The Problem Plays of Shakespeare Double Vision in Character and Action

The present book is a pioneering work in the interpretation of Shakespeare’s problem plays. It strikes a new line of approach developing the concept of double vision to explain the contradictions and enigmas in all the recognized problem plays of Shakespeare. The controversial issues in the three Problem Comedies, Hamlet, Antony and Cleopatra and Julius Ceasar are resolved by a plausible analysis of their characters and situations. In a detailed analysis of each play, all those baffling problems which have been attributed to deficiency of creative power or imperfect transmutation, or otherwise treated as insoluble mysteries, have been shown to be quite intelligible in the light of Shakespeare’s double vision. Each play emerges as a stage in the dramatist’s progressive illumination of the human condition. The book is aimed at finally ‘placing’ each play as positive artistic creation in the genre as against the ‘half-way-house’ approaches which attribute their problematic nature to imperfect handling of plot or character. Establishing double vision as Shakespeare’s habitual dramatic mode, the book links his artistry with that of Sophocles and Euripides in this form which was already handled by these Greek dramatists pointing out the new dimensions given to it by Shakespeare.