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Describe the characteristics of the problem play.

What are the chief characteristics of a problem play?

The problem plays come into being due to the result of the drama of ideas. Almost every modern play deals with one problem of life or the other musit is clear. The problem play is a kind of realistic play. It is a development from the drama of ideas. John Galsworthy is a great writer of the problem play Everyone of his great dramas deals with a problem. The ‘Silver Box’ is concerned with the problem of law and its application. ‘Justice’ deals with the problem of prison administration and solitary confinement. This Skin Game’ is centred round the problem of war.

The modern drama is a criticism of life. It is a realistic drama of purpose. It gives us a slice of life. It is mainly a drama of ideas. It enlarges out point of view. It is rooted by Shaw and then it is cultivated by Galsworthy, Granvllie Barker and others. As the Greek tragedy depends on a religious interest in the audience, and the Elizabethan tragedy on the analysis of an individual so the modern tragedy generally centres about a social problem.

Johs Galsworthy is a great writer of problem plays. All the thirty dramas written by him are problem plays. These problem plays are something of abidling interest. He deals with all th aspects of a problem play. He has hand led all sorts of problems in his plays. He has dealt with the problem of marriage of sex relationship, of labour and capital, of the administration of law, or prison system, of solitary confinement and the like. The problem handled in a play belongs not to one individual but to a group of people. This is the most important contribution of Galsworthy to the social drama, for it widens its scope.

The term ‘problem play’ was coined by Sydney Grundy. He used it in a disparaging sense for the intellectual drama of the nineties which he thought was aheading towards its doom in the hands of ‘a coterie of enthusiastic eccentrics’. Shaw defined it as the presentation in parable of the conflict between man’s will and his environment. It is a kind of play which treats of a particular social or moral problem so as to make people think intelligently about it. It is usually somewhat tragic in tone, in that it naturally deals with painful dilemmas It is a popular mode of drama of the late 19th century and the 20th century. The wrongs and injustices inflicted by society are the stock-in-trade of problem plays. Problem plays opposed all forms of insularity and falsehood and firmly adhered to the principles of equality, freedom and justice.

The conflict between victorian orthodox and new ideas and ways of life furnished material for the problem play. The problem play became a powerful and effective medium of social criticism. The development of the problem pla towards the end of the victorian age was closely related to the growth of the realistic movement in the field of English drama. According to Albert Guerard the problem play is the presentation of a contemporary question through realistic techniQ The new dramatists were preoccupied with the vital problems of contemporary life and morality and the drama was directly inspired by the social ferment of the time. The plays of Robertson, Pinero and Jones paved the way for the plays of Shaw, Galsworthy and Granville-Barker. It was with his problem plays that Ibsen exercised his real influence on the English drama.

The Problem play was essentially the drama of disillusion, it stripped life of false sentiment and revealed the ugliness and squalor masked by the generally accepted beliefs and conventions of contemporary society. The problem playwright exposed cant and hypocrisy. The new spirit of critical realism vitalized the form and content of problem drama. The problem play is not devoid of artistic values of literature. A problem play requires a high level of crafts-manship and drama turgic skill. Its dramatic vitality and effectiveness strengthened by Shaw, Hankn and others.