Shakespeares Problem Plays :: William Shakespeare Poems Literature Essays

Shakespeares Problem PlaysI suggest that a label for the causes of these feelings of disquietude and uncertainty of interpretation might be the tragi-comic surfacelook of man a view which splits the world today, and gives us the totalitarian attitude versus the end product of a European tradition which was chivalric and Christian. I mean by this every or all of the following, or any combination of these distinguishable attitudes. 1. A refusal or failure wholly to credit the dignity of man, and the significance that that gives the person in tragedy. 2. An emphasis (comic, derisive, satiric) on human shortcoming, even when man is booked in great affairs. 3. Any trend towards suggesting that on that point is usually other side to all human affairs, and that the other side to the serious, dignified, noble, famous and so forth, is comic. This implies a scepticism of mans worth, importance and value and may range from the inquisitive through the ironical to the cynical. 4. Any trend in the direction of expressing unhappiness, disappointment, resentfulness or bitterness about human life, by inverting these feelings and presenting the causes of them as matter for gag or jest.... 5. A corresponding attitude towards traditionally funny subjects which insinuates that in some way they are serious, or that the stock result to them bypasses trouble oneself at human shortcomings or wickedness or that this stock response depends on a lack of sympathy or insight which an pen can make us aware of without abolishing the comic situation. * * * They the problem plays substantiate another important themes or terms in common, and all bedevil some echo or parallel in Hamlet. 1. They share a common evaluation of conventionally accepted nobilities noble heroes in Troilus and Cressida (and the grandness of courtly love) Authority in ermine in beat for Measure a gentleman of family in Alls Well. All are deflated and with the deflations there runs concurrently the c ritical devaluation of man at large. 2. Interpolated into the critical analytical patterns we happen upon ideal figures who check our prattle of cynicism, satire or misanthropy Greek and trojan chivalrically fraternizing Hector, Uysses in his degree speech, perhaps the Duke in his quasi regal moments the Isabella who dialog Christian charity so moving.... All are as if inset or montage figures, so that in their context they appear out of phase .