The aim is to systematically explore Shakespeare’s dramatic texts. Learners will be enabled to objectively deconstruct language, structure and cultural contexts, and to critically reflect on the tension between the historical text and modern performance.
Content and Methods: The worksheet guides students through an analytical process ranging from grasping the content to envisioning a practical stage performance.
Methods:
- Structural classification: Locating scenes within the classical dramatic structure (e.g., exposition, peripeteia).
- Analysis of language and form: Examining blank verse vs. prose, imagery, and rhetorical devices (e.g., stichomythia).
- Thematic exploration: Linking scenes to universal motifs (power, fate, guilt).
Transfer: A choice between a performance critique (directorial concept/stage design) or a critical discussion on human archetypes. The primary texts for this exercise are sourced from Project Gutenberg.
Competencies:
- Literary analysis skills: Confident handling of genre-specific characteristics and technical terms used in drama analysis.
- Methodological skills: Application of categories from literary and theatre studies to decode the text.
- Transfer and creative skills: Projecting historical material onto modern staging concepts and contemporary social issues.
- Language awareness: Developing sensitivity to the impact of meter and figurative language.
Target Audience and Level: Advanced English course
