Welcome to the exciting Elizabethan / Jacobean world of Renaissance England, a world quite different from our contemporary situation here in Taiwan but filled, nonetheless, with some of the same types of people, thoughts, concerns, problems, joys, and emotions that we experience in our lives. This course will focus on the life and writings of William Shakespeare. The class will also explore some of the social, political, and cultural issues present in the Renaissance world in which Shakespeare lived and wrote.

This class will not be like other classes you have taken: it will be conducted almost entirely on the internet. Our classroom lectures, discussions, and writings will all be available online where we can read and respond to each other freely, repeatedly, and at times other than our scheduled class time. Our class will go beyond the walls and boundaries of the traditional classroom. A web page will be designed for each of the texts under discussion. In those web pages, besides having a video file with the teacher lecturing about the texts, you will also have an outline of that lecture and/or previous class discussions. Furthermore, you will be able to post your response journals, as well as have an arena where you can discuss freely with your classmates, teacher, and the assistants the texts read for class. You will have access to many helpful sites about Shakespeare and his works on the World Wide Web; you will have access to short film clips from movie versions of the plays, as well as some samples of songs from the plays; and you will receive specific and helpful instructions and materials that relate to those plays. Lectures by the teacher about each of the plays under discussion will be available online, together with Powerpoint outlines of those lectures. You will be able to watch those lectures and read the outlines as often and whenever you want. An on-line chat room will be available where you can interact with your classmates, as well as with the teacher and the two graduate teaching assistants available for this course, Kevin Chen and Gretchen Lee. Online discussion and message/announcement boards for students will be important for teachers and assistants to relay their messages. Quizzes will also be taken online.

This semester we will read two comedies and two tragedies: The Comedy of Errors, The Merchant of Venice, Othello, and Antony and Cleopatra. Each play must be read carefully because the mid-term and final exams will test your memory of the plays' texts.

I view your reading list for this course as a set of scripts-texts not meant to be primarily read (though that is what we will do), but rather performed for an audience. After all, the script is only the first step of realizing a play in production. After the playwright writes it, directors interpret it; actors and actresses make the characters flesh and blood; set designers, costumers, and light designers create the illusions we accept in seeing a theatrical performance; finally, critics interpret the playwright's-and a given production's-meaning. Accordingly, this course will go beyond an emphasis on texts alone. I strongly recommend that you watch videotapes of the plays we are reading this semester. This may be done either in groups or individually. Because the performative nature of drama involves a combination of the visual and the verbal, we will have a multimedia emphasis, especially incorporating filmic versions of the plays and recordings of songs from the plays into classroom discussion. Because this course will go beyond an emphasis on texts alone, students will also have the opportunity to hear audio recordings of selected passages. In this way you will be able to see and hear the text as it is presented in performance. This class, then, will give you a set of techniques for reading and considering Shakespeare's plays in their dramatic context.

In his plays and poetry Shakespeare often asked more questions than he answered, so half of the delight of reading Shakespeare's works involves allowing yourself the challenge of experiencing those questions head-on and considering them in light of your own views and experiences. In an effort to assist you with this, I will expect you to join in our online discussions and offer your own opinions. Also, I will require each of you to join a small group, with about four or five of your classmates, to discuss and even "act" out the plays we are reading. Each group will have online discussions in the chatroom at least one to two hours every month. They must notify the teacher of the times for those discussions each month.

I strongly recommend that you read from The Riverside Shakespeare (click to check the ). If you have New Arden editions of the plays, they are also acceptable alternatives; if you intend to read other editions, please talk to me first.

Hopefully, you will make this course YOUR course, and it will become discussion based. I cannot stress fervently enough the importance of active discussion and participation for this class. You must commit yourself from the onset to actively discussing the various dramatic texts that we will read. Your reactions-both emotional and cognitive, both immediate and those that follow your close reading and reflection-will be important for our online discussions. You must share your unique approaches, understandings, and questions about the plays we will read. Plays are open to many possible interpretations, so the more viewpoints you and your classmates hear and express, the more options we as a class can explore. Therefore, your constant and active participation is required throughout the course. The success of this class will ultimately depend upon you.

As you may already have guessed, because you are both a teacher and a student in this class, your attendance online will be required and regularly checked. Students who do not regularly check into our class website and join online discussions will have their final course grade significantly lowered.

I believe students should be encouraged to write well in all of their English classes. Papers must exhibit good ideas and good writing.

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Because you need to know the basic facts of Shakespeare's life and times, each of you will be required to read an encyclopedia article or a general introduction to Shakespeare (like the one found in The Riverside Shakespeare on pages 1-25) and write a one page summary of it.

A regular writing assignment will entail keeping a reading journal in which you respond to a character, event, or issue present in the text assigned for a particular class session. The journal entries will provide an opportunity for students to begin interpreting the plays, as well as to raise (and start answering) questions they may have about the texts. Students will be required to post AT LEAST three of journals (two pages each) online. Students will also be required to write and post online at least two responses to journals posted by their classmates.

Another of your short writing assignments is a one page typed summary of an article about one of the plays we read this semester. I am going to insist that your article be an essay from a periodical, not a chapter or essay from a book. You can find articles about Shakespeare in journals in our library, for example in Shakespeare Quarterly, Studies in English Literature, PMLA, or ELR (English Literary Renaissance). Be sure to include as part of the assignment the full bibliographic information in the correct MLA format. Also, when you turn in your summary, please include a copy of the original essay.

Grades

．Quizzes, journals, responses to classmates' journals, discussions, and short Dassignments 40%
．Midterm exam 30%
．Final exam 30%

Plagiarism

I would like to remind you of the importance of doing your own work throughout the semester. Presenting other people's writing and ideas as though they are your own is a serious error. Intentional and unintentional plagiarism are not acceptable and will jeopardize specific paper or journal grades, as well as the final grade for the course. (check this reference page!!)

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