Poet Ben Jonson said of Shakespeare that he “was not of his age, but for all time.” But what does a poet playwright, dead now some 400 years, have to say that speaks to this moment of the human experience? In this class we will read and discuss the Bard’s plays in order to see how they were understood in their time as well as how they address modern sensibilities of race, gender, sexuality, economics and politics. How does Measure for Measure figure in the #MeToo movement? What does a queer reading of Twelfth Night yield? How does The Tempest engage colonialism, race and the violence of language, or how does King Lear take on the betrayal of both the body and the body politic? How might Henry IV address cultural appropriation and entitlement or Henry V espouse or critique nationalism? Through discussing, writing about and even performing scenes of some of Shakespeare’s plays, we will test whether and how these works still resonate.