MA Shakespeare Studies

Taught jointly between King’s and Shakespeare’s Globe, our unique MA course offers you the opportunity to study the theatrical world of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. You will be able to draw on expertise at both King’s and Shakespeare’s Globe, studying Shakespeare in the context of London’s famous reconstructed early modern theatre located just a stone’s throw from where his plays were originally performed.
At the Globe you will learn about early modern playhouses, audiences and performance practices and get access to the Globe theatre and the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, while at King’s you will study early modern drama and other literary genres, examining the cultural and historical moment in which Shakespeare and his contemporaries were writing, and learning about the long Shakespearean afterlife.
Course Essentials
This unique Shakespeare Studies MA allows you to benefit from the academic expertise of both King’s and Shakespeare’s Globe. You’ll study two required modules at the Globe, the first of which will get you thinking about the material, social and economic contexts of the London theatre industry between 1576 and 1642. This will give you a solid framework for understanding how theatre was produced at the great Elizabethan, Jacobean and Caroline playhouses of the time.

The second required module at the Globe will explore the experience of actors, audiences and theatre-going in relation to Shakespeare’s works. You’ll think about early modern audiences and the psychology of spectating, the technologies of performance, the experiences of actors and acting, and the ways that playhouses might influence staging.

You’ll reflect on practice in the Globe and the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse during both modules This will allow you to consider, in practical and theoretical terms, the relationship between text and playhouse, the mechanics and material practices of theatre, and how the spaces were as crucial to the creation of drama as language itself.

At King’s, the MA in Shakespeare Studies will train you in skills such as palaeography, bibliography and other critical methodologies that you’ll need to produce your own piece of research. Using some of Shakespeare’s dramatic texts as case studies, you’ll reflect on how the critical direction of Shakespeare studies has evolved, consider how early modern literary texts were disseminated, and learn about the development from manuscript to print.

You’ll also shape your Shakespeare Studies syllabus by selecting two optional modules. For example, you could look at Shakespeare in contemporary performance and use place as a critical lens to study recent productions, and learn about early modern drama and the court. Or you could explore the relationship between theatre, gender and culture in Jacobean London and see how the theatre tackled current affairs, then take a further look into the past at literary texts composed between the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons in Britain and the fifth century and apply contemporary criticism to these medieval texts.

This Shakespeare Studies MA culminates in a dissertation supervised by academics at either King’s or the Globe, depending on your chosen topic.

For further information please contact the course convenor: Dr Oliver Lewis oliver.2.lewis@kcl.ac.uk