Shakespeare: fusions of Comedy and Tragedy

Shakespeare learned early to be a great generic engineer, testing forms to breaking-point and playing with audience expectations. This course looks closely at four plays from different stages of his career, tracing his radicalism of experiment from the mid-1590s to 1610, in Much Ado About Nothing, Troilus & Cressida, Measure For Measure, and Cymbeline, as he explored the boundaries of tragedy and comedy, relentlessly pulled in the punters, and faced the challenge of a new venue — while always providing challenges that actors and directors as well as audiences still relish. This is a 10-session course and must be taken with W210Pm02 in Week 2.

Course details

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Start Date
12 Jul 2026
Duration
10 Sessions over two weeks
End Date
18 Jul 2026
Application Deadline
28 Jun 2026
Location
International Summer Programme
Code
W110Pm02

Tutors

Dr John Lennard

Dr John Lennard

Tutor in literature

Aims

This course aims to: 

  • promote understanding of Shakespeare as a great generic engineer
  • focus closely on four plays challenging or defying generic categorisation
  • situate all four within Shakespeare’s career and dramatic landscape as well as their modern critical reception

Course content

We begin by thinking about Shakespeare’s earlier career in 1590s theatre, from the excesses of Titus Andronicus and multiplication of lovers in comedy, through the turning-point of status as a sharer in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men to the ambitious generic engineering that followed.

Much Ado About Nothing, from 1597, is known for Beatrice’s & Benedict’s “merry war” of wit, but darker currents coil, in Don John’s machinations with Hero’s humiliation and mock-death, the rash credulity of Claudio and Don Pedro, deeply compromised as a ruler, and the incompetence of Dogberry. The sunnier As You Like It was yet to come, but Much Ado points a bleaker way.

Troilus and Cressida is believed to date to 1601–02, as an intervention in the ‘Poetomachia’ (‘war of the poets’). A dark, curious play, set long ago yet full of neologisms, it radically undermines received history, leaving no reputation unscathed while refusing either to kill its protagonists (though not others) or provide a happy ending amid scabrous commentary. Found thoroughly dubious by everyone from Dryden to F. S. Boas (who mislabelled it a ‘problem play’), it achieved popularity in the Twentieth Century, which found its anti-war sentiments exact to modern needs.

Measure, for Measure dates to 1604 and, like Troilus, refuses its required generic ending in the principals’ marriage, surrounding that with shotgun marriages, a wrongly prosecuted clandestine marriage, a dubiously pardoned murderer, a bed-trick, and a mock-death. Probably Shakespeare’s penultimate comedy, its biting humour sustained it into the Eighteenth Century, but its sexuality horrified the Nineteenth, and if now again popular laughter is rarely achieved in performance.

Cymbeline was probably Shakespeare’s penultimate solo play, in 1610. Much the longest ‘Late Play’, it has claims as the most polygeneric and severely ironic of all his works, featuring a scene in which no-one on stage knows who anyone else is, and some don’t know who they are themselves, before multiplying concatenated mock-deaths by a real one and heading for a final scene with at least 24 revelations.

The final session is plenary, considering the evolutions of Shakespeare’s extraordinary generic engineering over 20 years and two major venues.

What to expect on this course

Each session will begin with a mini-lecture + PowerPoint presentation, lasting 30–45 mins, 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. The London theatre & Shakespeare’s career in the 1590s.
  2. Much Ado About Nothing 1: An older heroine and a war of wit
  3. Much Ado About Nothing 2: A callow lover and traducements of justice
  4. Troilus and Cressida: abrupting tragedy.
  5. Measure, for Measure 1: marriage-law and bed-tricks
  6. Measure, for Measure 2: abrupting comedy
  7. The London theatre & Shakespeare’s career in the later 1600s.
  8. Cymbeline 1: Tragical-Comical-Historical-Pastoral
  9. Cymbeline 2: Ironies around a headless trunk
  10. Plenary: Shakespeare’s restless generic engineering

Learning outcomes

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

  • understand tragedy and comedy as companionate, not opposites
  • understand Shakespeare as a great generic engineer
  • assess the historical and theatrical contextualisation of four of his generic experiments

Required reading

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

*Much Ado About Nothing (ed. Claire McEachern) (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2006) ISBN 978-1-903436-83-7

*Troilus and Cressida (ed. David Bevington, 1998; revised edition) (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2015) ISBN 978-1-472584-74-8

*Measure for Measure (ed. A R Braunmuller & Robert N Watson) (Arden Shakespeare, 2020) ISBN 978-1-904271-43-7

*Cymbeline (ed. Valerie Wayne) (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2017) ISBN 978-1-904271-30-7