B. A. COURSE.
Modern English.—In this class the study of the English drama and of
the descriptive history of the language is pursued; Shakspere is made a special
subject of study. The critical study of one or two plays of Shakspere, with
private reading of about one-fourth of the plays, is followed by similar study of
selected works of other dramatic authors. Lectures on the history of the
Elizabethan drama are given in connection with the study of Shakspere. These
treat the early dramatic forms prevalent in England—
i. e., the Mysteries,
Moralities and Interludes; the rise of regular comedy and tragedy as seen in
Ralph Royster Doyster and in Gorboduc; the Pre-shaksperian dramatists,
Lyle, Peele, Greene and Marlowe; the Shaksperian period, including Shakspere,
Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and Webster; and the Post shaksperian
dramatists to the closing of the theatres in 1642. The study of the English
drama occupies the first half-session; that of the history of English, treated
from an elementary point of view, the second half-session. The course closes
with the reading of some work in practical illustration of the formation of English.
The aim is to give such a knowledge of the history of the language as
every educated man should possess. Three lectures a week.
Text-Books.—For 1894-'95, King Henry IV., Part I. (Rolfe's edition); Ward's Old
English Drama; Dowden's Shakspere Primer; Abbott's Shaksperian Grammar; Champneys's
History of English; Skeat's Primer of English Etymology; Chaucer's Prologue to
the Canterbury Tales. For Reference.—The Globe Shakspere; Fleay's Life of Shakspere;
Fleay's History of the Stage, 1559-1642; Halliwell-Phillips's Life of Shakspere; Keltie's
British Dramatists; Sweet's New English Grammar, Logical and Historical, Part I.
