Both are led by professors with reputations for brilliance. Both require the reading of some of Shakespeare's greatest plays. Both had crowd-pleasing lectures on Richard III this week.

They are hardly the same.

One has weekly quizzes in section; the other has daily plot summaries in lecture. One is conducted partly as interactive discussion; the other is pure lecture in the cavern of Sanders Theatre. One is among the most challenging of classes. The other isn't.

In fact, a close look at Stephen J. Greenblatt's English 126g: "Shakespearean Tragedy" and Marjorie Garber's Literature and Arts A-40: "Shakespeare, The Early Plays" provides unique insight into some of the differences between a course in Harvard's core curriculum and a high-level department offering.

"After attending both classes, I felt that Professor Garber's class offered more of an MTV view, that it seemed too fast for any real introspection into the plays," says Ryan T. McGee '98, who shopped both and opted for Greenblatt, "whereas Professor Greenblatt's class offered an in-depth and interesting view of the Shakespearean canon."

Interviews with students and teaching fellows suggest that the differences in the course are not simply attributable to the fact that the English concentrators in Greenblatt's class are more comfortable working with literature. In part, undergraduates get less out of the core class because it demands significantly less preparation.

"I think Greenblatt is going to require more actual work," says Kelly M. Dodge '96, who took Garber's class during her first year and is currently in Greenblatt's course.

Greenblatt

Students say the most obvious differences between the two classes are the professors' lecture styles and their takes on Shakespeare.

"Greenblatt does more historical background and Garber did more gender based commentary," Dodge says.

Greenblatt's views on Shakespeare is unique, students and TFs, say. He takes what Wena Poon '95 describes as "a historical-cultural-anthropological approach" that some undergraduates find appealing.

"On the one hand, I'm trying to give the students a sense of Shakespeare in his culture, in some sense Shakespeare for Elizabethan and Jacobian culture," says Greenblatt, a visiting lecturer from the University of California, Berkeley. "But secondly and at the same time, I'm trying to give a sense of what is peculiarly unique and individual about this particular playwright."

The atmosphere in the class, which meets at 10 a.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays in Sever 113, is casual. This Thursday, Greenblatt showed up in a black soft leather shoes, blue jeans, blue shirt and a bright green tie with a picture of South African president Nelson Mandela in the middle.

He opened his class by having one of his roughly 150 students, Nicholas Corman '97, play a little "riff" on the room's piano.

The lecture is on the metaphysical, political and psychological dimensions of Richard III. The professor makes occasionally wry references to the history of the period. With 20 minutes left in the class, Greenblatt opens the floor for questions, and after taking several, he ends class 10 minutes early to catch a flight to California.

"Professor Greenblatt enlivens the class with many anecdotes--fascinating footnotes and asides about the plays and Shakespeare's time," says teaching fellow Chris Miller. "Greenblatt also seems more than willing to entertain off the cuff remarks blurted out during the course of his lecture. They simply become absorbed into the stream of his commentary."