WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, HISTORIAN

facilitated by Professor David Marno

Although we like to think that Shakespeare broke his staff and drowned his book in the role of The Tempest’s Prospero, in fact he concluded his career later by returning, in his last active year as a playwright, to the genre with which he began his career: the history play. But Henry VIII is unlike anything Shakespeare wrote before. For one thing, in focusing on England’s most divorce-prone king, Shakespeare and his co-author John Fletcher selected a period uncomfortably close to their own. This might explain why there is so much overt propaganda in Henry VIII. Amidst all the pageantry and celebration of both the Tudor and the Stuart dynasties, though, the play offers numerous occasions for us to reflect on what it takes to turn the recent past into “history.” What does this history look like from below, from above, or from the perspective of the auditorium? How do Shakespeare and Fletcher negotiate the demands of the present with the traces of the past? What happens when the past isn’t neatly separable from the present? We’ll discuss these questions along with any others raised about Henry VIII by the participants of the seminar.

This is a two-session seminar open to students and faculty. Participants are expected to attend both sessions and complete the required reading. Register below to participate in this seminar.

Required reading:
John Fletcher and William Shakespeare, Henry VIII (Folger edition is recommended, which is available for under $10 in paperback; or may be downloaded for free, albeit without the notes of the paperback edition, here: https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/download/#henry-viii) 

Date: Mondays, October 16 and 23, 2023

Time: 6:00 - 7:15PM

Location: Berkeley Institute (2134 Allston Way, 2nd floor)