Cambridge University academics have hit out at “trigger warnings” after students were cautioned that Shakespeare’s plays contain potentially distressing topics.

English literature undergraduates have been advised that a lecture which focusses on Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus and The Comedy of Errors will include “discussions of sexual violence” and “sexual assault”.

The trigger warnings were published in the English faculty’s Notes on Lectures document, which is circulated to students.

Gill Evans, emeritus professor of medieval theology and intellectual history at Cambridge, said the move would leave academics “very annoyed”.