THEA 61B Drama from the Renaissance to the Modern Age

Examines English and European drama from the early 16th to late 18th centuries, beginning with the Renaissance revival of classical Greek and Roman drama. Topics include the Age of Shakespeare, the Golden Age of Spanish drama, Jacobean and Restoration drama, Italian commedia dell’arte, and French Neoclassicism. The period ends with Germany’s Sturm und Drang. Non-Western forms studied in parallel include Chinese Kunqu opera, Indonesian leather shadow puppetry, and Ottoman Turkish shadow-based comic theatre.