In Shakespeare studies, the problem plays are plays written by William Shakespeare that are characterised by their complex and ambiguous tone, which shifts violently between more straightforward comic material and dark, psychological drama. Shakespeare's problem plays eschew the traditional trappings of both comedy and tragedy, and are sometimes cited as early predecessors to the tragicomedy.
The term was coined by critic F. S. Boas in Shakespeare and His Predecessors (1896). Boas' use of the phrase was derived from a type of drama that was popular at the time of his writing, most commonly associated with the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. In these problem plays, the situation faced by the protagonist is put forward by the author as a representative instance of a contemporary social problem.
As Boas used it, the term "problem play" was originally used to refer exclusively to three plays that Shakespeare wrote between the late 1590s and the first years of the seventeenth century: All's Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure, and Troilus and Cressida. Some critics include other plays that were not enumerated by Boas, most commonly The Winter's Tale, Timon of Athens, and The Merchant of Venice. For Boas, this modern form of drama provided a useful model with which to study works by Shakespeare that had previously seemed uneasily situated between the comic and the tragic; nominally two of the three plays identified by Boas are comedies, while the third, Troilus and Cressida, is found amongst the tragedies in the First Folio, although it is not listed in the Catalogue (table of contents) of the First Folio. According to Boas, Shakespeare's problem-plays set out to explore specific moral dilemmas and social problems through their central characters.
Boas contends that the plays allow the reader to analyze complex and neglected topics. Rather than arousing simple joy or pain, the plays induce engrossment and bewilderment. All's Well that Ends Well and Measure for Measure have resolutions, but Troilus and Cressida and Hamlet do not. Instead Shakespeare requires that the reader decipher the plays. Rhodes goes on to claim that this offering of the merits of both sides of the social dispute is a rhetorical device employed but not originated by Shakespeare. Rather, the rhetorical practice of submitting a thesis with a counter-contention that is just as persuasive began in Ancient Greece. In four of the plays that Harmon categorizes as problem-plays, The Merchant of Venice, All's Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure, and Troilus and Cressida, the social order is restored when faulty contracts are properly amended. Harmon's conception of the problem-plays differs from others in that he argues that the problem-plays offer a resolution to their respective stories. Much like the characters in the plays must fulfill their contracts, he argues, Shakespeare fulfills his contract as a playwright by providing resolution. Schanzer chooses to consider only ethical dilemmas in the definition of problem, excluding psychological, political, social, and metaphysical problems that may develop.