This course aims to help students gain insight into the genius of Shakespeare through a reading of some of his works, and learning about his life and times. The course will provide students with the tools to understand and analyze Shakespeare’s language as well as to discuss larger themes in Shakespeare’s plays and poems, regarding timeless issues like love, jealousy, greed and death and how they can inform contemporary life. The course also provides training in watching performances of Shakespeare and evaluating them, incorporating the showing of film excerpts with reading and analyzing the texts. Students will also perform scenes from Shakespeare’s plays and create their own video of a scene.