The use of supernatural beings in four of Shakespeare’s plays – A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, and The Tempest – is examined in order to show the change in Shakespeare’s thinking about magic, and how the mortal and supernatural can co-exist. The shift from properly controlled benevolent female power, to out-of-control malevolent female power, to the eradication of female power and triumph of the male magus is examined; the ideal co-existence of the human and supernatural worlds is assessed.

<p>The licentiate thesis focuses on young people’s dramatisation and reflections on the reception of theatre in schools as part of aesthetic learning processes. Its main objective is to describe and analyse how theatre can be used in teaching as a means to create meaning and knowledge in practice. The theatre’s relation to the Swedish subject is discussed from different aspects.</p><p>The empiric survey was conducted at three 6–9 schools in the south of Sweden, referred to in the study as Österskolan, Norrskolan and Söderskolan. The survey is designed as a multiple case study. Two cases consist of individual classes with supplementary work based on the students’ reception of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the other two on stage productions that include acting. The material consists of video recordings of teaching processes, rehearsals and performances; notes from observations, interviews with teachers and pupils, a questionnaire regarding theatre habits, as well as documents such as theatre programmes and home pages. The cases are contrasted in order to extend the analysis, distinguish between mutual and contrasting patterns, and to some extent also to explain concepts used for description and analysis.</p><p>The thesis aims to answer the following questions:</p><p>• What is required in order for theatre to create meaning and knowledge in practice within a school’s framework?</p><p>• How do form, content and use, and also production, reception and reflection cooperate in various media in the aesthetic learning processes and what didactical potential is the result of this cooperation?</p><p>The result of the survey shows that a teacher’s patterns for verbal and physical interaction and his or her media specific competence strongly influence the terms for the aesthetic learning processes. The nature of the theatre culture’s meeting with the school culture at the individual school determines the possibilities for the participation in creation of meaning and knowledge in practice that are offered to pupils. Financial conditions, support from the school management, collaboration between subjects, functioning rooms, and the school’s gender practice are other important factors.</p><p>The conditions for the theatre’s creation of meaning and knowledge differ significantly between the three schools included in this study. At Österskolan the theatre culture is a fairly unfamiliar element in the school culture. The teacher who supervises the supplementary work for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, however, possesses good media specific competence in the theatrical field and is able to generate possibilities for reflections on experience pedagogy based on the theatrical performance and actual participation in the theatrical practice for the pupils. For a number of years, the theatre culture at Norrskolan has been included in an integrated part of the school culture. A Midsummer Night’s Dream becomes the basis for verbal, dialogue-oriented discussions in the classroom. The pupils’ performance at the school strengthens the school culture and the pupils learn how to cooperate and take responsibility. The cultural profile at Söderskolan collaborates with professional cultural workers and regional cultural institutes in a theatrical project that invites both schools and the general public. In this case, all media is integrated in the creation of meaning and there is great didactical potential.</p><p>In the intended doctoral thesis the analysis of the terms and the design of the aesthetic learning processes will be further discussed.</p>

The licentiate thesis focuses on young people’s dramatisation and reflections on the reception of theatre in schools as part of aesthetic learning processes. Its main objective is to describe and analyse how theatre can be used in teaching as a means to create meaning and knowledge in practice. The theatre’s relation to the Swedish subject is discussed from different aspects. The empiric survey was conducted at three 6–9 schools in the south of Sweden, referred to in the study as Österskolan, Norrskolan and Söderskolan. The survey is designed as a multiple case study. Two cases consist of individual classes with supplementary work based on the students’ reception of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the other two on stage productions that include acting. The material consists of video recordings of teaching processes, rehearsals and performances; notes from observations, interviews with teachers and pupils, a questionnaire regarding theatre habits, as well as documents such as theatre programmes and home pages. The cases are contrasted in order to extend the analysis, distinguish between mutual and contrasting patterns, and to some extent also to explain concepts used for description and analysis. The thesis aims to answer the following questions: • What is required in order for theatre to create meaning and knowledge in practice within a school’s framework? • How do form, content and use, and also production, reception and reflection cooperate in various media in the aesthetic learning processes and what didactical potential is the result of this cooperation? The result of the survey shows that a teacher’s patterns for verbal and physical interaction and his or her media specific competence strongly influence the terms for the aesthetic learning processes. The nature of the theatre culture’s meeting with the school culture at the individual school determines the possibilities for the participation in creation of meaning and knowledge in practice that are offered to pupils. Financial conditions, support from the school management, collaboration between subjects, functioning rooms, and the school’s gender practice are other important factors. The conditions for the theatre’s creation of meaning and knowledge differ significantly between the three schools included in this study. At Österskolan the theatre culture is a fairly unfamiliar element in the school culture. The teacher who supervises the supplementary work for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, however, possesses good media specific competence in the theatrical field and is able to generate possibilities for reflections on experience pedagogy based on the theatrical performance and actual participation in the theatrical practice for the pupils. For a number of years, the theatre culture at Norrskolan has been included in an integrated part of the school culture. A Midsummer Night’s Dream becomes the basis for verbal, dialogue-oriented discussions in the classroom. The pupils’ performance at the school strengthens the school culture and the pupils learn how to cooperate and take responsibility. The cultural profile at Söderskolan collaborates with professional cultural workers and regional cultural institutes in a theatrical project that invites both schools and the general public. In this case, all media is integrated in the creation of meaning and there is great didactical potential. In the intended doctoral thesis the analysis of the terms and the design of the aesthetic learning processes will be further discussed. / <p>Licentiatavhandling i litteraturvetenskap: alternativet Svenska med didaktisk inriktning.</p>

This dissertation examines the role of aesthetic activity in the pursuit of political agency in readings of several of Shakespeare’s plays, including Hamlet (1600), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1595), The Tempest (1610), the history plays of the second tetralogy (1595-9), Julius Caesar (1599), and Coriolanus (1605). I demonstrate how Shakespeare models political subjectivity—the capacity for individuals to participate meaningfully in the political realm—as necessitating active aesthetic agency. This aesthetic agency entails the fashioning of artistically conceived public personae that potential political subjects enact in the public sphere and the critical engagement of the aesthetic and political discourses of the subjects’ culture in a self-reflective and appropriative manner. Furthermore, these subjects should be wary auditors of the texts and personae they encounter within the public sphere in order to avoid internalizing constraining ideologies that reify their identities into forms less conducive to the pursuit of liberty and social mobility. Early modern audiences could discover several models for doing so in Shakespeare’s works. For example, Hamlet posits a model of Machiavellian theatricality that masks the Prince's interiority as he resists the biopolitical force and disciplinary discourses of Claudius's Denmark. Julius Caesar and Coriolanus advance a model of citizenship through the plays’ nameless plebeians in which rhetoric offers the means to participate in Rome’s political culture, and Shakespeare’s England for audiences, while authorities manipulate citizen opinion by molding the popularity of public figures. Public, artistic ability affords potential political subjects ways of not only framing their participation in their culture but also ways of conceiving of their identities and relationships to society that may defy normative notions of membership in the community.