Shakespeare: Context and Stagecraft
New Free Online GSCE Course from King’s College London

The King’s College London GCSE Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) Shakespeare: Context and Stagecraft is going live on FutureLearn next Monday 5 October. This is a FREE 2-week course that looks in detail at Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, and Macbeth. The course includes video contributions from 12 Shakespeare experts at King’s and focuses on context, language, stagecraft and performance history. It includes videos, articles, polls, tasks, and discussion questions and asks students to engage with mentors who will be available on hand to respond to individual posts.

We hope that students will not only gain a greater understanding of the plays themselves but also a deeper insight into how and why these texts came into being. The course aims to help students appreciate that these plays are malleable and interpretation is often an individual response. Shakespeare: Context and Stagecraft hopes to bring Shakespeare’s plays to life by exploring not only the environment that shaped their creation, but also their continuing relevance.

This course has been designed with GCSE students in mind but it will also be of interest to A-level students and the general public. We have all suffered from lack of access to learning and to theatre during the coronavirus pandemic. Please feel free to share details about this course with anybody who might be interested!