230090 Genre & Jealousy in William Shakespeare (S) (SoSe 2021)

Shakespeare had a few themes that seem to have fascinated him and that he returned to again and again; kingship is one, jealousy is another. He explored jealous behaviour and its consequences in all of the major dramatic genres: farce (The Merry Wives of Windsor), dark-ish comedy (Much Ado About Nothing), tragedy (Othello), romance/tragi-comedy (Cymbeline and The Winter's Tale). His choice of genre had a significant influence on the character, intensity and the consequences of jealous behaviour. We will discuss how "the green-eyed monster" is represented in each play, but we will also try to understand how Shakespeare's dramatic treatment of it transformed over time.

Bibliography

Please buy annotated critical editions of the plays. You CANNOT work with any old online version; they are not reliable. The ONLY online versions that are acceptable are the ones prepared by the Folger Shakespeare library: https://shakespeare.folger.edu/shakespeares-works/ (If you choose to work with these, please download the PDFs, and PRINT them out. You must be able to write into your copies.)
But since they offer only a limited number of annotations, I would still recommend you buy copies from the Arden Shakespeare, New Cambridge Shakespeare, Oxford Shakespeare or Penguin Shakespeare. Second-hand copies are not that expensive!
Jealousy usually plays a part mainly in one plot strand, so we will not discuss the complete plays in detail but focus on selected scenes. Obviously you should know the rest of the plays too, though.