Shakespeare in Love

Fluid, ever changing, fresh and quick, love is the stuff of imagination. Who can define it? This course will begin where Shakespeare begins his career as a playwright with The Comedy of Errors. We then intersperse the reading of Shakespeare's sonnets (nos. 1-154) three comedies in which love figures as a principal theme: Love's Labor's Lost, Much Ado About Nothing, and All's Well That Ends Well. The final three weeks will be devoted to different kinds of love as they appear in the Henry sequence. Against the stately backdrop of history, we will examine the betrayed love of Sir John Falstaff for Prince Hal, the lighthearted banter of the knight and Mistress Quickly, Henry V's wooing of Catherine of Valois.