•Students will become familiar with the plots, characters, and 
major themes of a range of Shakespeare's plays and poems and 
with some basic literary terms necessary for understanding and 
responding to Shakespeare's works.
•Students will learn to read Early Modern English comfortably 
or even with pleasure and to enjoy viewing performances of the 
plays on stage or screen.
•Students will become familiar with the historical and cultural 
background of the English Renaissance.
•Students will learn to respond orally and in writing to the 
material that they are studying.
•Students may become aware of or even critical of the 
significance of Shakespeare in twenty-first century culture.

Each instructor has the freedom to vary the course structure, 
assignments, and material.

•One version of the course might move through a selection of 
the plays and poems topically, pausing to give students 
necessary political and historical background. Such a course 
might begin with a topical unit on Shakespeare's History plays, 
reading the two parts of Henry IV and Henry V in the context of 
the Tudor myth and disputes about succession. Next the course 
might move on to some comedies (such as The Taming of the Shrew,
Much About Nothing, Twelfth Night) in the context of questions 
of female subordination during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. A 
historical review of the reign of King James might accompany a 
reading of Othello, Lear, Hamlet, and Macbeth and the course 
might conclude with material on the emergence of the nuclear 
family during the period as it considered the parent-child 
relationships in The Tempest.

•Another version of the course might begin with an overview of 
the English Renaissance before moving into sustained discussion 
of the plays and poems, organized chronologically, relating 
them to the known facts about Shakespeare's life and the 
great political, religious, and literary developments of his 
time.

•Assignments might similarly vary. One instructor might assess 
students with examinations designed to draw out through short 
questions the knowledge they have acquired in the course; 
another might mandate essay examinations to assess students' 
new skills in discussion and synthesis. All instructors will 
emphasize class participation and discussion--for instance, by
requiring oral presentations, by assigning short response papers
or online postings, by requiring frequent quizzes, and/or by
requiring group projects or brief performances of scenes.

Students are expected to be familiar with and adhere to the UGA 
Student Honor Code.  Students may be expected to perform some 
graded work in groups, at the instructor's discretion.