Page 28 - DENG403_BRITISH_DRAMA

British Drama

Notes 2.1.2 Definition of Problem Play

According to Henrik Ibsen, a problem play is a type of drama that presents a social issue in order to
awaken the audience to it. These plays usually reject romantic plots in favor of holding up a mirror
that reflects not simply what the audience wants to see but what the playwright sees in them. Often,
a problem play will propose a solution to the problem that does not coincide with prevailing opinion.
The term is also used to refer to certain Shakespeare plays that do not fit the categories of tragedy,
comedy, or romance.

2.1.3 Shakespearean Problem Play

In Shakespeare studies, the term problem plays normally refers to three plays that William
Shakespeare wrote between the late 1590s and the first years of the seventeenth century: All’s Well
That Ends Well, Measure for Measure and Troilus and Cressida, although some critics would extend
the term to other plays, most commonly The Winter’s Tale, Timon of Athens, and The Merchant of
Venice. The term was coined by critic F. S. Boas in Shakespeare and his Predecessors (1896), who
lists the first three plays and adds that “Hamlet, with its tragic close, is the connecting-link between
the problem plays and the tragedies in the stricter sense.” The term can refer to the subject matter of
the play, or to a classification “problem” with the plays themselves.
The term derives from a type of drama that was popular at the time of Boas’ writing. It was most
associated with the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. In these problem plays the situation faced
by the protagonist is put forward by the author as a representative instance of a contemporary
social problem. For Boas this modern form of drama provided a useful model with which to study
works by Shakespeare that had previously seemed to be uneasily situated between the comic and
the tragic, though nominally the three plays identified by Boas are all comedies. For Boas,
Shakespeare’s “problem plays” set out to explore specific moral dilemmas and social problems
through their central characters. Boas writes, throughout these plays we move along dim untrodden
paths, and at the close our feeling is neither of simple joy nor pain; we are excited, fascinated,
perplexed, for the issues raised preclude a completely satisfactory outcome, even when, as in All’s
Well and Measure for Measure, the complications are outwardly adjusted in the fifth act. In Troilus
and Cressida and Hamlet no such partial settlement of difficulties takes place, and we are left to
interpret their enigmas as best we may. Dramas so singular in theme and temper cannot be strictly
called comedies or tragedies. We may therefore borrow a convenient phrase from the theatre of to-
day and class them together as Shakspere’s problem plays.
The problem plays are characterised by their complex and ambiguous tone, which shifts violently
between dark, psychological drama and more straightforward comic material; All’s Well and Measure
for Measure have happy endings that seem awkward, artificial and perfunctory, while Troilus ends
with neither a tragic death, nor a happy ending. Boas used the term for plays in which the resolution
of the themes and debates seems inadequate, and in the final act the deliverance of justice and
completion one expects does not occur. Other definitions have followed, but all center on the fact
that the plays cannot be easily assigned to the traditional categories of comedy or tragedy. The
three plays are also referred to as the dark comedies, since despite ending on a generally happy
note for the characters concerned, the darker, more profound issues raised cannot be fully resolved
or ignored.

Boas used the term problem play for plays in which the resolution of the themes and
debates seems inadequate and in the final act the deliverance of justice and completion, one
expects does not occur. Keeping in view this, explain the concept of problem play.

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