Shakespeare Drama Study

Shakespeare's problem comedy can usually be regarded as the second period of Shakespeare's plays. Before the problem plays, Shakespeare had already finished ten of his early comedies. While Shakespeare was writing his problem plays, he also had written four of his most famous tragedies. So the problem plays were at the key position from the early comedies to the tragedies which they were influenced by. In the problem plays, we could find not only the writing methods which originated from the early comedies, but also the methods of creating characters and some ideas which were very similar with the tragedies. For this reason, many characteristics were formed in the problem plays. For example, the realistic factors including some ideas of Renaissance and the realistic life had existed in the problem plays and impacted the creating methods which were the fusing of the different modes of literature traditions used in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.In this paper, the author will put the problem plays into the background of the comedies and the tragedies and discuss how the key position influenced the problem plays in the following aspects: the characteristics of the problem plays on creating and ideas, the connections between the problem plays and the early comedies and the tragedies.