ENGL 265-03, Special Topics: Seventeenth-Century British Comedy, Fall 2015

Abstract

This course treats British comedy from the Renaissance and Restoration periods, including plays by Shakespeare, Jonson, and Fletcher, the most influential of the early modern playwrights, and, from the later period, after the theaters reopened in the early 1660s, comedies by Dryden, Wycherley, Etherege, Aphra Behn, and Congreve. We will consider the various kinds of comedy developed over the seventeenth century; the influence of the earlier playwrights on their successors; and aspects of staging, production, casting, and acting, including the significant introduction of the professional actress in lieu of the boy actors who had played women’s roles, in the 1660s. We will have as a special resource Nick Hutchison, an English actor and director, who will be visiting class in October, as well as a symposium on Friday, October 23rd., on Shakespearean comedy, which will include presentations by Nick Hutchison and scholar Fiona Ritchie, speaking on Shakespeare and women in the eighteenth century.