Rhetorical Readings, Dark Comedies, and Shakespeare's Problem Plays

Drawing upon a wide base of reading in late Tudor-early Stuart drama, Clark offers a formal anatomy of the "problem play" genre, which serves as a primary context for reading the three plays. He also resuscitates the methodological resources of new formalism in light of more recent theoretical approaches--not only through his reexamination of the historiography of dramatic genre but also through his foregrounding of the history and theory of rhetoric.