Summer Shakespeare I

Course Overview

Throughout five years of course offerings in English, the Scholars Online program covers a fair amount of Shakespeare. A student who has taken World Literature, English Literature, and Senior English will have read:

• World Literature:
  • The Tempest
• English Literature:
  • Richard III
  • Much Ado About Nothing
  • Macbeth
• Senior English:
• Henry IV, Part 1
• Henry IV, Part 2
• Henry V
• Hamlet
• Measure for Measure

I have not yet figured out a legitimate way of incorporating Shakespeare into either Western Literature to Dante or American Literature. Failing some major historical upheaval, I suspect that this will not change.

Accordingly, a student can read eight or nine plays. While this certainly represents a good deal more Shakespeare than the average high school student will study formally, still, as Harold Bloom argues, Shakespeare has a unique place at the center of the Western literary canon, and it is nearly impossible to get too much of him.

Accordingly, this course, being offered for the eighth time in 2018, is designed to fill in some of the larger gaps in our Shakespeare offerings. We will cover, at the rate of one per week, nine more major plays, thus doubling the number a student has before college. Of course, at this pace, we cannot even pretend to be exhaustive — it’s intended to be a fun course in any case. But I am hoping that it will foster a cheerful familiarity with Shakespeare, and an awareness of the shape of his corpus as a whole. Taken together with the nine above, this will bring the student’s coverage to eighteen plays — more than half of Shakespeare’s total production. (Summer Shakespeare II is available to provide another ten plays, bringing the total to twenty-eight. Summer Shakespeare III completes the canon.)

Accordingly, this course will include:

• Comedy:
  • Twelfth Night
  • As You Like It
  • The Taming of the Shrew
  • The Merchant of Venice
  • A Midsummer Night’s Dream
• Tragedy:
  • King Lear
  • Julius Caesar
  • Romeo and Juliet
• History:
• Richard II

Because time is at a premium during the summer, and we would like to accomplish as much as we possibly can, I’d like to hit the ground running with a play discussion the first week. Therefore, do not delay to enroll, and get the books as soon as possible.

Contents of this page © Copyright 2002, 2004, 2006 by Bruce A. McMenomy.
Permission to download or print this page is hereby given to students of Scholars Online currently enrolled in Summer Shakespeare for purposes of personal study only. Any other reproduction or use for profit constitutes a violation of copyright.