What are the defects in Shakespeare's plays?

Answer 1

Some of Shakespeare's plays are more defective than others. The ones which have greater defects are, of course, the ones you are less likely to have heard of. Both of the early plays Titus Andronicus and The Two Gentlemen of Verona have scenes which are very hard to play because the characters' reactions are so unnatural. In Titus, Marcus Andronicus finds his neice Lavinia, raped and horribly mutilated, and then talks for about a page without going to offer her any comfort or help. In Two Gents, Valentine saves his beloved Sylvia from being raped by his former buddy Proteus, then offers her to Proteus as a gift. And Sylvia does not immediately try to kill either of them. This scene makes so little sense that people just refuse to stage the play.

Some of the later plays tend to be talky: Shakespeare gets carried away with the poetry in the lines and it slows the action down to a crawl. Antony and Cleopatra is like this, and so is A Winter's Tale, as well as the middle-period history play King John.

Many of the plays in the form we have them are really too long for performance and need to be cut back. There is some evidence to suggest that this was done in Shakespeare's day.