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240:(1912), developed the genre to shift the nature of the 'problem'. This "resolutely realistic problem play set in domestic interiors of the mill town Hindle" starts with the 'problem' of an apparently seduced woman, but ends with the woman herself rejected due to her status as a victim of seduction: "the 'problem' is not, after all, the redemption of a betrayed maiden's tarnished honour, but the readiness of her respectable elders to determine a young woman's future for her without regard to her rights—including here her right to erotic holiday enjoyment."
193:(1852). Other French playwrights followed suit with dramas about a range of social issues, sometimes approaching the subject in a moralistic, sometimes in a sentimental manner. Critic Thomas H. Dickinson, writing in 1927, argued that these early problem plays were hampered by the dramatic conventions of the day: "No play written in the problem form was significant beyond the value of the idea that was its underlying motive for existence. No problem play had achieved absolute beauty, or a living contribution to truth."
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While social debates in drama were nothing new, the problem play of the 19th century was distinguished by its intent to confront the spectator with the dilemmas experienced by the characters. The earliest forms of the problem play are to be found in the work of French writers such as
204:, whose work combined penetrating characterisation with emphasis on topical social issues, usually concentrated on the moral dilemmas of a central character. In a series of plays Ibsen addressed a range of problems, most notably the restriction of women's lives in
62:', it favoured instead the form of the 'problem play', which would bring to life some contemporary controversy of public importance—women's rights, unemployment, penal reform, class privilege—in a vivid but responsibly accurate presentation.
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writes that the genre emerged "from the ferment of the 1890s... for the most part inspired by the example of Ibsen's realistic stage representations of serious familial and social conflicts." He summarises it as follows:
49:. It deals with contentious social issues through debates between the characters on stage, who typically represent conflicting points of view within a realistic social context. Critic
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that he considered to have characteristics similar to Ibsen's 19th-century problem plays. As a result, the term is also used more broadly and retrospectively to describe any
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In
America the problem play was associated with the emergence of debates over civil rights issues. Racial issues were tackled in plays such as
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While plays in ancient Greece and ancient Rome, mystery plays, and
Elizabethan plays are clearly classified as tragedy, comedy, and
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Rejecting the frivolity of intricately plotted romantic intrigues in the nineteenth-century French tradition of the '
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Boas used the term to refer to a group of
Shakespeare's plays which seem to contain both comic and tragic elements:
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Documentary
Theatre in the United States: An Historical Survey and Analysis of Its Content, Form, and Stagecraft
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Robert J. Fehrenbach, "An Early
Twentieth-Century Problem Play of Life in Black America: Angelina Grimké's
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222:(1882). Ibsen's dramas proved immensely influential, spawning variants of the problem play in works by
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The genre was especially influential in the early 20th century. In
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Wild Women in the
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in the arts, especially following the innovations of
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