Shakespeare's Tragedies: Lessons for Our Time
James Mumford PhD
Course Format
Live online group classes. All sessions are recorded and made available to registrants, allowing you to review material or catch up on any missed sessions.
Course Tutor
The course is led by James Mumford, who graduated with a double-first in English from Oxford University before becoming one of two Oxbridge students to receive a Henry Fellowship to Yale. After Yale he returned to Oxford to study new subjects at graduate level - Theology, Ethics and Political Philosophy. His PhD was published by Oxford University Press.
Course Description
Approaching Shakespearean tragedy can be daunting. Even as individual texts, Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello and King Lear can seem impenetrable worlds unto themselves. This online series of classes is about providing "on-ramps" to these great plays. As well as Shakespeare's major tragedies we will also consider Richard II and Roman plays in the context of Shakespeare's tragedies. The seminars will ask: How do the character flaws of each main protagonist compare? How different or similar are the spiritual worlds of each play? What were the differing historical contexts for the tragedies? What do the respective endings show Shakespeare to be saying about the human condition?
Course Outline
Shakespearean tragedy is about everything: Paralysis and procrastination, deadly ambition, forbidden love, catastrophic foolishness, all-consuming jealousy, racism, ageing, suicide, deception, violence and villainy, heroism and virtue, responsibility and fate, the plague and marvel of self-consciousness. The classes will explore how Shakespeare explores all these themes. To understand Shakespearean tragedy is to understand Shakespeare's time as well as how he transcended it to speak to ours. Thus the classes will unearth the historical context necessary to understanding Shaekspearean's innovations with the genre before focusing on his four mature tragedies - Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear and Othello.
- Class 1 - How did Hamlet reinvent Tragedy?
- Class 2 - Who's to blame in Macbeth?
- Class 3 - Is King Lear the Bleakest Tragedy of Them All?
- Class 4 - Is Othello a racist play?
- Class 5 - Richard II
- Class 6 - What is Shakespeare up to in The Roman plays?
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