Globe Education Online

MA in Shakespearean Studies

This course explores aspects of Renaissance drama within the historical context of the London theatre industry. Special attention will be paid to the design, architecture and operations of the Elizabethan playhouse. Equally, the course will uncover the structure and order of the theatre companies and their repertories. The new Globe playhouse, as the primary learning tool, will provide the students with some idea as to how plays were commissioned, cast, licensed, rehearsed, performed and printed.

Students will be given the opportunity to visit the Rose excavation site and will conduct detailed analyses of playhouse documents, old and new. In addition to straight lectures given by the course faculty and esteemed guest lecturers, the students will also hear from directors and Globe practitioners on aspects of staging, properties and costuming.

The course will take place in lectures, seminars and practical workshops on the Globe stage, which will require active participation (but no acting skills!). The course also seeks to examine the practical and theoretical implications of scholarly attempts to recover evidence about playhouse practice; students will also engage with current debates about the uses of material history and the intellectual limits of the notion of authenticity.

This MA, taught jointly with King's College London, offers the chance to study Shakespeare's works in the context of the theatre industry of his time, using surviving artefacts (including playhouse documents) of the period and exploiting the unique learning facilities of the reconstructed Globe.

Benefitting from the resources of the Globe Education and Research departments and the English department of King's College London, participants will examine the production and consumption of drama in the London theatres under Elizabeth I and James VI and I.

The parts of the programme based at King's focus on reading widely within early modern drama, on examining the Shakespeare canon alongside other texts and in relation to its varied afterlife, and on developing an advanced understanding of critical approaches to early modern writing and culture.

In a Research Methods course taught jointly by faculty from King's and the Globe, students learn of the resources and techniques appropriate to postgraduate study of Shakespeare's play, including textual, bibliographical and critical theory. This course also provides an introduction to early modern palaeography - in order that students may read sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century manuscripts - and to early modern printing practices, using the Globe's replica hand-press to teach the techniques of printing which have shaped the Shakespeare texts that have come down to us.

Faculty will include Dr Farah Karim-Cooper (Globe), Dr Gordon McMullan (King's), Dr Sonia Massai (King's) and Professor Ann Thompson (King's). The Globe has regular visiting fellows who also contribute to the MA. Past guest lecturers have included Professor Andrew Gurr (University of Reading), Professor Susan Cerasano (Colgate University) and Jenny Tiramani (Director of Theatre Design, 2003-2006)

For further information, please contact Madeline Knights by email or on telephone at +44 (0)20 7902 1436,  or visit the King's College London website

Postgraduate Courses for Teachers

For postgraduate opportunities for teachers, including the MA in Creative Arts in the Classroom, please see the Teacher Training section of the website