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“All the world’s a stage,” laments Jacques in As You Like It. “And the men and women merely players.” It’s a statement that presents us with the idea of the world as a stage. It presents us with the question of the place of the stage not just within Shakespeare’s world but in ours as well. This course will take you to the World Shakespeare Festival in London next summer to explore just that. What is the place of the stage today? Are players merely players (in Shakespeare’s time and ours)? What is the place of Shakespeare in the globalized, socially-mediatied, necessarily international world of today? These are just some of the questions we will be considering as we read Shakespeare this summer.

This class will introduce students to the work of William Shakespeare through the study of six of his major dramatic works, from each of the major genres in which he wrote—history, comedy, tragedy and romance. In addition to introducing students to the particular constraints and demands of the theatrical medium and to the cultural of early modern England, we will attend a number of international productions of Shakespeare while in London during the World Shakespeare Festival and thus raise the the question of how the Shakespearean text has (and can be) adapted and translated by different cultures and languages.What are the particular challenges to editing the Shakespearean text? What is lost in the translation? What is gained?

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