Shakespeare's Enigmatic Late Plays

The famous English poet, playwright, and actor William Shakespeare had during his lifetime produced 39 plays which are widely regarded as being among the greatest in the English language and are continually performed around the world, translated into every major living language. In recent years, modern criticism has labeled some of these plays "problem plays" that elude easy categorisation, or perhaps purposely break generic conventions, and has introduced the term romances for what scholars believe to be his later comedies. What is so enigmatic about these later plays? Today, the distinguished American scholar and professor of English, Dr. Seth Lerer is going to walk us through the major transitions of Shakespeare's plays as well as how to appreciate the aestheticism demonstrated in his later plays.

Dr. Seth Lerer specializes in historical analyses of the English language, and in addition to critical analyses of the works of several authors, particularly Geoffrey Chaucer. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Literature at the University of California, San Diego, where he served as the Dean of Arts and Humanities from 2009 to 2014. Dr. Lerer previously held the Avalon Foundation Professorship in Humanities at Stanford University and won the 2010 Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism and the 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism for Children’s Literature: A Readers’ History from Aesop to Harry Potter.

Recommended Readings:
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Hamlet
The Tempest

Music Credit:
Artists: Dowland, Holborne, & Byrd. Album: Lifescapes Music in the Time of Shakespeare Song: The Fairie Rounde

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