ABSTRACT
Though all of Shakespeare's plays in varying degrees and in various ways combine tragic and comic elements, two groups of plays -- the so-called ''problem plays" or "dark comedies" and the so-called "romances" -- integrate tragic and comic effects in such complex ways that the plays' meanings depend on an understanding of how their comic and tragic elements work with or against one another. "Problem play" and ''romance" are clearly misnomers for Shakespeare's tragicomedies. A problem play is a drame of the kind written by Ibsen, and romance is a narrative genre; applied to drama, ''romance" can only be modal. Thus Shakespeare's late plays from Pericles to The Winter's Tale are romantic tragicomedies. The earlier group (Troilus and Cressida, All's Well that Ends Well, and Measure for Measure) may most simply be described as ironic tragicomedies, though they, too, utilize romance material and (except for Troilus and Cressida) work towards conventionally (if not emotionally) comic romantic endings.
