Joseph Westlund

Mondays, February 27 - April 9 (not March 12) 1:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. 6 sessions
Prescott House, 55 Beacon Street

Because this was probably Shakespeare’s last play, and because the only fully developed character is a magician, critics – in desperation – read it biographically, or turn it into an allegory of government. We will approach Prospero as someone in the line of the author’s great tragic heroes who, surprisingly, manages to bend history his own way and bring the conclusion to a kind of grand comedy. The psychological portrait of Prospero is far more complex and believable than the one usually presented by those who emphasize his magical powers. In class we will discuss the text itself (in the required edition), looking as closely as possible to the page before us to see how character is developed, themes announced and transformed. No class presentations; bring one written sentence about the act under discussion that day. We will read the criticism at the back of the Signet Edition.

Required text: Signet Classics, ed. Fraser, paperback $4.95 ISBN 978-0451527127, 1998.

Joseph Westlund

Joseph Westlund is a graduate of Harvard and received his PhD from U.C. Berkeley. He taught many courses on Shakespeare at Yale and Northeastern University over the decades. He published Shakespeare’s Reparative Comedies (University of Chicago, 1984).