Conner, Marc C.

How to Read and Understand Shakespeare: (Complete set of 4 DVDs + Course Guidebook)

Chantilly, VA: The Great Courses / The Teaching Company, 2013.
DVD set of 4 discs in box + paperback guidebook.

Course #2711. English Professor, Shakespeare scholar, and Skidmore College president Marc C. Conner seeks to make Shakespeare understandable to the general reader starting with a simple premise: Shakespeare actually teaches us how to understand his plays. He gives us clues and tools at every step of the way that can help us unlock the mysteries of his art. It’s as if Shakespeare provides us a toolbox with a host of tools inside that can be used to understand not just one play, but all of his plays. Properly understand and utilized, these tools can help us read, understand, and love Shakespeare’s work. Lectures included here:

Disc 1

1. Approaching Shakespeare – The Scene Begins
2. Shakespeare’s Theater and Stagecraft
3. A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Comic Tools
4. A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Comic Structure
5. Romeo & Juliet – Words, Words, Words
6. Romeo & Juliet – The Tools of Tragedy

Disc 2

1. Appearance versus Reality in Twelfth Night
2. Twelfth Night – More Comic Tools
3. Richard II – History and Kingship
4. Politics as Theater in Henry IV, Part 1
5. Henry IV, Part 2 – Contrast and Complexity
6. The Drama of Ideas in Henry V

Disc 3

1. Macbeth – “Foul and Fair”
2. The Tragic Woman in Macbeth
3. Staging Hamlet
4. The Religious Drama of Hamlet
5. The Women of Hamlet
6. The Merchant of Venice – Comedy or Tragedy?

Disc 4

1. The Arc of Character in The Merchant of Venice
2. Measure for Measure – Is This Comedy?
3. Measure for Measure – Overcoming Tragedy
4. Tools of Romance in The Tempest
5. The Tempest – Shakespeare’s Farewell to Art
6. The Tools for a Lifetime of Shakespeare

Item #900850
ISBN: 1629971537

4 discs in case, 36 lectures, 30 minutes per lecture, includes 228pp 5-1/4 x 7-3/8" guidebook in pictorial wrappers.

Previously owned set - the DVDs are in excellent condition. The paperback guidebook is in very good condition with a bit of creasing to edges.

Price: $50.00