Like Greenblatt, Garber offers a unique approach to Shakespeare. The course is centered around a small number of themes, including cross-dressing.

"She does explore cross dressing," Salamensky says. "But I think people have the impressions that she speaks about cross dressing more than she does because she wrote a book about it."

"I would say she explores the deeper human issues--psychoanalytic issues and artistic issues in the plays," she adds.

Even while exploring complicated issues, Garber's teaching can be simplistic, students say.

"She can't just assume that the hundreds of people in her class have studied English or Shakespeare or literature and so she has to obviously cater to a wider audience," Kory says.

One reason for Garber's use of plot summary, for example, may be that a significant percentage of students don't do the reading on time, if at all.

"I know some people in the class and they don't do the reading," says Aliza B. Goren '97, "and it makes it so that they can understand the lectures and what she's talking about even if they haven't read the plays before-hand."

There's nothing necessarily wrong with that, students and TFs say. A core course can't--and shouldn't--be as challenging as a departmental class, they argue.

Says Salamensky: "The plays are rich enough to stand alone for the purpose of a core course and the purpose of a core course is to bring unfamiliar material to life for students who might not otherwise gain access to it..