This course provides an introduction to the major plays of William Shakespeare. With this course, students will encounter and enjoy in each semester four major plays of the author.

The four plays to be studied vary from year to year. They will be announced in class at the beginning of each semester after orientation in the first week. The text to be used is Stephen Greenblatt’s The Norton Shakespeare, Based on the Oxford Edition (NY: Norton, 2008).


1. Regular attendance is demanded. Every absence will result in three points being deducted from the final grade average.

2. Students of this course are expected to hand in their midterm and final papers with citations in MLA format.

Some basic reading materials:
1. Bentley, Gerald Eades, ed. The Seventeenth-Century Stage. Chicago and London: U of Chicago P, 1968.
2. Biggs, Murray, et al., eds. The Arts of Performance in Elizabethan and Early Stuart Drama. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1991.
3. Greenblatt, Stephen, ed. The Norton Shakespeare, Based on the Oxford Edition. NY and London: Norton, 2008.
4. Gurr, Andrew. The Shakespearean Stage, 1574-1642. 3rd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992.
5. Hinman, Charlton, ed. The First Folio of Shakespeare. NY: Norton, 1968.
6. Norman, Marc, and Tom Stoppard. Shakespeare in Love: A Screenplay. NY: Hyperion, 1998.
7. Wells, Stanley, and Gary Taylor, eds. William Shakespeare: The Complete Works. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1986.

The schedule: The texts to be studied are as follows.  The schedule is a tentative one and is subject to change. Students are supposed to read the plays before the class.