How challenging are 3000 level Shakespeare courses?

the purpose of the 2000 level course, which you appear to be rather familiar with, is to give you the foundation that a 3000 level course works to build on.

that being said, every teacher will be different, especially when shakespeare is involved. there are 40 works of shakespeare in the cannon, so you could potentially have 6 different shakespeare teachers and still never read all of those works. all teachers will teach him differently.

i took my first 3000 level course the spring semester of my freshman year and was pleasantly surprised with the material and expectations. don’t let the course number scare you, oftentimes they are just given a 3000 ranking because they are more than just a survey/intro class.

i completed a 4000 level Shakespeare class last semester (spring of my sophomore year) and had no problem understanding the material. what usually works best is reading the original shakespeare work alongside a website such as sparknotes (which provides a section called ‘no fear shakespeare’ that offers line for line modern english translation).

good luck!

Sean T – Obviously your knowledge of higher education has limited you to colleges who offer only 3 digit course numbers.. so ironically your “knowledge” is moot. Some colleges, FSU for example, offer course listings starting at 1000, then 2000 and up to 4000-5000 for graduate level courses. That being said, a 3000 level Shakespeare course would be in the moderate Undergraduate level and would probably be considerably difficult compared to an entry level shakespeare course. But – what do I know, I was a Bio major. Compared to Organic Chemistry I think Shakespeare would be fantastic!

I say go for it!

I don’t know a lot of things in life, but I do know that a 3000 level course would be pretty insane because they don’t get up that high in numbers. It’s usually a number in the hundreds. If you said a 300-level course then that sounds a little more realistic….but I have no idea what a 300-level course would be like in Shakespeare….because I majored in psychology

Shakespeare is wonderful but the plays can be very hard to read. What I did was I would watch the movie of a play first and then I would read the play. It was so much easier that way. I think all of the plays have been filmed.

I just had to give nixitee kudos for that answer!