Shakespeare and friends

Aims

This course aims to explore and detail:

• the context in which Shakespeare wrote
• his intersection with Christopher Marlowe
• his intersection with Ben Jonson

Course content

Recent scholarship has accepted several of the canonical plays as collaborations and emphasised how widespread collaboration was in Jacobethan theatre. But formal collaboration is not the only way friendly playwrights can work together, and after an opening session considering Shakespeare in his own context, as a resident playwright and actor, this course takes a different tack, contrasting Shakespeare with two of the playwrights who were both friends and professional rivals.

From the beginning of his career, in the early 1590s, come his marvellous Richard III and Christopher Marlowe’s different but equally daring Edward II, itself probably influenced by Shakespeare’s first history plays. How do the two kings and their many faults compare? And what might Shakespeare have learned from his ill-fated friend?

Then from the close of his career, in about 1610, come two extraordinary plays that are both deeply about and strangely critical of theatre itself, Shakespeare’s fantastical The Tempest and Ben Jonson’s roaringly farcical The Alchemist. Over the years of their acquaintance, Shakespeare softened Jonson’s punitive endings, and Jonson made him confront his own playwrighting tricks ever more closely.

The old national myth of the isolated Bard has never been so thoroughly exposed as a fallacy as it is now, but the context needed to understand Shakespeare more fully – the theatres he worked in and the rival playwrights whose works he read, saw, and acted in – has still to be integrated into a new understanding of him, and this course sets about it.

What to expect on this course

Each session will begin with a mini-lecture and PowerPoint presentation, lasting 30–45 minutes, and subsequently open to question and answer, and contributions by all. Questions and responses will be welcome throughout, and need not concern only the plays in hand.

Course sessions

1. Shakespeare in his own time and place
2. Edward II and the weakness of desire
3. Richard III and the weakness of ambition
4. The Alchemist and the abuse of theatre
5. The Tempest and the use of theatre

Learning outcomes

As a result of the course, you will gain a greater understanding of the subject and you should be able to:

• understand the theatrical and biographical context in which Shakespeare wrote
• understand his friendship and rivalry with Christopher Marlowe
• understand his friendship and rivalry with Ben Jonson

Required reading

Any modern, annotated editions of the set texts are acceptable, but the Arden 3 and Revels editions listed below are recommended. Complete works that lack scholarly and critical annotation will be of less help.

Shakespeare, William, Richard III (ed. James R. Siemon) (Arden 3 2009) 
ISBN 978-1903436899

Shakespeare, William, The Tempest (ed. Virginia Mason Vaughan & Alden T. Vaughan) (Arden 3, rev. ed. 2011) ISBN 978-1408133477

Christopher, Marlowe, Edward the Second (ed. Charles R. Forker) (Manchester & New York: Manchester UP, 1994 [Revels Edition]) ISBN 978-0719030895

Jonson, Ben, The Alchemist (ed. F. H. Mares) (Manchester & New York: Manchester UP, 1967 [Revels Edition]) ISBN 978-0719016177