Vibrant and varied dramatic works existed long before Shakespeare began to write, and this course seeks to bring them back to life. Although there were no permanent theater structures in the era covered by this course, plays were performed in many places: city streets and squares, lordly manor houses, churches, and inn yards. Some plays sought to increase devotional piety, others to inform audiences about biblical history, some to teach particular kinds of morality, and still others to entertain and foster laughter about human foibles. This course will journey from the Middle Ages into the later sixteenth century, and along the way we will sample a great many popular works, some of which drew quite large audiences in their own times. We will discover as we go the profound revisionary effects the Protestant Reformation had on traditional drama.

Course requirements include active participation in discussions, dramatic readings, group readings of scenes, some short performances (no prior experience needed), brief creative quizzes, and several short papers on how a scene might be performed, how a character could be brought to life, and how performance affects the interpretation of dramatic works.

A theater mini-course for flex credit (RC HUMS 485, taught by Martin Walsh) may run concurrently with Eng 449. This mini-course will consist of scene work coordinated with the Eng 449 syllabus.

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