LIT 90 — Love’s Madness: Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Quarter: Fall
Instructor(s): Carolyn Sinsky
Date(s): Sep 29—Nov 17
Class Recording Available: Yes
Class Meeting Day: Tuesdays
Class Meeting Time: 5:30—7:20 pm (PT)
Tuition: $495
Refund Deadline: Oct 1
Unit(s): 1
Status: Registration opens Aug 17, 8:30 am (PT)
Quarter: Fall
Day: Tuesdays
Duration: 8 weeks
Time: 5:30—7:20 pm (PT)
Date(s): Sep 29—Nov 17
Unit(s): 1
Tuition: $495
Refund Deadline: Oct 1
Instructor(s): Carolyn Sinsky
Recording Available: Yes
Status: Registration opens Aug 17, 8:30 am (PT)
Few writers capture the exhilaration and irrationality of young love better than William Shakespeare. In the mid-1590s, he wrote two plays that explore the same emotional terrain in strikingly different ways: the tragic passion of Romeo and Juliet, with its iconic balcony scene and fatal miscommunications, and the mischievous confusions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, where enchanted forests, quarreling fairies, and errant love potions send lovers astray. One ends in death, the other in marriage. Yet both ask the same question: Why does love so often feel like madness? The instructor presents the plays side by side to explore Shakespeare’s early fascination with desire, illusion, and youthful intensity. We’ll examine how dreams, chance encounters, family pressures, and performance shape the lovers’ fates, while considering how comedy and tragedy transform the same emotional material. Taken together, the plays show how Shakespeare turns the volatility of youth into two of the most enduring works in the theatrical canon.
CAROLYN SINSKY
Literary Scholar and Writer
Carolyn Sinsky received a PhD in comparative literature from Yale, where she received the Vardis & Opal Fisher Fellowship and the Prize Teaching Fellowship for excellence in teaching literature and writing. She has taught literature and writing at Yale, the Fashion Institute of Technology, and the Great Books Summer Program at Stanford. Textbooks for this course:
(Optional) William Shakespeare, Barbara A. Mowat (Ed.), & Paul Werstine(Ed.), Romeo and Juliet, Folger Shakespeare Library (ISBN 978-1451621709)
(Optional) William Shakespeare, Barbara A. Mowat (Ed), & Paul Werstine (Ed), A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Folger Shakespeare Library Updated Edition (ISBN 978-1501146213)
(Optional) William Shakespeare, Barbara A. Mowat (Ed), & Paul Werstine (Ed), A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Folger Shakespeare Library Updated Edition (ISBN 978-1501146213)