A quick note to say that last Fall quarter I taught a course something
like what you'd like, entitled "Pre-Shakespearean Drama." The title was a
deliberate and shameless ploy to get Renaissance students enrolled as well
as medieval. We stopped at Marlowe (on the quarter system there's hardly
room to make it that far!). We used my anthology ("Early English Drama"
-- excellent, i'faith), which gets outside of the "cycle" play mentality,
and then selected plays from Fraser and Rabkin's Drama of the English
Renaissance (2 Vols.--Tudor and Stuart--; I made them available for the
students) and from Tydeman's Four Tudor Comedies and his Two Tudor
Tragedies, plus selections from Axton's Tudor Classical Interludes.
There's a new collection that I used for an independent study course last
quarter, Colin Gibson's Six Renaissance Tragedies, which worked very well
for that end of the spectrum.
Something that paid off well for me in the class was requiring Victor
Turner's From Ritual to Theatre, which is short and approachable and
teachable. It got the students talking about "liminal space," and it
emphasizes the importance of the performative as well as of performance.
This in turn made them feel theoretically sophisticated and allowed them
to talk about meanings generated beyond the page and in different
historical moments.
Good luck in the course.
--John Coldewey
On Sat, 11 Apr 1998, Carolyn Coulson-Grigsby wrote:
> Regarding Barbara Palmer's request for 'workable texts' for her class, I
> for one would like to hear suggestions on-list. I'm very interested in
> the idea of a course which eschews the typical medieval/Renaissance (or
> Elizabethan/Shakespeare etc.) split.
>
> Carolyn Coulson-Grigsby
> [log in to unmask]
> University of Connecticut
>
