8G:8 Drama (Humanities)

Drama makes use of sight, sound and language both on the stage and the page, but theatre involves live, public enactments of stories that we experience collectively. Beginning with the ancient Greeks and extending into the complexities of post-modern theatre, this class will investigate how drama interacts with and influences its multiple audiences that reside both in the private space inhabited by readers and in the public space of the theatre. It will also explore the relationship between plays and the cultural moments in which they were produced.

Specific Course Description and texts used in recent versions of this course

Texts that have been used in recent years for this course. (This is a comprehensive list. During any particular semester, only a few of these texts or similar ones will be used for a specific section of 8G:8)

Greek and Roman Drama

• Aristophanes, Four Plays by Aristophanes: The Clouds, The Birds, Lysistrata, The Frogs, tr. William Arrowsmith (NAL)
• Aristophanes, Lysistrata, tr. Sutherland (HarperCollins)
• Euripides, Vol. I, tr. Grene & Lattimore (U. of Chicago Pr.) (contains Alcestis, Medea, Heracleidae, and Hippolytus)
• Sophocles, Vol. I., tr. Grene & Lattimore (U. of Chicago Pr.) (contains Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone)

Medieval, Renaissance, and Restoration Drama

• Shakespeare (NAL/Signet paperbacks):
  • Antony and Cleopatra
    
  • Henrv IV, Part l
    
  • Measure for Measure
    
  • A Midsummer Night's Dream
    
  • Much Ado About Nothing
    
  • The Tempest
    
  • The Winter's Tale
    
• Beaumont, The Knight of the Burning Pestle (Norton)
  
• Congreve, The Way of the World (Harlan Davidson)
  
• Dryden, All for Love (Norton)
  
• Ford, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore (Norton)
  
• Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer (Harlan Davidson)
  
• Jonson, Volpone (Harlan Davidson)
  
• Marlowe, Dr. Faustus (NAL)
  
• Moliere, The Misanthrope and Tartuffe, tr. Wilbur (Harcourt Brace)
  
• Sheridan, The Rivals (Harlan Davidson)
  
• Sheridan, The School for Scandal (Harlan Davidson)
  
• Webster, The Duchess of Malfi (Norton)
  
• Wycherley, The Country Wife (Univ. of Nebraska Pr.)
  

Modern and Contemporary Drama

• Albee, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (NAL)
  
• Beckett, Endgame (Grove)
  
• Chekhov, The Major Plays (NAL) (contains Ivanov, Sea Gull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters, and Cherry Orchard)
  
• Churchill, Cloud Nine (Routledge)
  
• Edson, Wit (Faber & Faber)
  
• Elder, Ceremonies in Dark Old Men (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
  
• Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun (Signet)
  
• Ibsen, Four Major Plays, tr. McFarlane and Arup (Oxford Univ. Pr.) (contains A Doll's House, Ghosts, Hedda Gabler, and Master Builder)
  
• Kennedy, Sleep Deprivation Chamber (Theatre Communication Group)
  
• O'Neill, Long Day's Journey into Night (Yale UP)
  
• Orton, The Complete Plays of Orton (Grove Pr.) (contains The Ruffian on the Stair, Entertaining Mr. Sloan, The Good and Faithful Servant, Loot, Funeral Games, and others)
  
• Pinter, The Caretaker (Grove)
  
• Pirandello, Naked Masks: Five Plays (Dutton) (contains It Is So If You Think So, Henry Fourth, Six Characters in Search of an Author, Each in His Own Way Liola)
  
• Shaffer, Equus (Penguin)
  
• Shaw, St. Joan (Penguin)
  
• Shepard, Buried Child (Dramatists Play Service) (publisher does NOT send desk copies)
  
• Six Modern American Plays, intro. Halline (McGraw-Hill) (contains The Emperor Jones, Winterset, The Man Who Came to Dinner, The Little Foxes, The Glass Menagerie, and Mister Roberts)
  
• A.D. Smith, Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and Other Identities (Doubleday)
  
• Strindberg, Three Plays, tr. Watts (Penguin) (contains Father, Miss Julie, and Easter)
  
• Wagner, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe (Harper Collins)
  
• Wertenbaker, Plays One: New Anatomies (Faber and Faber) (contains The Grace of Mary Traverse, Our Country's God, The Love of the Nightingale, and Three Birds Alighting)
  
• Williams, Streetcar Named Desire (NAL)
  
• Wilson, Fences (NAL)
  

Anthologies Offering a Wide Historical and Generic Range

• Stages of Drama, 5th edition, classical to contemporary drama, eds. Carl Klaus, Miriam Gilbert, and Bradford Field Jr. (St. Martin's Press), $81.35 for 50 plays.
  Contains Trifles, Agamemnon, Oedipus Rex, The Bacchae, Lysistrata, Casina (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Wedding), Second Shepherds' Play, Everyman, Doctor Faustus, Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, Volpone, The Misanthrope, The Rover, School for Scandal, Woyzeck, A Doll's House, Miss Julie, The Importance of Being Earnest, In the Shadow of the Glen, The Cherry Orchard, Pygmalion, Six Characters in Search of an Author, Homecoming, The House of Bernarda Alba, Galileo, Death of a Salesman, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Lesson, Endgame, The Zoo Story, Raisin in the Sun, Dutchman, Absurd Person Singular, Death and the King's Horseman, Pantomime, Landscape, "Master Harold" . . . and the Boys, Top Girls, Translations, 'Night, Mother, Fences, M. Butterfly, Shadow of a Man, Oleanna, Angels in America: Millenium Approaches, Arcadia, "Art", How I Learned to Drive, and In the Blood. Also includes reviews and photographs of all plays (except Trifles), "Reading and Witnessing a Play," "Analyzing a Play: Close Reading for Writing" [with a student paper], "Film and Video Productions of Plays in Stages of Drama," and Ideas of Drama (selected theoretical essays).
  
• Types of Drama: Plays and Contexts, 8th edition, eds. Sylvan Barnet, William Burto, Lesley Ferris, and Gerald Rabkin (Addison Wesley Longman), $99.80 for 1560 pages.
  Contains Quem Quaeritis, Trifles, My Brazil: A Recital, Oedipus Rex, Antigone, Medea, Lysistrata, Second Shepherds' Play, Everyman, Doctor Faustus, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, Tartuffe, Dojoji, The Rover, A Doll's House, Miss Julie, Importance of Being Earnest, Cherry Orchard, Machinal, Waiting for Lefty, Major Barbara, Emperor Jones, The Mother of Us All, Gypsy: A Musical, Death of a Salesman, Suddenly Last Summer, Votes for Women, Purgatory, The Sandbox, The Good Woman of Setzuan, Funnyhouse of a Negro, Los Vendidos, Fences, The Dumb Waiter, Krapp's Last Tape, The Bacchae of Euripides (Soyinka), We Won't Pay! We Won't Pay!, Top Girls, The Real Thing, True West, Glengarry Glen Ross, Terminal, The Dance and the Railroad, The Conduct of Life, Fires in the Mirror, Angels in America, Part I, In The Blood, and Pantomime. "Writing About Drama" section includes tips on both textual analysis papers and performance review papers; a section on writing about a film based on a play; and a section on using electronic sources.
  
• Wadsworth Anthology of Drama, Brief 5th edition, ed. W.B. Worthen (Wadsworth), $59.00 for 980 pages. This anthology contains 30 plays that range from ancient to postmodern periods, and, though it focuses on European and American plays, includes non-Western texts.
  The plays included are: Oedipus the King, Medea, Lysistrata, Matsukaze, Chushingura: The Forty-Seven Samurai, Everyman, Hamlet, The Tempest, Life is a Dream, Tartuffe, The Rover, Loa to The Divine Narcissus, A Doll House, The Importance of Being Earnest, The Cherry Orchard, Major Barbara, Mother Courage and Her Children, Endgame, Cloud Nine, Blasted, Trifles, The Glass Managerie, Death of a Salesman, Zoot Suit, Fences, Angels in America, Part 1, Information for Foreigners, Translations, “Master Harold”…and the Boys, and Harvest. The anthology also includes helpful excerpts that help establish historical and critical contexts for the plays. These excerpts range from Aristotle’s Poetics to Fanon’s “The Fact of Blackness.”

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