Second Year First Lecture

‫ حنان أبو حطب‬.‫د‬

Good morning to you all!!

Today, we are going to have a general idea about the course
because there are so many absentees and because Thursday will be
off. Let’s talk a little bit about what you are expected to do here—we,
together.
I have a lecture before this in another building, so I may not be
here at ten sharp; it takes me five or ten minutes between the
buildings. I will try to do my best to finish earlier there and come
here on time.
Do you know what the title of this subject is?
Students: Drama!
Professor: What type of drama will we be discussing here?
Student: Last year, we talked about Greek Drama.
Professor: This year we are going to move forward. At the
beginning, it is a break with the classical drama, but later in the
second part of this course, you will read about forms of drama that
are inspired by classical Greek and Roman drama and literature in
general. However, the course of drama in general is Medieval and
Renaissance Drama. Renaissance is the one that relies on classic
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heritage: Roman and Greek. Before that, we are going to learn about
the early beginnings of English Drama, and that was during the
middle ages. So we will learn about the early beginnings of English
drama and how it developed to reach the Renaissance, which is
considered to be the golden age of English drama.
Mainly, we will be dealing with three texts; two of them are
very short ones from the medieval period.
 Two short texts from the medieval
 One text from the renaissance
These texts are:
1- The Second Shepherds' Play
2- Everyman
3- Volpone By Ben Johnson
The Second Shepherds' Play was written by someone called the
Wakefield Master. He is not known, but most probably he is a priest.
Everyman also is written by an anonymous writer. The writer is
unknown, but most probably he is a priest as well because we will
see when we start of talking about the early beginning of English
Drama how plays were so religious. They were purely religious at the
beginning. Later on, they started moving slowly outside the church
and from religious subjects into ones that are more secular. That
leads us to Renaissance drama, which gave us such writers as
William Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson, and others.
Unfortunately, I went to the bookstore of the university, but it
was not open. There should be an anthology of plays there, and it is
entitled Types of Drama: Plays and Contexts. I will not ask you to
buy it all because it is huge and expensive. Of course, you can get it
if YOU want, but I know it is expensive, and what we need is only a
few pages.
Types of Drama: Plays and Contexts is an anthology; it is a
collection of plays from different the Greek period to the modern
one. Both of Everyman and The Second Shepherds' Play feature in
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that book. What I will try to do is to get a copy of this one from the
bookstore, copy the pages we need, and give them to you. Otherwise,
it is too big and expensive. Anyway, you cannot carry it here with
you.
For Volpone, try to get the York Classics edition. If you can get
it, it is fine, if not, I will also try to find something online. There is a
website called Project Gutenberg where they have some literary
discussions of old plays. This is a renaissance play, and you should
find it there. You can use this website for your other subjects as well.
You can look for the titles you want.
I will do my best to see what I can do with the third text as
well, so that we try to follow the same edition with the same page
numbers. If you get a different edition of Volpone, it is fine. The
variation is not going to be great. When it comes to The Second
Shepherds' Play and Everyman, there are drastic cuts, so I will give
you the text to work on it together.
I used Volpone last year, but I used a very shorter version of it.
So do not get last year’s version. This year, I am using the full text of
the play.
Usually, we are going to meet twice a week: on Tuesdays and
Thursdays. Keep an eye on the timetable because it might change
during the first two or three weeks.
Today is just and introduction and to let you know that we are
starting. Spread the word as well because other colleagues might be
just waiting, and they do not know that we are starting today. At
least, it is a warning for everyone. Starting from next week, we are
having a full lecture.
On Tuesday, I will hand you the texts of the first two plays. I
will give it to one or two of you as long as it reaches everybody. The
language is a bit different and old. The text of Everyman is
modernized, so that readers today can understand it. Otherwise, it
would have been difficult for you to read it as it was written.

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 Definitely, I would like you all to read the text in English. I
know that some of you will resort to reading the texts in Arabic. I
would tell you not to do that, but I will tell you, if you need to consult
an Arabic translation to understand the text, it is fine as long as you
take the English text to be the base on which you build everything.
Your whole study should be based on the English text. When you
say, “I studied Volpone!” for example, you should be able to
recognize any piece of it when you see it in the exam. Otherwise, you
are like anybody else who studies anything else. You want to become
an expert in English language and literature, not only literature.
Thank you very much.

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