19597 - Understanding Shakespeare

Course Overview

Shakespeare wrote plays to be seen, not read! But reading and understanding the plays before seeing them greatly enhances the play-going experience. The New Mexico Shakespeare Festival will present The Comedy of Errors and  A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Veterans Memorial this summer. We will focus on that play's plot, characters and themes in a lively text-based discussion. We will hear from guest speakers from the festival and explore Shakespeare's life and career in Elizabethan and Jacobean times; the structure and source materials of his plays; quartos, folios. meter and verse; and the contemporary and lingering question, did Shakespeare really write all those plays?

Please bring a text of the play to class, any edition.