As part of a three-hour paper on tragedy during final-year exams at Cambridge University, students were asked to write about the following lines from a pop song by the Bee Gees: "It's tragedy... Tragedy when you lose control and you got no soul, it's tragedy."

"There are elements to the Bee Gees songs that could have directed you to the great central canonical texts," explained John Kerrigan, chairman of the English finals examination board. "The line in the Bee Gees song where he sings 'the feeling's gone and you can't go on' is a fair summary of the end of King Lear."

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