In as much as Shakespeare is not known to have visited Italy, yet chose Italian settings for so many of his plays and derived many of his plots from Italian (and classical Latin) sources, a course that sets out to look at Shakespeare in Italy will inevitably, and rewardingly, end up exploring the Italy in Shakespeare.
In Italy, the Renaissance retains strong physical presence in the very architecture of the cities, while the great painters and sculptors of the period left a magnificent patrimony of visual art. Translated to England, however, the Renaissance acquired a pre-eminently literary form, and Shakespeare was to become a defining literary force at the very moment England began building a mercantile empire based on ideas of individualism, capital acquisition, trade and communication that continue to inform current western values. At the same time Shakespeare was enriching English, English was becoming the language of enrichment, and remains so today.
Just as the Romans grew militarily and financially more powerful than the Greeks but still deferred to Greek culture, so the Elizabethans saw in Italy as a place of great culture but fading might. Arguably, this handing on of the cultural baton from a fading empire to a new power has since taken place between Britain and the United States, whose culture therefore owes a great deal to Shakespeare and Shakespeare’s idea of Italy.
We shall look in detail at five plays (these plays must be read and studied carefully) and glance at five others (considering the plot, characters, important scenes and speeches, but without reading the full work), which we shall examine primarily for the light they shed on the main texts. All ten are located in Italy or peopled by characters from Italy. We shall also see how film directors have interpreted the plays for modern audiences, and consider the Shakespearean-Italian influences in popular Hollywood productions, ranging from the “Rom Com” to Sci-Fi and even the Marvel Comic superhero.
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Theme
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Main Play
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Subsidiary Play
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Class work/excursions/films
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Week 1
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Romance and cynicism. Men who love women.
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Romeo and Juliet
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Two Gentlemen of Verona
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Class test on Romeo and Juliet /the persistent charm of romantic comedy/tragedy
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Week 2
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Rome and the tragic hero. America and the Superhero.
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Julius Caesar
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Titus Andronicus
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Test on Julius Caesar/Visit to Forum; Essay (3 pages)
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Week 3
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Capitalism, trade, money and race
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The Merchant of Venice
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The Comedy of Errors
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Test on The Merchant of Venice/Film/Visit to Jewish Ghetto of Rome; Essay (3 pages)
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Week 4
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War and love. Men who hate women.
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Antony and Cleopatra
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Coriolanus
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Test on Antony and Cleopatra/Visit to Capitoline Museum Essay (3 pages)
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Week 5
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Italy as Arcadia. Gardens, islands and secret hideaways.
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Much Ado about Nothing
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The Tempest
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Test on Much Ado about Nothing. Visit, if possible, to Villa d’Este; if not, to Villa Medici.
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Final
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Research paper (c. 10 pages)
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