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Plays called "problem plays" are problems because the scholars have problems with them, not because they are in any way difficult to stage or to watch. Some scholars have called Measure for Measure and All's Well that Ends Well "problem plays" because the main characters are not as happy as they might be. It's a bit iffy whether the nun Isabel is going to accept the Duke's proposal of marriage, and Bertram is still in a forced marriage even if he is now going to accept the situation. Of course, Bertram's situation is no different from Kate's in Taming of the Shrew. Our changed sensibilities about the treatment of women has made the Shrew a problem play to some. Troilus and Cressida, which ends neither with the main characters dying nor with them getting married, and which is marked by the most biting cynicism, is often considered to be a problem play.

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What was the dispute over the authorship of Shakespeare's plays?

Some people think that others wrote Shakespeare's plays such as Francis Bacon.


Who handed plays down to Shakespeare?

Shakespeare wrote most of his plays. Some others may have inspired him.


William Shakespeare and Ben Johnson were writers of?

They wrote plays. They never wrote them together although they were friendly and Shakespeare had acted in some of Jonson's plays.


Where did Shakespeare write some of his plays?

Shakespeare wrote all of his plays in London. Where exactly in London is an open question.


Did Shakespeare write only 15 plays?

No. Shakespeare wrote over 38 plays. Some of them you may not have heard about, however.


Who supposedly wrote Shakespeare's plays?

It was William Shakespeare. Some people argue that some of his works should be attributed to other writers, but there is little to justify this.


Why couldn't anybody else write Shakespeare's plays?

Because if they did they wouldn't be Shakespeare's. Many people were writing plays at that time: Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare's plays; Marlowe wrote Marlowe's plays; Jonson wrote Jonson's plays; Middleton wrote Middleton's plays; Webster wrote Webster's plays, and the same for Heywood, and Chettle, and Beaumont and Fletcher.How do we know that Shakespeare wrote the plays? For three very good reasons:Because they are credited to him in published editions.Because a lot of people said he wrote them at the time.Because nobody at the time suggested that he didn't write them.We know now that Shakespeare had help on some of his plays (the published version of one of them officially acknowledges this) just as most other playwrights did. We know also that some poems were credited to Shakespeare which he didn't write, so you can't always go just by the name on the cover. But the name on the cover is corroborated again and again by other references to Shakespeare the playwright and Shakespeare the actor. There is as little reason to believe that someone else wrote everything credited to Shakespeare as there is to believe that the first man on the moon was not really Neil Armstrong but Jerry Garcia.


What were some things Shakespeare did before he wrote his famous plays?

He wrote his less famous plays and some long poems called Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. Before that, nobody knows.


What were the names of characters by Shakespeare?

Shakespeare wrote a lot of plays - here are some of his more well known characters: Hamlet, Ophelia, King Lear


Did william shakespeare write all the plays he was supposed to?

William Shakespeare certainly wrote plays. Some plays we know he wrote all by himself. Some we know (like The Two Noble Kinsmen) or suspect (like Pericles and Henry VIII) he wrote in collaboration with John Fletcher. But for sure he wrote at least part of the 36 plays in the first folio plus Pericles and the Two Noble Kinsmen. Beyond that we cannot be so certain. Some people claim that Shakespeare wrote Edward III, a contemporary anonymous play. Other unattributed plays of the time have from time to time been attributed to Shakespeare. We just cannot be sure. Even shortly after Shakespeare's lifetime two plays were attributed to him in 1619 which are now not believed to be his: Sir John Oldcastle and A Yorkshire Tragedy. As for the suggestion that Shakespeare wrote no plays at all, but that his plays were really written by Oxford, Bacon, Queen Elizabeth, Doctor Who or someone else, the simple answer is that such ideas are fiction.


What was one genre of play Shakespeare wrote?

History


Which play did shakespeare write the most by himself?

Shakespeare wrote most of his plays entirely by himself, although he generally borrowed his plots from others. He wrote some of his later plays and perhaps also some of his early ones in collaboration with another playwright. But this cannot come to more than 5 or 6 of his 38 plays.