This month I’m teaching “Shakespeare’s Villains”: a Continuing Education course at the University of Calgary open to curious members of the public. Here’s the description:
“O villain, villain, smiling, damnèd villain!”
Shakespeare’s plays tell stories about characters who move from problems to resolutions, though sometimes the resolution is death. The problems that Shakespeare’s heroes face are usually villains: bad people who thwart the success of good people, in order to serve their own motives. What makes villains so compelling, though, is the powerfully beautiful language they use to draw in audiences and make us (almost) complicit with their villainy. In this course we’ll consider the range of Shakespeare’s villains, from Iago in Othello to Aaron in Titus Andronicus to Richard III, to appreciate how some of his most dastardly characters were formed in his imagination, and compel us to this day. We’ll discuss Shakespeare’s four main dramatic genres (tragedies, comedies, histories, and romances) to appreciate what roles villains play in various story types.
