After the first week of class I seriously contemplated dropping it because I can not stand theater and realized that I made a mistake. However, once we got into the plays Dr. Little had super interesting ideas and was extremely engaging during his lecture. I thoroughly looked forward to coming to his lectures and learning more about Shakespeare. The structure of this class made it pretty easy to get a good grade. You have to read a different play each week (usually 3 hours with an audiobook), but in all honesty you can probably escape with reading the summaries or the "No Fear" translations (something that Dr. Little and the TAs look down upon though). There are two papers, one is three pages the other one four and a half, the topics are a little strange but nothing awful. The TAs were very generous with grading in my opinion so you don't have to stress about it. The midterm and final are extremely easy if you just take notes during class and pay attention, I would strongly advise against skipping lectures.

Prof Little is such an engaging and passionate teacher. Really enjoyed having him as a professor; he makes a boring class about Shakespeare actually entertaining.

******SELLING******
The Complete Works of Shakespeare

I bought it brand new, and there are zero markings/highlighting inside. Good as new.

Email me if interested! *************

Dr. Little is very funny, and a great presenter and clearly loves what he teaches. Unfortunately what he teaches is a bunch of disorganized crap.

Disorganized: All of the lectures are based on his lectures, which you cannot find a parallel anywhere on the internet. There will be things that appear on tests that he talks about very briefly, and makes NO note of, that you are expected to remember somehow. Additionally, his lectures are mixture of rambling and tangents, which makes it very hard to pay attention.

Crap: What he teaches is pure crap. He takes some random line in a play, and makes some incredibly loose conclusion from the writing. For example, he talked about Macbeth (not lady macbeth) bleeding as being like menstrual blood. I googled that, and found ZERO corroborating scholars opinions on that, and I am convinced he pulled that out of his ass. He also constantly talked about the characters having incestuous desires (which I'm also pretty sure he pulled out of his ass. Also, all he talks about is race and sex, which if you are ok with that, by all means take this class.

He is very funny and the class is easy (take home tests), but you should absolutely take this class with someone else if you want to learn something substantive.

Thank god for my TA, this class would have been hell with them.

I think the lecture is very interesting and interactive but the class itself is very disorganized. I asked my TA about if the final exam is cumulative and what will the exam be format be like two days before the exam was due and she didn't have a clue. Apart from that, there is no lecture slide for the class so you have to go to class since the exam is heavily based on what was taught in the lecture. therefore, if you zone out or miss a lecture, you are basically screwed for the parts you missed.

Personally, this class wasn't really for me, but I know that a lot of the other students had a good time with this class. There are 8 assigned plays, and we read one play a week. This workload is pretty manageable tbh, and you can get away with reading the play in modern english on litcharts. It is important to know significant quotes from the play though, so I recommend reading some of the original text beside the translation. The class is graded on 2 tests and 2 papers. One of the papers is 2-3 pages and the other paper is 3-4.5 pages. Professor Little is very engaging and his lectures are great, but I find it difficult to write papers for this class because the papers are VERY deep. This is my first year at ucla, so I might not be used to the depth of some of the classes, but it's nothing like any literature class I've taken before. If you are really good at getting super deep in Shakespeare, this class may be great for you! But this class just wasn't my jam..

By far, one of the most awful professors and classes at UCLA. While the assignments are really easy, if you make a mistake the Prof and the TA are extremely unforgiving. Prof Little's lectures are so strange in the sense that he goes on really random tangents and doesn't deeply discuss any of the texts. He just randomly quotes dialogues super dramatically, as though he is Shakespeare and tells us the origins of certain words. The class content is so horrible but if you are entertained by these kind of things, then I guess it would be a good class. Coming away from this class, I learned absolutely nothing about Shakespeare or the thematic depths of his plays. Honestly, the assignments are really easy but I missed one of them because of certain personal circumstances and the Prof and the TA were extremely unforgiving. They did not give me any accommodations whereas every other Prof for my other classes this quarter had helped me in some way or the other. Was on track to get an A, but this completely destroyed any chance of that.

By far, one of the most awful professors and classes at UCLA. While the assignments are really easy, if you make a mistake the Prof and the TA are extremely unforgiving. Prof Little's lectures are so strange in the sense that he goes on really random tangents and doesn't deeply discuss any of the texts. He just randomly quotes dialogues super dramatically, as though he is Shakespeare and tells us the origins of certain words. The class content is so horrible but if you are entertained by these kind of things, then I guess it would be a good class. Coming away from this class, I learned absolutely nothing about Shakespeare or the thematic depths of his plays. Honestly, the assignments are really easy but I missed one of them because of certain personal circumstances and the Prof and the TA were extremely unforgiving. They did not give me any accommodations whereas every other Prof for my other classes this quarter had helped me in some way or the other. Was on track to get an A, but this completely destroyed any chance of that.

I decided to take this class for my love of reading Shakespeare plays; this class taught me all the plays I once read from a better perspective than a high school teacher. Professor Little is constantly engaging with students, takes the time to accurately learn students' names, and teaches the material effectively. I would recommend this class to anyone taking the course and if available, have Johnathan as your TA. He is the best and helped immensely with breaking down all the material.

Loved this class. Loved this professor. Loved the TA (Dyese <33). Workload was heavier than expected (a play a week & discussion posts) but manageable if you don't leave it all to the last minute. I generally don't like (and am not good at) reading Shakespearean language but it wasn't that bad. This class made me love Shakespeare and think about it ways I never have before. Highly recommend if you have even the slightest bit of interest in the topic!

I took this class online. Lectures weren't live so you could watch them on your own time which was great. There were about 3 lectures for each play and they would last from 20-50 minutes. We ended up reading 6 plays total then had a movie week. Sometimes you will need to read a play a week, but it's doable especially if you break up the workload. The grading was originally: Discussion posts: 20% Participation in section 20% First paper 10% Midterm Exam 15% Final Paper 15% Final Exam 20%. However, this quarter he canceled the final exam so percentages were redistributed in your favor. His lectures were extremely interesting and made me think about Shakespeare's plays in ways I didn't know was possible. He doesn't use slides so during lectures you'll have to pay attention and take notes. Overall I definitely recommend this class if you have even a slight interest in Shakespeare.