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Though interacting with others, in many of Shakespeare’s plays at least one important character remains an outsider, set apart by color, creed, social status, deformity, or age. While society rejects him, the playwright does not. Instead, Shakespeare gives him a context and a voice to explain his feelings and actions. Sometimes he seems to us almost alien and monstrous, sometimes all too human, for Shakespeare asks us through looking at this outcast to recognize the outcast in ourselves.
In this course we will look at a variety of outsiders: at young lovers just discovering their secret world of sharing who are destroyed by an ancient feud; at a Jew who is scorned because of his religion and occupation; at a black man who dares to cross a social boundary; at a cripple who, loveless, lusts after power; at a young monarch not to feel or act as an individual man; at an aged king, cast out by his family, who in losing his mind expands his heart.
