Professor Watson is an incredible professor. He truly shows his passion and knowledge in his lectures but is also incredibly engaging and funny. His insights about the plays reveal so much to us that we, as modern people, would have missed without the historical context Watson is so well versed in. His lectures are insightful and interesting, and really illustrate the depth and nuance of Shakespeare's plays, and why they matter today. The class isn't super hard, as long as you're able to grasp the plot of Shakespeare's plays fairly well. Since you study a different play every week, it can be a bit hard to keep up, but I ended up watching each play (productions are provided on Bruinlearn) and following along with the book, which was more than enough, as you only really need to know the plot for lectures. I would have just watched them but reading was helpful for the essays. The midterm and final were pretty easy, considering that the passage identification was easy and he gave you everything you need for the writing questions in his lectures. They basically test if you were paying attention to the plays and the lectures. There are only two papers, one 3-page and one 5-7 page, on some pretty interesting topics, so all things considered, I found the workload to be very manageable. If you have any interest in Shakespeare, I highly recommend this class! It seems scarier than it is. If you hate Shakespeare/struggle A LOT with grasping it then this might not be the class for you, since it covers so many plays so quickly. If you're in between, this might be the class that makes you a Shakespeare lover. Also, most people in the class are also Shakespeare/literature nerds so if that's your vibe then it's a good place to meet people :)