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AdelaideX: Shakespeare Matters

Learn about Shakespeare’s plays and their influence through a focus on emotions such as love, hate, and jealousy.

5 weeks
3–5 hours per week
Self-paced
Progress at your own speed
Free
Optional upgrade available

There is one session available:

14,387 already enrolled! After a course session ends, it will be archivedOpens in a new tab.
Starts Mar 27
Ends Dec 31

About this course

Skip About this course

Shakespeare’s work has influenced the way we think about our relationships and ourselves. His plays are still as relevant today as when they were written almost 400 years ago.

In this introductory course, you will learn how Shakespeare uses emotion in his plays, how his characters experience and manipulate emotions, and how the emotional resonance of the plays makes them powerfully relevant to the modern world.

As you follow and engage with the emotional journeys of characters in tragedy, comedy, tragicomedy, and history; you will discover patterns of plot, action, and speech that will help you appreciate, understand, and discuss Shakespeare’s plays.

Each week of the course will focus on a different emotion. You’ll cover the range of emotions found in Hamlet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Othello, The Winter’s Tale, and King Henry V.

This course includes interactive activities, and interviews with a range of people engaged creatively and professionally with Shakespeare’s plays. You’ll be encouraged to interpret Shakespeare in your own way - to find ‘your Shakespeare.’

You will learn how to read a Shakespeare play and gain the tools you need to interpret its language. You will also have the opportunity to experience what it’s like to direct scenes from the plays. And you’ll learn about the various kinds of Shakespearean drama, and the dramatic and poetic techniques Shakespeare uses to investigate the human condition.

Awards

Class central top 100 course of all-time.edX Prize Finalist 2018

At a glance

  • Language: English
  • Video Transcript: English
  • Associated skills:Influencing Skills

What you'll learn

Skip What you'll learn
  • Why Shakespeare still matters, all through a focus on emotions
  • Ideas and techniques that will help you understand as well as enjoy Shakespeare’s plays
  • How to understand and appreciate Shakespeare’s language and its power

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