From The Merchant of Venice to The Taming of the Shrew, it’s easy to see how Shakespeare’s plays can cause offence to contemporary audiences. Is it harder to teach Shakespeare today than in the past? Have ideas about what is offensive in Shakespeare changed over time?

In this lecture, a team of Shakespeare scholars will look at the challenges and opportunities of teaching, editing and staging Shakespeare in our current ‘age of offence’.

A lecture by Adam Hansen and Monika Smialkowska 21 September

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:

https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/offensive-shakespeare

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.

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