Sex and the City in Stuart Drama

Learning Outcomes

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• -Use your study time effectively and make the most of your own independent research when constructing an argument
• -Approach ambiguity and complexity of meaning in a wide variety of texts with confidence and a critical eye

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• -Satire, intertextuality, and metatheatrical references as popular ingredients of Jacobean as well as Caroline plays
• -Various ways in which Stuart drama can bear witness to the cultural and political transformations taking place in the early seventeenth century
• -The evolution of theatrical practice and popular dramatic genres in England under the rule of James I and his successors

Cognitive Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• -Engage productively with existing scholarship and draw on a variety of critical approaches to drama of this period
• -Consider the respective merits of studying early modern plays either as reading texts or as performance texts
• -Think critically about the challenges of generic designation and canon formation

This module will be structured around a selection of plays written in the seventeenth century during the reign of the Stuart monarchs, with no more than one play as a primary text for any one week. The module aims to offer a mix of some well-known and some less well-known works, comedies, tragedies, and everything in between, plays written for professional adult companies as well as those performed by children’s companies at private venues. The weekly reading will support a discussion of various aspects of theatre history, collaborative authorship, textual transmission, performance studies, genre and reception, urban culture, gender and sexuality, and other relevant topics. Among the authors likely to appear on a reading list are: William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, John Marston, Thomas Middleton, John Webster, Francis Beaumont, Elizabeth Cary, William Rowley, John Ford, and Richard Brome.

Teaching and learning methods

The teaching provision for this module consists of weekly lectures and seminars, workshops, consultation hours, feedback on written work, and—depending on available options—theatre trips.

Learning activities include work in small groups, micro-assignments, individual study and research with emphasis on close reading, and reflection on the plays in performance.

This module includes a Learning Support Hour. This is a flexible weekly contact hour, designed to support and respond to the particular cohort taking the module from year to year. This hour will include (but not be limited to) activities such as language, theory and research skills classes; group work supervisions; assignment preparation and essay writing guidance; assignment consultations; feedback and feed-forward sessions.

Resources & Reading list

General Resources

English Renaissance Drama: A Norton Anthology.

Formative

This is how we’ll give you feedback as you are learning. It is not a formal test or exam.

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.

Repeat Information

Repeat type: Internal & External