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BARD EXPLORED:
A SHAKESPEARE LECTURE SERIES

Enrich your Bard experience through one or more of these informative talks full of insights into the world of Shakespeare and his plays. Conducted by Associate Dean, Dr. Paul Budra, this series is generously sponsored by Simon Fraser University. Enjoy the lecture on its own or book tickets to the corresponding play that evening. You can even order a Picnic from Emelle's to enjoy preshow.
Advance booking is required.

Shakespeare 101 Free
An Introduction to Shakespeare & Elizabethan Theatre
Monday, July 6 at 7 pm - Mainstage tent
  • Life and times of Shakespeare
  • History/roots of Elizabethan drama
  • Elizabethan theatre venue
  • Staging the plays in Elizabethan times
  • Theatrical conventions
  • Use of verse
Exploring the Plays $10 each
On site in the Bard Marquee.
Sundays, 5 - 6 pm, prior to the 7 pm staging of:
June 14The Comedy of Errors
July 5Othello
July 19All's Well That Ends Well
July 26Richard II

The Comedy of Errors

  • Shakespeare's first attempt at comedy
  • the Roman tradition of comedy
  • how Shakespeare adapts Plautus
  • the classical unities of the play
  • the threat of violence vs. slapstick
  • Elizabethan humour
  • illusion and madness
  • metamorphosis
  • courtship and marriage

Othello
  • early Jacobean theatre
  • Elizabethans and race theory
  • knowledge of Africans
  • perceptions of Venice
  • the first scene vs. the second - a reversal of expectations
  • Iago: "motiveless malignity"?
  • the collapse of Othello's world view
  • appearance vs. reality
  • Desdemona
  • the religious analogies of the play
  • the play as a failed comedy
  • the textual crux in the last speech: base Indian or Iudean?

All's Well That Ends Well
  • sources for the story: Boccaccio
  • romance traditions: Petrarch and Sidney
  • impediments to love: class and male immaturity
  • Elizabethan class structure
  • Paroles and the miles gloriosus
  • disease and idolatry
  • Elizabethan sexuality
  • the bed trick
  • male vs. female honour
  • the "problem play"

Richard II
  • an overview of the dynastic history
  • Shakespeare's career in history plays
  • the formality of RICHARD II -verse, cosmic symbols, allegory
  • the tragic form of the play
  • the duel scene
  • the Flint castle scene (it's Richard who suggests deposition)
  • the deposition and death scenes
  • the emergence of Bolingbroke
  • the threat to future order