×

The Shakespeare Legacy

12 classes

Shakespeare left us far more than a corpus of plays to be staged (or filmed) according to the taste of each succeeding age. He also enriched the treasury of language, gave us stories to inspire artists, composers, and choreographers, and forever established the esthetic of what we think of as "Shakespearian." We shall look at some of the ways his works were received (and often altered) in later centuries, recast as operas or ballets, and even rewritten as contemporary fiction. The class will begin by looking briefly at Shakespeare in his time, then look at Restoration and Romantic Shakespeare, the new interpretations in the age of Marx and Freud, and the advent of film. Finally, we shall look at the Shakespeare of our youth, and what has become of him in the present time.