Shakespeare & Renaissance Drama at Sheffield Uni: Lecturer Tom Rutter's Work, Lecture notes of Theatre

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Shakespeare at Sheffield

Tom Rutter

Who am I?

• Lecturer in Shakespeare and Renaissance Drama
• Came to UoS 2012
• Books on work and play in Shakespearean Drama; Christopher Marlowe
• Currently working on book about Admiral’s Men playing company
• Teach/have taught on Studying Theatre (level 1), Renaissance Literature (level 2), Genre (level 2), Christopher Marlowe (level 2), etc.

Studying Theatre: teaching

• 2 lectures + 1 seminar per week
• Students typically asked to prepare material in advance of seminars, possibly on MOLE
• Saw The Winter’s Tale in performance; Q&A from Crucible actors and staff

Studying Theatre: Sample assignments

1. Imagine you have been asked to direct a production ofbelieve to be a key theme of the play, then, choose a scene and discuss how you as a director The Winter’s Tale. Identify what you would approach: working with actors, set designers, sound and lighting designers and costumemakers in order to produce an effective production that amplifies your chosen theme. Draw on contextual and textual evidence to support your decisions.
2. Discuss the importance of scenes - or parts of scenes - when characters are on stage but notinvolved in the dialogue. Choose two or more examples from The Winter’s Tale and reflect on how different ways of staging them might change the audience’s response to what is happening.
3. “The full text of the play, spoken with rare spontaneity, registered as fresh but, the performanceitself became the ground of authenticity and co-equal of the text.” Zarilli, P.B, et al. 2006.Routledge) p.458. Theatre Histories: An Introduction. (Abbingdon and New York: apply to many outstanding modern productions of historical texts. Focusing on any of the playsThis assessment of Peter Brook's 1970 production of^ A Midsummer Night's Dream^ could equally studied, outline and analyse the ways in whichof the original text. Comment on the ways in which direction, design (set, lighting, costume, two modern productions have been the 'co-equal' sound) and character interpretation have revealed new meanings or contemporary relevances.
4. Discuss the representation of morality in any two of the plays studied. In your answer draw onevidence from spoken text, given and imagined action, sound, costume and stage design, as well as contextual information regarding the society out of which the plays were born.

Renaissance Literature: Teaching

1 seminar per week 2 lectures per week...

Edmund Hall’s

Chronicle (1548)

‘The union of the two noble and illustre families of Lancaster and York, being long in continual dissention for the crown of this noble realm, … beginning at the time of king Henry the fourth, the first author of this division, and so successively proceeding to the reign of the high and prudent prince king Henry the eight, the undubitate flower and very heir of both the said lineages.’ (spelling modernised)

First Quarto (1598)

First Folio (1623)

Deposition scene follows

Renaissance Literature: Assessment

• Asssignment 1: 2,000 word coursework essay on general topic, e.g.:
  1. Discuss the ways in which early modern texts explore the relationship between the living and the dead.
  2. What has reading texts on EEBO – paying attention to issues such as spelling, punctuation, or lay-out – brought to your understanding of early modern literature?
  3. How, and to what effect, do early modern texts use drama as a metaphor?
  4. How does early modern literature reflect the experience of religious Reformation and/or Counter-Reformation?
• Assignment 2: commentary (exam conditions)

Genre (year 2)

• ‘This module gives you the opportunity to study developments in two literary genres from classical antiquity to the present day.’
• 2012-13: Oedipus Rex , Menaechmi , The Comedy of Errors , Twelfth Night , King Lear , The Winter’s Tale , also novels (e.g. Jude the Obscure ), modern drama ( Phaedra’s Love )
• ‘to use genre as a means of drawing connections between periods’
• why genre is important
• genre in history
• mixing genres

Genre: Assessment

• Students write 3,000 word essay on (at least) one text from the syllabus and one (of their own choosing) off it
• King Lear and The Royal Tennenbaums
• The Comedy of Errors and The Big Lebowski

Shakespeare on Film (year 2)

• ‘This module deals with issues arising from the transposition of Shakespeare's plays to film. It will consider such issues as the relationship between text, staging and the cinematic adaptation.’
• Fidelity vs. rewriting
• Viewing sessions + interactive seminars
• 2 x 2,500-word essays

Summary

• All above modules optional except Renaissance Literature and Genre (both core for Eng Lit students).
• We teach Shakespeare in loads of different ways: as a text to be dramatised/adapted; in historical context; as a writer in specific genres…
• Above all: close reading; whole texts