Page 202 - DENG402_HISTORY_OF_ENGLISH_LITERATURE

Unit 26: Twentieth Century (Poetic Drama and Problem Play)

Self Assessment Notes

Multiple Choice Questions:
1. .................... is a fossilized Elizabethan.
(a) John Masefield (b) Stephen Phillips
(c) Dr. Gordon Bottomley (d) John Drinkwater
2. .................... is best known for his prose historical drama Abraham Lincoln (1918) which
secured for him international fame.
(a) John Drinkwater (b) John Masefield
(c) Stephen Phillips (d) W.B. Yeats
3. The leaders of the Irish movement and .................... (1865 - 1939) and synge.
(a) Dr. Gordon Bottomley (b) Stephen Phillips
(c) W.B. Yeats (d) John Drinkwater
4. Whereas Abercrombie tried to poetise ordinary speech and thus combine poetry with
realism, .................... endeavoured to ake an altogether new start.
(a) John Masefield (b) W.B. Yeats
(c) Stephen Phillips (d) Dr. Gordon Bottomley
5. .................... has been the greatest shaping force in the literature of the twentieth century in
poetry.
(a) W.B. Yeats (b) T.S. Eliot
(c) John Drinkwater (d) John Masefield

26.2 Problem Play

The problem play is a form of drama that emerged during the 19th century as part of the wider
movement of realism in the arts. It deals with contentious social issues through debates between
the characters on stage, who typically represent conflicting points of view within a realistic social
context.
The critic F. S. Boas adapted the term to characterise certain plays by Shakespeare that he considered
to have characteristics similar to Ibsen’s 19th-century problem plays. Boas’s term caught on, and
Measure for Measure, The Merchant of Venice, Timon of Athens, Troilus and Cressida, and All’s
Well That Ends Well are still referred to as “Shakespeare’s problem plays”. As a result, the term is
used more broadly and retrospectively to describe pre-19th-century, tragicomic dramas that do
not fit easily into the classical generic distinction between comedy and tragedy.
While social debates in drama were nothing new, the problem play of the 19th century was
distinguished by its intent to confront the spectator with the dilemmas experienced by the characters.
The earliest forms of the problem play are to be found in the work of French writers such as
Alexandre Dumas, fils, who dealt with the subject of prostitution in The Lady of the Camellias
(1852). Other French playwrights followed suit with dramas about a range of social issues, sometimes
approaching the subject in a moralistic, sometimes in a sentimental manner.
The most important exponent of the problem play, however, was the Norwegian writer Henrik
Ibsen, whose work combined penetrating characterisation with emphasis on topical social issues,
usually concentrated on the moral dilemmas of a central character. In a series of plays Ibsen
addressed a range of problems, most notably the restriction of women’s lives in A Doll’s House
(1879), sexually-transmitted disease in Ghosts (1882) and provincial greed in An Enemy of the
People (1882).

Did u know? Ibsen’s dramas proved immensely influential, spawning variants of the
problem play in works by George Bernard Shaw and other later dramatists.

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