University of Virginia Library

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 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,
usually of Chaucer, 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 1895-'96, Twelfth Night (Rolfe's edition); Tancock's or 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 and Knight's Tale; Pollard's Chaucer Primer. 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; Emerson's History of the
English Language; Skeat's Student's Chaucer.