*King Lear*: tragedy and beyond

Aims of the course

• To introduce participants to critical study of Shakepeare's King Lear.
• To show participants how this drama has a long history of challenging established ideas about tragedy, the wider aims of literature, and the human condition at large.
• To enable participants to assess the merits of some established critical views of the plays, and to engage critically with modern productions (including film versions). 

Course content overview

King Lear has often been regarded as the greatest of Shakespeare's tragedies. But it is also a play which has frequently been seen as, in one sense or another, exceeding the conventional bounds of tragedy, and thereby challenging received definitions of what tragedy is or can be.

Participants on this course will see how the history of the play, both on the stage and in criticism, has been marked by attempts either to adapt the play to prevailing ideas of tragedy, or conversely to find an idea of tragedy adequate to describe what happens in the play as Shakespeare wrote it. They will also see how such a challenge to the idea of tragedy has necessarily involved a wider challenge to fundamental and often cherished ideas, not only about the wider purpose of literature, but likewise about the very nature of good and evil and of humanity's place in the world.

Particular attention will be given, through collaborative close reading, to the ways the play's text itself initiates such a profound challenge to conventional ideas about tragedy, and to our wider moral bearings in the universe, by the way it represents its characters themselves as grappling with such questions in the face of their often incomprehensible experience.

Each week will focus on a particular part of the play, as well as on one of the key themes the play holds up for scrutiny and on a corresponding aspect of the critical tradition. The five themes around which the five teaching weeks will be organised are: Justice, Nature, The Gods, Virtue and Vice, and Nothingness. 

This course will refer to the following editions:

Shakespeare, William. King Lear. Cambridge University Press, 2005. (paperback or Kindle edition)

Welcome week (Week 0)

Purpose:

• personal introductions
• introducing the course
• useful reading
• personal objectives

Learning outcomes:

• become familiar with navigating around the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) and from VLE to links and back
• tested their ability to access files and sorted out any problems with the help of the eLearning team
• learnt how to look for, assess and reference internet resources
• used the Forums to introduce themselves to other students
• contributed to a discussion forum to introduce themselves to other students and discuss why they are interested in the course, what they hope to get out their studies and also to respond to a question set by tutor aimed at initiating critical discussion of the set text

Week 1: Justice in King Lear (focus on Act One)

Purpose:

Students will be introduced to the theme of justice in King Lear through Tate’s 17th century adaptation of the play and the 18th century critics (including Addison and Johnson) who debated the merits of Tate’s radically altered and ‘poetically just’ ending as compared with the Shakespearean original. Students will begin to explore the importance of the idea of justice in Shakespeare’s text by means of a close look at Act One. We will see that different characters in the play express radically different ideas about what justice consists in and who is entitled to administer it.

Learning outcomes:

By studying this week, the students should have:

• understood why the concept of ‘poetic justice’ was key to the way in which the play was rewritten, performed, and perceived critically in the period 1660-1800
• seen in detail how the opening act of Shakespeare’s King Lear explores concepts of justice
• discussed the place of justice in tragedy in light of Shakespeare’s play and its early reception

Week 2: Nature in King Lear (focus on Acts One and Two)

Purpose:

Students will be introduced to this week’s theme by way of the growing emphasis in 18th and 19th century criticism (including Schlegel and  Coleridge) on nature as a criterion for judging Shakespeare’s text, and will give especial attention to the 20th-century critics (including Stephen Greenblatt and Kathleen McLuskie) who aim to historicise and politicise the concepts of nature that feature in the play. Students will explore in detail the ways in which the ideas of nature and naturalness are evoked and contested by the play’s characters in Acts One and Two of King Lear

Learning outcomes:

By studying this week the students should have:

• encountered the range of contrasting ideas current in Shakespeare’s time concerning nature and human nature, and observed how these ideas are alluded to in the play
• seen how, in literary criticism of the past two centuries, ‘naturalness’ has gone from being a touchstone of critical evaluation to a target of critical interrogation
• discussed with what dramatic function and what political aims various concepts of ‘nature’ and ‘naturalness’ are expressed by characters in Shakespeare’s King Lear (Acts One & Two)

Week 3: The Gods in King Lear (focus on Acts One – Three)

Purpose:

Students will be introduced to the play’s concerns with the divine by way of the approaches taken to Shakespearean tragedy around the turn of the 20th century by Swinburne and Bradley and responses to those approaches among subsequent generations of critics (including Empson, Kott, and Greenblatt). Students will look closely at the reasons for which the gods are evoked by the plays’ characters, and the various qualities that are attributed to them, in Acts One to Three.

Learning outcomes:

By studying this week, the students should have:

• understood the importance in 20th-century Shakespeare criticism of the concepts of divine providence and universal order as a context for interpreting the human situation in the play
• considered in detail the depictions and invocations of the gods by characters in the play
• explore and debated some key aspects of the 20th-century critical legacy in light of this detailed reading

Week 4: Virtue and Vice in King Lear (focus on Act Four)

Purpose:

Students will be introduced this week to the theme of moral character, by way of the play’s insistent questions about the nature of human virtue and vice and whether they have transcendent or human origins. We will consider the concern among mid-20th-century critics (including Knights, Wilson Knight, and Orwell) over whether virtue can be a viable end in itself without reference to ultimate rewards or happiness in life; and, with some more recent critics (Kiernan Ryan, Richard Halpern), we will explore the play’s intimations that the origins of evil may lie in the structure of human society rather than in human nature. Close reading for this week will concentrate on Act Four, with reference as appropriate to Acts One through Three

Learning outcomes:

By studying this week, the students should have:

• seen how the theme of moral character, its origins and importance are explored in the play
• understood and assessed some important 20th-century critical views of the play which focus on these issues, either from an ethical or from a political-historical standpoint
• discussed the play’s exploration of these themes in the light of additional reading

Week 5: Nothingness in King Lear (focus on Act Five)

Purpose:

In view of the gap opened in the ground, in previous weeks, under conventional ideas about Justice, Nature, the Gods, and Moral Virtue, students this week will explore the resonance in King Lear of the word ‘nothing’ and the associated idea of absence, with some input from post- structuralist criticism (notably Jonathan Goldberg). Close reading will focus on Act Five, drawing on Acts One to Four as appropriate. We will consider in particular the strong tendency among the play’s characters to try to impose meaning and resolution on their experience as the action draws towards a close; we will ask what, if anything, these attempts achieve, and how they figure in our experience of the play as a tragedy or as something beyond.

Learning outcomes:

By studying this week, the students should have:

• considered in detail the thematic role of ‘nothingness’ in Shakespeare’s play, and the dramatic significance of attempts by the play’s characters to find or make meaning in their experience in the closing scenes of the play
• learned about the role of this theme in criticism and productions of the last half-century
• revisited earlier weeks’ discussions, and some central aspects of the history of the play’s reception, in light of this week’s reading and study

Week 6: what next?

• assessment of student learning
• assessment of student satisfaction
• encouragement of further study

This course is open to everyone, and you don’t need any previous knowledge or experience of the subject to attend.  

Our short courses are designed especially for adult learners who want to advance their personal or professional development. They are taught by tutors who are expert in both their subjects and in teaching students of all ages and experiences. 

Please note that all teaching is in English. You should have near-native command of the English language to get the maximum benefit from the course. 

Each week of an online course is roughly equivalent to 2-3 hours of classroom time. On top of this, participants should expect to spend roughly 2-3 hours of self-study time, for example, reading materials, although this will vary from person to person. 

While they have a specific start and end date and will follow a weekly schedule (for example, week 1 will cover topic A, week 2 will cover topic B), our tutor-led online courses are designed to be flexible and as such would normally not require participants to be online for a specific day of the week or time of the day (although some tutors may try to schedule times where participants can be online together for web seminars, which will be recorded so that those who are unable to be online at certain times are able to access material). 

Unless otherwise stated, all course material will be posted on the VLE so that they can be accessed at any time throughout the duration of the course and interaction with your tutor and fellow participants will take place through a variety of different ways which will allow for both synchronous and asynchronous learning (using discussion boards etc).

Fees 

The course fee includes access to the course on our VLE, personal feedback on your work from an expert tutor, a certificate of participation (if you complete work and take part in discussions), and access to the class resources for two years after your course finishes. 

Concessions 

For more information, please see our concessions information page. 

Alison Fordham Bursary

University of Cambridge Professional and Continuing Education is proud to offer the Alison Fordham bursary, which is awarded to students who wish to study on one of our short online courses via our VLE, reducing the fee paid by 50%. The bursary is limited to a single award for each set of online courses. 

Application criteria:  

• applicants should set out their personal learning motivations since priority will be given to those who are returning to learning after an extended break, or have not previously engaged with fully online learning, or are seeking to use the online short course as a bridge towards undergraduate award-bearing study
• applicants who can demonstrate financial need 

For more information, please see our bursaries information page.

A certificate of participation and a digital credential will be awarded to those who contribute constructively to weekly discussions, exercises and assignments for the duration of the course.