Shakespeare’s comedies are marvelously funny at every level from low humor to grand comedy of Godly forgiveness. We will see how the Master combines both to keep us penny-groundlings amused and in order, even while he is soaring over our heads into Heaven!

Instructor Access (Optional grading support) is available for this course. Please note: this is ONLY recommended if you wish to write the optional paper. All quizzes are internally graded in this course. Optional papers will be completed via this page (click here) for an Instructor Access fee of $75.

Instructor: Dr. Henry Russell

Course Description: This semester’s plays will examine how Shakespeare used the “spirit world” in drama to stand in for the great actions of God himself. This was necessary to avoid English law against explicitly religious drama, but it also created delightful characters.  
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is structured around six (!) different sets of romantic lovers, descending from the spiritual Oberon and Titania, down through the humans: Theseus and Hippolyta; Lysander and Hermia; Demetrius and Helena; to the union of a spirit, Titania, and a human-animal, Bottom; and finally to the fantastical Pyramus and Thisbe. This ladder of lovers and fools shows many ways that love can be distorted by sight that looks only to the physical, or by our petulant wills that override reason. Yet in the end, each lover is healed or aided by Oberon’s spiritual guidance, even if that guidance is marred by the erratic acts of Puck. Duke Theseus creates a New Law of love fitting for the Feast of St. John the Baptist (Midsummer) who announces the New Law of Christ.
The Tempest’s lead character, Prospero, can command the winds, the sea, the fire, can foresee the future to the minute, and open graves at his command. These attributes of God, the Father, mark his true nature in Shakespeare’s final allegory, a full return to the Catholic Mystery Plays outlawed by Queen Elizabeth when the playwright was a teen. The action of the drama is simple. Prospero draws his enemies, who have driven him from Milan into his island of exile, to bring them to repentance and offer them forgiveness, culminating in unifying his family and theirs through marriage with his perfect daughter. The play also presents the two sides of Man to the audience: the spiritual, angelic Ariel (pure spirit that is forgetful and even sometimes impatient at the low necessities of the world) and the base, animal-like Caliban—the picture of unredeemed man.