Shakespeare's Problem Plays
I suggest that a label for the causes of these feelings [of uneasiness and uncertainty of interpretation] might be the tragi-comic view 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 any 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 individual in tragedy.
2. An emphasis (comic, derisive, satiric) on human shortcoming, even when man is engaged in great affairs.
3. Any trend towards suggesting that there is usually another 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 man's worth, importance and value; and may range from the quizzical 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 laughter or jest....
5. A corresponding attitude towards traditionally funny subjects which insinuates that in some way they are serious, or that the stock response to them bypasses pain at human shortcomings or wickedness; or that this stock response depends on a lack of sympathy or insight which an author can make us aware of without abolishing the comic situation.
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They [the problem plays] have another important themes or terms in common, and all have some echo or parallel in Hamlet.
1. They share a common evaluation of conventionally accepted "nobilities": noble heroes in Troilus and Cressida (and the nobility of courtly love); Authority in ermine in Measure for Measure; a gentleman of family in All's Well. All are deflated; and with the deflations there runs concurrently the critical devaluation of man at large.
2. Interpolated into the critical analytical patterns we find "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 talks Christian charity so moving.... All are as if inset or montage figures, so that in their context they appear out of phase; .
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