The course requires that you read the plays (thoroughly), attend class, participate in class discussion, turn in papers on time, and take the exams (midterm and final).  Be sure to do the assigned reading before the class meets and be ready to discuss the reading. Being prepared for class means being prepared to ask questions about anything you did not understand from the assigned reading. I will call on students to point out passages that they did not fully understand. (This is Shakespeare. There will always be passages that you will not fully understand.)  You can do well in this course if you have thorough understanding of what is going on in the texts. 

In class, we will not only read through and discuss the text, we will also talk about performance issues, how to interpret the plays on stage and film. We will spend time watching film productions of the plays, thinking about how performance brings the plays to life. 

We will read three (or possibly four) of Shakespeare's plays set in Italy. If one excludes the English history plays, more of Shakespeare's plays are set in Italy than in any other country. Here is a list: 

Shakespeare plays set in Italy

Messina | Much Ado About Nothing
Padua | The Taming of the Shrew
Rome |  Julius Caesar + Coriolanus + Titus Andronicus + Antony and Cleopatra
Syracuse | The Comedy of Errors 
Venice | The Merchant of Venice + Othello
Verona | Romeo and Juliet + The Two Gentlemen of Verona

Plays partially set in Italy
Florence | All’s Well That Ends Well
Sicily | The Winter’s Tale
Ancient Britain under the Roman Empire |  Cymbeline

A version of this course could be dedicated to the Roman plays set in the ancient world. This summer, the course will instead be about plays set in early modern Italy, in Sicily and Venice (and possibly Verona.)