| 研讀序次 | 預定研讀 日期 | 主讀人 | 研讀內容 （書目章節或篇次） Text or Lesson to be Taught | 討論議題 Title of Lesson |
| 1 | 2008年09月23日 | 周德客教授 | Plot Structure of Hamlet | Understanding Hamlet |
| 2 | 2008年09月30日 | 彭鏡禧教授 | Famous soliloquies of Hamlet | Understanding the Language I |
| 3 | 2008年10月07日 | 周德客教授 | Famous quotations of Hamlet | Understanding the Language II |
| 4 | 2008年10月14日 | 包俊傑講師 | Humours/Madness in Hamlet | Understanding the Language III |
| 5 | 2008年10月21日 | 周德客教授 | Dramatic Devices in Hamlet | Orthodox Readings I |
| 6 | 2008年10月28日 | 王慧娟教授 | Tragic Hero, Revenge in Hamlet | Orthodox Readings II |
| 7 | 2008年11月04日 | 雷碧琦教授 | The Oedipus Complex in Hamlet | Orthodox Readings III |
| 8 | 2008年11月11日 | 蘇其康教授 | Life/Death Theme in Hamlet | Orthodox Readings IV |
| 9 | 2008年11月18日 | 周德客教授 | Fortinbrases, King Hamlet in Hamlet | Minor Characters I |
| 10 | 2008年11月25日 | 周德客教授 | Osric and the Gravediggers in Hamlet | Minor Characters II |
| 11 | 2008年12月02日 | 周德客教授 | Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Hamlet | Minor Characters III |
| 12 | 2008年12月09日 | 周德客教授 | Gentlemen of the Guard, Players in Hamlet | Minor Characters IV |
| 13 | 2008年12月16日 | 周德客教授 | Claudius and Polonius in Hamlet | Major Characters I |
| 14 | 2008年12月23日 | 周德客教授 | Ophelia and Gertrude in Hamlet | Major Characters II |
| 15 | 2008年12月30日 | 周德客教授 | Laertes and Horatio in Hamlet | Major Characters III |
| 16 | 2009年01月06日 | 周德客教授 | Hamlet in Hamlet | Major Characters IV |
| 17 | 2009年01月13日 | 胡迪教授 | Intertextual Readings of Hamlet | The Intertextual Hamlet |
| 18 | 2009年01月20日 | 周德客教授 | Student Responses to the Study of Hamlet | Review and Response |
Tentatively scheduled for 18 weeks…
Week One
Focus: Understanding Hamlet
Goal: Students will engage in discussions designed to lead them toward a comprehension of the basic plot, from start-to-finish, of the play. The lesson will begin, using both projected images and handouts, with Freytag’s Pyramid, the illustration of dramatic structure and diagrammatic analysis of the symmetry of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. Students will demonstrate their awareness of the exposition, challenge, dramatic complication, turning point, reversal, climax and catastrophe of Hamlet.
Week Two
Focus: Understanding the Language of Hamlet I
Goal: Students will be guided through careful interaction with the text toward a degree of comfort with the English of Shakespeare. Students will practice with the most famous soliloquies—simultaneously preparing for later readings of the same selections—as they seek to bring the words trippingly to their tongues.
Week Three
Focus: Understanding the Language of Hamlet II
Goal: Students will work with the “famous” quotes, the “quotable quotes,” and discover how many of these have carried over into modern usage. As part of this activity students will also engage with the various figures of speech such as metaphor, metonymy, simile and synecdoche, for case. Students will also have an opportunity to recognize the authority of the language to deliver freezing insult, bitter sarcasm or cruel humor.
Week Four
Focus: Understanding the Language of Hamlet III
Goal: Students will learn about the concept of humours as presented in the drama, carried over from medieval medical assumptions. Attendant to this will be an entrance to discussion of the orthodox analytical consideration of the emotional stability of Hamlet, with a discussion of the madness of Ophelia.
Week Five
Focus: Orthodox Readings of Hamlet — Dramatic Devices
Goal: Students will respond to the inclusion and effectiveness of various dramatic techniques employed at various points throughout the work, with the desired goal of analyzing how these enhance or possibly detract from the flow and authority of the overall movement of the drama. Here, for example, the focus will be upon the play within the play, the inclusion of comic relief, etc.
Week Six
Focus: Orthodox Readings of Hamlet — The Tragic Hero and Revenge
Goal: Students will, based on an understanding of “round vs. flat” (“full vs. stock”) and “major vs. minor” characters (as adapted from E.M. Forster’s 1927 essay “Aspects of the Novel”), engage in discussions of the primary characters and their interrelationships. Connected with this will be a discussion of revenge as it permeates the play in the form of three sons seeking justice for three fathers: Hamlet for King Hamlet, Laertes for Polonius, and young Fortinbras for King Fortinbras.
Week Seven
Focus: Orthodox Readings of Hamlet — The Oedipus Complex
Goal: Students, who will through a variety of resources available through the class website already have some concept of the principles of the Freudian Oedipus Complex, will engage in a discussion about the applicability of the psychoanalytical reading of the relationship between Hamlet and Gertrude as resulting from characteristics of the Oedipus Complex.
Week Eight
Focus: Orthodox Readings of Hamlet — Themes of Life, Death and Reality
Goal: Students will address the famous references to death throughout the play, ranging from the question of fratricide, moving on to suicide, potential matricide, eventual “patricide,” and other instances of death. The focus will be upon concepts of life and reality and how these are made more visible through contrast with their “dark” opposite. Here too the concept of Christianity in Hamlet will be introduced.
Week Nine
Focus: Realization through Performance — Minor Characters I
Goal: With this unit begins an intensive study of the characters in Hamlet, starting with a focus upon some of the relatively minor characters that take the stage throughout the drama. Student-generated performance and discussion will encourage an intimate and panoptical understanding of these characters. This exciting pedagogical approach begins with a focus on young Fortinbras and the ghostly King Hamlet. Selections available for reading, interpretive performance and discussion will include those exchanges between these and other characters, including young Hamlet and Horatio.
Week Ten
Focus: Realization through Performance — Minor Characters II
Goal: Student-generated performance will guide discussions of the seemingly flamboyant courtier Osric who serves as a foil for a playful Prince Hamlet, and the darkly wise gravediggers whose musings on life and death prove him a worthy opponent in a contest of wits with Hamlet.
Week Eleven
Focus: Realization through Performance—Minor Characters III
Goal: Student-generated performance will serve as a starting point for discussions of Hamlet’s seemingly sincere friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
Week Twelve
Focus: Realization through Performance — Minor Characters IV
Goal: Student-generated performance will guide discussions of the varied personalities referred to here as the Gentlemen of the Guard (Marcellus, Barnardo and Francisco) who begin the play and move it forward with their telling to Horatio and later to Hamlet of their engagements with the ghost of their old king. Through performance students will also put the spotlight on the Players, especially in their roles as Player Queen and Player King within Hamlet’s altered version of The Murder of Gonzago.
Week Thirteen
Focus: Realization through Performance — Major Characters I
Goal: Student-generated performance will encourage discussions of the questionable character of Polonius and of the usurper regicide, Claudius. It is expected these performances will force consideration of the possible interpretations of these characters according to various qualities ranging from righteousness to malevolence.
Week Fourteen
Focus: Realization through Performance — Major Characters II
Goal: Student-generated performance will support serious discussions and analyses of the seemingly tortured characters of Ophelia and Gertrude, with dramatic interpretations fueling debates over the innocence or guilt of both females as concerns their participation in various acts of deception perpetrated upon Hamlet.
Week Fifteen
Focus: Realization through Performance — Major Characters III
Goal: Student-generated performance will force a greater focus upon the personalities of Laertes and Horatio, resulting perhaps in a contrast that allows discussion of possible similarities between these men who exist only within the shadows cast by Hamlet’s darkness of spirit.
Week Sixteen
Focus: Realization through Performance — Major Characters IV
Goal: The final student-generated performance will focus upon Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark. It is expected that these interpretations will encourage students toward emotionally charged discussions of various aspects of Hamlet’s personality that have been focused upon or merely touched upon throughout this semester-long class teaching-project.
Week Seventeen
Focus: What a Piece of Work is Hamlet
Goal: This final “instructional” unit introduces students to the ongoing influence of Hamlet upon other art forms and avenues of creativity. Using a variety of multimedia resources, host speakers will first show students how Hamlet has found its way to theatrical representations as French Opera (Ambroise Thomas’ 1869 score with libretto based in part on a stage play by Alexandre Dumas) and Carson Kievman’s modern Opera, to symphonic renditions from Berlioz, and into dance through Shostakovich's, David Nixon’s, and Phillip Glass’ separate ballets. Students will also look at fine art renditions of the play, and more modern graphic versions including digitally drawn posters, comic books and animated cartoons, as well as the Kafkaesque, surrealistic modern film, Fodor’s Hamlet. Finally, students will introduce their own research findings in the topic of Chinese-language and other Asian stage adaptations of Hamlet.
Week Eighteen
Focus: Did We Report His Cause Aright?
Goal: The end unit of this project will offer an opportunity for students to guide the discussion in entirety as they report their (hopefully) new understandings about Hamlet, Shakespeare, theatre, and the performance arts in general.
Midterm Examination
Group Project: Radio Hamlet
The goal of the midterm small group project is to produce in the form of an old-fashioned “radio show” an important scene from the drama.
Final Examination
The final examination is comprised of two assignments, both due for completion during the university’s end-of-semester final exam period:
- Group Project: Key Scenes on Stage (60%)
Student groups will confer with the host speaker in the selection of a scene from Hamlet that is exemplary of some aspect of the play that had been discussed at some point in the semester.
- Individual Essay: Hamlet, Here and Now (40%)