Download Detailed Course Outline - C 10 Plays

Fall Term – Room A100
Friday, Sept 09 – Friday, Nov 11, 2016
Morning – 9:50-11:50
COURSE C
Co-chairs: Berit Dullerud and Fran Sayers
Course Director: Dr. Philippa Sheppard teaches Modern and Renaissance Drama at the University of Toronto.
TEN PLAYS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD
Opening with the ancient Greeks and travelling through the history of drama to the present day, this course will
provide a survey of theatrical development. Each class will provide background on the playwrights’ lives and
revelations about the plays’ commentary on human society. Each period of drama will be introduced with a
brief description of performance conditions and prevailing schools of thought. Then we will delve deeply into
one of the best representatives of the era’s playwriting. The lectures will be illustrated with stills and with clips
from filmed performances.
1 Sept 09 The Ancient Greeks and Romans: Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex
Using this seminal work as our foundation, we will explore the conventions associated with the dramatic arts in
the time that gave birth to Western drama. This play by Sophocles has become the most cited of any in the
Western canon, and formed the basis for Freud’s Oedipus Complex. It examines our subconscious desires and
our confrontation with the limitations of human power in the face of what has variously been termed: fortune,
fate, Providence, destiny or luck.
2 Sept 16 Early Renaissance Drama: Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus
We leap from the inception of Western drama to its greatest flowering – the Renaissance. Marlowe’s play about
a man in the throes of psychomachia provides the perfect bridge between the medieval and early modern
periods. Faustus is essentially a Renaissance man – brilliant, sceptical and ambitious. Yet he operates in a
medieval world in which visible angels and devils vie for his soul. A descendant of the protagonists of the great
Greek tragedies, Faustus is undone by his flaw of hamartia – pride.
3 Sept 23 The Golden Age of Theatre: William Shakespeare’s Hamlet
Benefitting from the path blazed by Marlowe, Shakespeare honed his craft until he was able to compose a play
that has become iconic in Western civilization. Like Faustus, Hamlet is a man tortured by his conscience. No
conventional avenger, Hamlet is nevertheless set on a vengeful quest by his father’s ghost. This confrontation
with mortality leads Hamlet to ask many of the profound questions about our place in the universe.
4 Sept 30 The Jacobean Masque: Shakespeare’s The Tempest
Shakespeare’s other famous contemporary, Ben Jonson, influenced the bard’s move towards a more courtly
form of drama that suited the indoor theatre recently purchased by his company: Blackfriars. Highlighting
music, dance and spectacle, the new drama in Shakespeare’s hands nevertheless addresses the key issues of the
age: the ethics of colonialism, the components of good leadership and the power of art.
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5 Oct 7 Restoration Drama: Aphra Ben’s The Rover
After the Civil War in England, when the Puritans closed all the theatres, the Restoration of the monarchy meant
that a new kind of drama emerged, one that celebrated human sexuality as if to spite the Puritans. Women trod
the boards for the first time and were also emerging as writers. Aphra Ben is often named the first female
English playwright. The heroine of her play voices some lines that seem incredibly modern and proto-feminist.
Like most Restoration plays, The Rover is characterized by a rollicking plot and an effervescent wit.
6 Oct 14 Naturalism and the Birth of Feminism: Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House
With advances in the sciences helmed by pioneers like Charles Darwin, artists were driven to investigate human
nature in a more methodical fashion. Emile Zola published an essay on the need for greater naturalism in the
arts, basing character and plot on new learning about heredity and environment. The Norwegian playwright
Ibsen was a forerunner in implementing these ideas on the stage. He also exposed the oppressiveness of 19th
century social conventions, particularly on women.
7 Oct 21 The Emergence of the Modern Age: Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan
In the aftermath of the Great War, every commonly held assumption came under question. Shaw became the
master of the thesis drama, in which lively dialectic presents at least two contrasting views on an issue for the
audience to consider. In Saint Joan, considered by many to be Shaw’s greatest work, the playwright examines
nationhood, genius, war and religion, among other themes. He picks up where Ibsen left off in exploring
women’s rights.
8 Oct 28 The Myth of the American Drama: Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun
Following the Second World War, the United States enjoyed a period of unprecedented prosperity. Some
groups, however, did not share in the fulfillment of the American Dream, among them, many African Americans.
Hansberry exposes the racial prejudice that prevailed in the United States on a micro as well as a macro level,
zeroing in on the social forces that attempt to stop a hard-working family from escaping the ghetto. She
celebrates the distinct culture of African Americans in the dialogue and spectacle of the play.
9 Nov 4 The Theatre of the Absurd: Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot
The huge death toll of the two world wars meant that the Grand Narrative which had promoted absolute
authority figures and hierarchical powers systems ceased to hold the same appeal as it had held for previous
generations. Beckett and contemporaries like Ionesco, Sartre and Camus viewed human life as absurd, existing
in a random and meaningless universe. Their art reflects this absurdity. Waiting for Godot, a ground-breaking
play, features characters who lament their lack of purpose and failure to communicate. Humour becomes a
bulwark against the despair that might swamp people shorn of their convictions.
10 Nov 11 Contemporary Theatre and Millennial Angst: Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia
Stoppard started his career as an absurdist, but by the 1990s had infused his work with a more optimistic, if
post-modern, philosophy. Arcadia explores discoveries in science such as chaos theory and Fermat’s Last
Theorem, using landscape gardening and Romantic versus Enlightenment aesthetics as analogies. The
intellectual characters in two time periods all reach the conclusion that seeking and sharing knowledge keeps
millennial angst at bay.
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