Undergraduate Course: The Play's the Thing: Drama in Early Modern England (ENLI10441)
Course Outline
| School | School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 3 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course focuses on the development of English drama in the late sixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth century. Beginning with Thomas Kyd's ground-breaking Elizabethan blockbuster The Spanish Tragedy and ending with the daringly inventive self-reflexive drama of the Caroline period, the course explores a variety of comedies and tragedies as performed by various child and adult companies in a range of different indoor and outdoor venues. In addition to this theatrical focus, the course attends to the literary and textual dimension of early modern drama and probes at the often-vexed relationship between text and performance. In doing so, it places the plays in a wider historical context and examines the manifold ways that early modern drama broached many of the most pressing political and cultural questions of the day, especially as pertaining to issues of gender, race, and social status. |
| Course description |
Early modern London was a theatrical city. As the city grew, so too did its theatre industry. Drama in the early modern era was a major form of popular entertainment, drawing together large heterogenous audiences, including visitors from overseas. Performing six days a week, theatre companies produced a dazzling range of plays drawing on diverse sources, from Italian novellas to English historical chronicles. This was the time of Shakespeare, but it was more than only Shakespeare's age. This course considers a range of plays by numerous dramatists from the beginning of the English professional theatre to the closure of the theatres before the English Civil War. Students will consider the complex interrelationships between the plays. For example, a play like Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy which was extremely popular, was an inspiration for Shakespeare's Hamlet but is alluded to in parodic terms by various plays such as Francis Beaumont's The Knight of the Burning Pestle and James Shirley's A Bird in a Cage. Students will also be invited to think about early modern performance conditions: what did it mean, for example, to stage a play at an indoors playhouse, or at an outdoors playhouse? How do plays work in repertory? How does an understanding of the identity of the performers aid our comprehension of the plays they performed?
Students will read the set texts and other materials where they are set for each week; meet in small groups outside the seminar hours to prepare answers to specific questions set in advance; come to the seminar ready to present and discuss those answers in class, and engage in the wider debate that they help generate.
INDICATIVE READING LIST
Essential:
Bevington, David, Lars Engle, Katharine Eisaman Maus, and Eric Rasmussen, ed. The Norton Anthology of Renaissance Drama, Norton, 2002. Key text.
Chalmers, Hero, Julie Sanders, and Sophie Tomlinson, ed. Three Seventeenth-Century Plays on Women and Performance, Manchester UP, 2006. Key text.
Dowd, Michelle and Tom Rutter, ed. The Arden Handbook of Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama, Bloomsbury, 2022. Key text.
Dutton, Richard, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Theatre, Oxford UP, 2009. Key text.
Lopez, Jeremy, ed. The Routledge Anthology of Early Modern Drama, Routledge, 2020. Available as an eBook.
Shakespeare, William Hamlet: The Revised Edition, ed. Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor, Arden Shakespeare, 2016. Key text.
Secondary Reading:
Akhimie, Patricia, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Race, Oxford UP, 2024.
Bourne, Claire M. L. ed. Shakespeare / Text: Contemporary Readings in Textual Studies, Editing and Performance, Arden Shakespeare, 2021.
Chakravarty, Urvashi, Fictions of Consent: Slavery, Servitude and Free Service in Early Modern England, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022.
Drouin, Jennifer, Shakespeare/Sex: Contemporary Readings in Gender and Sexuality, Arden Shakespeare, 2020.
Erne, Lukas, Beyond the Spanish Tragedy: A Study of the Works of Thomas Kyd, Manchester UP, 2001.
Gordon, Colby, Glorious Bodies: Trans Theology and Renaissance Literature, Chicago UP, 2024.
Hall, Kim F., Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England, Cornell UP, 1994.
Hattaway, Michael, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Drama, Cambridge UP, 2003.
Howard, Jean E., Theater of a City: The Places of London Comedy, 1598-1642, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007.
Kinney, Arthur F., and Thomas Warren Hopper, ed. A New Companion to Renaissance Drama, Blackwell, 2017.
McInnis, David, Shakespeare and Lost Plays: Reimagining Drama in Early Modern England, Cambridge UP, 2021.
Munro, Lucy, Shakespeare in the Theatre: The King's Men, Arden Shakespeare, 2021.
Ndiaye, Noémie, Scripts of Blackness: Early Modern Performance Culture and the Making of Race, University of Chicago Press, 2022.
Smith, Emma, and Garrett J. Sullivan, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Early Modern Tragedy, Cambridge UP, 2010.
Smith, Ian, Black Shakespeare: Reading and Misreading Race, Cambridge UP, 2022.
Stern, Tiffany, ed. Rethinking Theatrical Documents in Shakespeare's England, Arden Shakespeare, 2019.
Thompson, Ayanna, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race, Cambridge UP, 2021.
Turner, Henry S., ed. Early Modern Theatricality, Oxford UP, 2013.
Woodbridge, Linda, English Revenge Drama: Money, Resistance, Equality, Cambridge UP, 2010.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
|
Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | Available to students on Honours degrees with English and Scottish Literature and to Visiting Students; not available as an outside course to other Edinburgh students. |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2026/27, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: 0 |
| Course Start |
Semester 1 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 22,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
174 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
- 30% term essay (LOs 1, 2, 3, 4)
- 70% final essay (LOs 1, 2, 3, 4) |
| Feedback |
Students will receive feedback in the following formats:
1. Students will receive formative feedback on all written assignments. Feedback for the mid-semester essay will be available before submission of the final essay.
2. Students receive in-class formative feedback from peers and seminar leader on the work completed during autonomous learning groups.
3. Students are encouraged to meet with the course organiser during drop-in hours or at another pre-arranged time for verbal feedback in advance of, and following, assignment submission. Students with specified learning adjustments that allow for submissions of essay plans in progress are expressly encouraged to submit these to the course organiser. |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Construct clear and original arguments about the production of meaning and effect by early modern English plays on the page and/or in performance
- Develop those arguments with close reading analysis of written dramatic texts from the early modern era
- Situate those close readings of early modern drama in the context of changing social and theatrical conventions
- Evaluate ideas from a range of secondary sources to inform and substantiate your arguments and close readings of the primary course texts
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
By the end of this course, students will have:
- Curiosity for learning that makes a positive difference
- Courage to expand and fulfil their potential
- Passion to engage locally and globally
They will be:
-Creative problem solvers and researchers
-Critical and reflective thinkers
-Effective and influential contributors
-And skilled communicators. |
| Keywords | English Literature,Early Modern,Drama,Theatre,Performance |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Eoin Price
Tel:
Email: eprice@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | |
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