| LEC # | TOPICS | READINGS |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Introduction — to an experiment and a century. Genesis meets Galileo. | Read Brecht's Galileo. [*Note what is meant by "read" in relation to playscripts, see the Syllabus.] Read Jonathan Baker's notes on History of Cosmology, and compare to the chapter by Lovejoy. |
| 2 | Discussion of Brecht's Galileo and cosmology. | Read Dunn on "The Puritan Revolution" and skim his "The Century of Genius" chapter. Read selections from Eugen Weber (Grimmelshausen, Mun, Descartes, Newton, Locke, and Hobbes). |
| 3 | Guest speaker: Anne McCants, historian. | Read the common assignment (i.e. Burton pp. 147-8 and 154-9, Synopsis of Descartes' Meditations, etc.). Students will also be divided into four groups and given additional pages from one of these authors (Bacon, Burton, Descartes and Boyle), to be read in greater depth and with greater care. The four groups will then lead the discussion of "their" author. Read Barzun's "The Invisible College" (pp. 192-207) and Margaret Jacob (pp. 15-72). |
| 4 | Four men of "science": Bacon, Burton, Descartes and Boyle. | Read both Shakespeare's King Lear and Nahum Tate's History of King Lear. Read Chapter 9 in Brockett's History of the Theater and Janette Dillon's "Theatre and Controversy 1603-1642." |
| 5 | Discussion of King Lear | Read Ben Jonson's masque "Mercury Vindicated from the Alchemists at Court," and Lindley's chapter on the court masque. |
| 6 | Library research; Scenework from two versions of King Lear and Jonson's masque | |
| 7 | Special event: Screening of the film Stage Beauty. | |
| 8 | Perform scenes from Ben Jonson's masque and from the two Lears. | Read Ford's Tis Pity She's a Whore and secondary material about Caroline dramatic and theatrical history by Brockett, Saunders, and Butler ("Theater and Crisis.") |
| 9 | More Lears, and 'Tis Pity She's A Whore. | |
| 10 | Tis Pity (cont.); Paper brainstorming. | Read chapters from Wallington's World and Christopher Hill. |
| 11 | Student presentations | |
| 12 | Student presentations (cont.) | |
| 13 | Guest speaker Malcolm Smuts, historian. | Chapters by Steven Shapin. |
| 14 | Conclude student presentations | |
| 15 | Guest lecture by Dean Bob Silbey, Chemistry. | Read Light Shining in Buckinghamshire. |
| 16 | Session with playwright Laura Harrington. Writing workshop 1 | |
| 17 | Group work on timelines; Light Shining in Buckinghamshire | |
| 18 | Light Shining in Buckinghamshire (cont.) | |
| 19 | Performance work with Laura Harrington | |
| 20 | Performance work Writing workshop 2 | |
| 21 | Performance work (cont.) | |
| 22 | Performance work (cont.) | |
| 23 | Performance work (cont.) | |
| 24 | Performance of staged reading to an invited audience | |
| 25 | Browne's "Hydriotaphia" and Kushner's Hydriotaphia. | Read Browne's "Hydriotaphia" and Kushner's Hydriotaphia. |
| 26 | Aphra Behn, The Rover. | Read Behn's The Rover. |
| 27 | Wrap-up |
Table of Contents
Study Materials
Readings
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This page lists the reading assignments per class session, followed by a bibliography with complete citations for all works.
Behn, Aphra. "The Rover." In The Rover and Other Plays. Edited by Jane Spenser. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1998. ISBN 9780192834515.
Brecht, Bertolt. The Life of Galileo. Translated by R. Manheim and J. Willett. New York, NY: Arcade Publishing, 1994. ISBN: 9781559702546.
Churchill, Caryl. "Light Shining in Buckinghamshire." Plays: One. London, UK: Methuen, 1985. ISBN: 9780413566706.
Ford, John. 'Tis Pity She's a Whore and Other Plays. Edited by Marion Lomax. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1999. ISBN: 9780192834492.
Kushner, Tony. Death and Taxes: Hydriotaphia and Other Plays. New York, NY: Theatre Communications Group, 2000. ISBN: 9781559361569.
Shakespeare, William. King Lear. Edited by R. A. Foakes. London, UK: Arden Shakespeare, 1997. ISBN: 9780174434603.
Lovejoy, Arthur. "The Principle of Plenitude and the New Cosmography." In The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976 (reprint). ISBN: 9780674361539.
Weber, Eugen, ed. Compilation of writings by Grimmelshausen, Mun, Descartes, Newton, Locke, and Hobbes, from "The Seventeenth Century." Chapter IV in The Western Tradition: From the Renaissance to the Atomic Age. Boston, MA: D.C. Heath & Co., 1959, pp. 362-397 and 410-423.
Parry, Graham. Selections from The Seventeenth Century: The Intellectual and Cultural Context of English Literature, 1603-1700. Boston, MA: Longman, 1989. ISBN: 9780582493766.
Milling, Jane, and Peter Thomson, eds. Selections in The Cambridge History of British Theatre. Vol. 1, Origins to 1660. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2004. ISBN: 9780521650403.
- Butler, Martin. "The Condition of the Theatres in 1642."
- Clare, Janet. "Theatre and Commonwealth."
- Dillon, Janette. "Theatre and Controversy, 1603-1642."
- Knutson, Roslyn L. "Working Playwrights, 1580-1642."
- Lindley, David. "The Stuart Masque and its Makers."
- Milling, Jane. "The Development of a Professional Theatre, 1540-1660."
Baker, Jonathan. Notes on History of Cosmology (PDF). (Courtesy of Jonathan Baker. Used with permission.)
Jacob, Margaret C. Scientific Culture and the Making of the Industrial West. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1997. ISBN: 9780195082203.
Tate, Nahum. The History of King Lear.
Descartes, Rene. Selections from Meditations. (Download from filepedia.org)
Dunn, Richard S. "The Puritan Revolution," and "The Century of Genius." In The Age of Religious Wars, 1559-1689. New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1970. ISBN: 9780393098914.
Burton, Robert. Selections from Anatomy of Melancholy. (Download from Project Gutenberg)
Boyle, Robert. Selections from The Sceptical Chymist. Chestnut Hill, MA: Adamant Media Corp, 2001. ISBN: 9780543916587.
Bacon, Sir Francis. Selections from various works.
Browne, Sir Thomas. Hydriotaphia.
Shapin, Steven. "The Philosopher and the Chicken: On the Dietetics of Disembodied Knowledge." In Science Incarnate: Historical Embodiments of Natural Knowledge. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998. ISBN: 9780226470146.
———. "Who Was Robert Boyle?" Chapter 4 in A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995. ISBN: 9780226750194.
Prynne, William. Histrio-mastix.
Marvell, A. "An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland." (PDF)
Jonson, Ben. "Mercury Vindicated from the Alchemists at Court." In Ben Jonson's Plays and Masques. Edited by Robert M. Adams. New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1979. ISBN: 9780393090352.
Seaver, Paul S. Wallington's World. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1985, preface and chapters 1 and 2. ISBN: 9780804714327.
Boyle, Robert. Excerpt from "A Defense of the Doctrine Touching the Spring and Weight of the Air." Oxford England, 1662. (PDF)
Hill, Christopher. "Introduction," and "Narrative of Events." In The Century of Revolution, 1603-1714. New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1982, pp. 1-10. ISBN: 9780393300161.
Clare, Janet. "General Introduction: The Theatre and Cultural Revolution." In Drama of the English Republic, 1649-1660. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2002. ISBN: 9780719044823.
Sanders, Julie. "Introductory Biographical and Historical Outline." Chapter 1 in Caroline Drama. Tavistock, UK: Northcote House, 1999. ISBN: 9780746308776.
Butler, Martin. Theatre and Crisis: 1632-1642. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1984, chapters 1-3. ISBN: 9780521246323.
Brockett, Oscar G., and Franklin J. Hildy. "English Theatre to 1642," and "English Theatre to 1800." Chapters 5 and 9 in History of the Theater. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 2003. ISBN: 9780205358786.
Morton, A. L. "Religion and Politics in the English Revolution." In The World of the Ranters. London, UK: Laurence and Wishart, 1970. ISBN: 9780853152200.
Hill, Christopher. "Religion and Ideas," and "Appendices A-D." Chapter 10 in The Century of Revolution, 1603-1714. New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1982, pp. 1-10. ISBN: 9780393300161.
———. The World Turned Upside Down. New York, NY: Penguin, 1984, chapters 1 and 2. ISBN: 9780140137323.
Ridley, Jasper. "Henry VIII and the Religious Revolution." Chapter 8 in The History of England. London, UK: Routledge, 1981. ISBN: 9780710007940.
Smuts, Malcom. "Rethinking the Political Context."
Keller, Evelyn Fox. "Spirit and Reason at the Birth of Modern Science." In Reflections on Gender and Science. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996. ISBN: 9780300065954.
Wertheim, Margaret. "The Ascent of Mathematical Man." Chapter 5 in Pythagoras' Trousers: God, Physics, and the Gender Wars. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Co., 1997. ISBN: 9780393317244.
Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York, NY: Vintage Books/Knopf, 1973, foreward, preface, Chapters 1 and 2. ISBN: 9780394719351.
Shapin, Steven. "'Who Was Then a Gentleman?' Integrity and Gentle Identity in Early Modern England," and "A Social History of Truth-Telling: Knowledge, Social Practice, and the Credibility of Gentlemenn." Chapters 2 and 3 in A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995. ISBN: 9780226750194.