Pathways 2014
Shakespeare and His World Academic Coordinator: Dr Victoria Sparey
Shakespeare and His World provides a rich introduction to Shakespeare’s drama, encouraging students to engage with an expansive approach to the most influential writer of the Renaissance period. You will achieve a fuller understanding of Shakespeare’s work by placing it in vital contexts: historical, cultural, and theoretical. Connections between Shakespeare’s texts and their contexts will be examined in taught sessions that benefit from the expertise of scholars from the departments of English, History and Drama. You will encounter different ways of interpreting Shakespeare’s works in sessions that include: examinations of the textual history of Shakespeare’s plays; the significance of historically and culturally specific detail when interpreting Shakespeare; analysis of performance practices of the past and present that inform an understanding of Shakespeare.
You will also attend sessions that analyse the module’s central texts, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest, as well as sessions that provide historical, performance and theoretical contexts for understanding other Shakespeare plays.
Pathways – Shakespeare and His World
ional internat school 2014 summer
The module encourages you to explore Shakespeare’s drama via both text and performance. The pathway includes going to see a play at the world famous Globe Theatre in London. Within performance workshops, you will draw upon their experience of watching a play at the Globe and put performance theory into practice. Key readings William Shakespeare, The Tempest, A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
‘My first UK experience was just terrific, the Shakespeare and His World pathway exciting and the experience of watching Macbeth at the Globe thrilling. The programme also offered me a unique chance to meet friends from other countries and to learn about other cultures than my own.’ Hao Zhizi, Fudan University 36
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