Analysing six Greek tragedies - the Orestes triology, Ajax, Antigone and Philoctetes - and Hamlet, this book also contains a chapter on the Greek and the Elizabethan dramatic forms and one on religious drama. This is an important work from an author respected for a constructive and sensitive quality of criticism.

The theory of decadence in early seventeenth-century
drama has generally been misapplied. Chapter I
suggests that the moral uncertainty found in many
plays is not the product of some kind of perversity
but of a sea-change in the way belief, knowledge and
law were perceived. The application of an ethical
standard which equates a corrupt court with a corrupt
private theatre imposes an ideological and inappropriate
interpretation on the drama. I argue that
changes in morality, the theatre and literary style
are not symptoms of decay. If they are, then
Shakespeare may be as culpable as Beaumont and
Fletcher.
I suggest, in Chapter II, that Shakespeare's
tragedies and tragicomedies, like Beaumont and
Fletcher's tragicomedies, are tragic and tragicomic
precisely because they are uncertain. We usually
find an unresolved tension in the ending which
prevents us from carrying home a moral for our use
and edification. We are disturbed rather than
comforted. 
Massinger's method in collaboration is similar.
His independent tragicomedies, as I argue in Chapter
III, exploit the tension between romantic and
satiric action to illustrate a complex moral world
in which characters may have an uncertain and
changing moral status. Typically he uses satiric
characters and methods to undercut romantic
assumptions and conventions. The process can
sometimes lead, however, to confusions which make
some of Massinger's plays morally dubious rather
than ambiguous. The questions, paradoxes and tensions in
Massinger's tragedies are more acute than those to
be found in his tragicomedies. He presents a
shifting world in which it is difficult to judge
characters accurately, and in which justice seldom
seems to be done. Our sympathies are complicated
by the multiple moral status of his protagonists,
or their antagonists, who are never totally evil
or wholly redeemable. The Renaissance plays, in
Chapter IV, exploit the problems inherent in the
idealistic and malicious pursuit of revenge. The
Roman plays, in Chapter V, deal with more political
complexities, largely the result of a simultaneous
sympathy for the individual and acceptance of the
identity imposed on him by the state. The tension
between perceived and imposed identity, and the
tragic destruction of the integrity of the
individual, are most fully realised in The Roman
Actor and Believe As You List. The simultaneity of equal and opposite values
in these plays is common to Massinger's work as a
whole. The tension of uncertainty - whether broken,
as in the tragedies, or not - seems to express
exactly that "negative capability" which Massinger
has been denied. Only if we read him on the most
superficial level, can we consider him to be
moralistic or simplistic.

Form and Meaning in Drama: A Study of Six Greek Plays and of Hamlet

Certainty and doubt : moral issues in the plays of Philip Massinger

Dramatic character is among the most long-standing and familiar of artistic phenomena. From the theatre of Dionysus in ancient Greece to the modern stage, William Storm's book delivers a wide-ranging view of how characters have been conceived at pivotal moments in history. Storm reaffirms dramatic character as not only ancestrally prominent but as a continuing focus of interest. He looks closely at how stage figures compare to fictional characters in books, dramatic media, and other visual arts. Emphasis is sustained throughout on fundamental questions of how theatrical characterization relates to dramatic structure, style, and genre. Extensive attention is given to how characters think and to aspects of agency, selfhood, and consciousness. As the only book to offer a long view of theatrical characterization across this historical span, Storm's dramaturgical and theoretical investigation examines topics that remain vital and pertinent for practitioners, scholars, students of theatre and literature, and general audiences.

Dramaturgy and Dramatic Character: A Long View

Through a critical review of several studies dealing with Sophocles' drama, the Antigone, I have explored some of the prominent methodological problems encountered in the psychoanalytic interpretation of literature. Foremost among these is the inherent difficulty that the interpretation of literature is unable to benefit from the process of the analytic situation. Divorced from the realities of the therapeutic process, the drama itself is often used to corroborate an author's theoretical bias or to advance some special interest, with consequent distortion or blurring of the text. Although data about the artist's life and sociocultural environment may be of crucial significance, it is the text itself that must be the ultimate object of study. Through a re-examination of the Antigone as an aesthetic totality I have sketched out what appears to be an alternative manner of approaching the drama, and suggested that works of art reach us on both unconscious and conscious levels. I have stressed the need to analyze our emotional response to a work as affording a valuable source of insight into the work itself. Throughout, I have drawn attention to the need for greater scholarly rigor and the value of interdisciplinary collaboration. An open recognition of the problems in the psychoanalytic study of literature should serve to minimize dilettantism and raise the level of scholarship.

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Methodological Problems in the Psychoanalytic Interpretation of Literature: A Review of Studies on Sophocles': Antigone

While Shakespeare clearly borrows from Ovid in The Merchant of Venice, substantial correspondences between Shakespeare's play and Euripides' Medea suggest that this Greek text may have been an equally important source for Shakespeare's Jason/Medea plotlines and invite us to reconsider the foundational assumption that Shakespeare was wholly unfamiliar with Greek drama. Several Latin and French translations of the Attic play circulated during the late sixteenth century, and structural, thematic, and topical parallels between the two dramas provide compelling evidence for a Euripidean influence on Shakespeare's work. Recognizing a Euripidean strain within the play would help to resolve many of the most pressing questions about The Merchant of Venice by providing classical evidence in support of modern readings and performances that highlight Shakespeare's sympathy for the plight of religious, sexual, and racial others.

More Greek than Jonson thought? Euripides' Medea in The Merchant of Venice

My PhD thesis, The Flower of Suffering, offers a philosophical evaluation of Aeschylus' Oresteia in light of Presocratic ideas. By examining several aspects of the tragic trilogy in relation to some of Aeschylus' near-contemporary thinkers, it aims to unravel the overarching theological ideas and the metaphysical and epistemological assumptions underpinning the Oresteia's dramatic narrative. My aim is to bring to relief those aspects of the Oresteia which I believe will benefit from a comparison with some ideas, or modes of thought, which circulated among the Presocratic philosophers. I will explore how reading some of this tragedy's themes in relation to Presocratic debates about theology and cosmic justice may affect and enhance our understanding of the theological ‘tension' and metaphysical assumptions in Aeschylus' work. In particular, it is my contention that Aeschylus' explicit theology, which has been often misinterpreted as a form of theodicy where the justice of heaven is praised and a faith in the rule of the gods is encouraged, is presented in these terms only to create a stronger collision with the painful reality dramatized from a human perspective. By setting these premises, it is my intention to confer on Greek tragedy a prominent position in the history of early Greek philosophical thought. If the exclusion of Presocratic material from debates about tragedy runs the risk of obscuring a thorough understanding of the broader cultural backdrop against which tragedy was born, the opposite is also true. Greek tragedy represents, in its own dramatic language, a fundamental contribution to early philosophical speculation about the divine, human attitudes towards it, indeed, the human place in relation to the cosmic forces which govern the universe.

Form and Meaning in Drama: A Study of Six Greek Plays and of Hamlet

Citations

Certainty and doubt : moral issues in the plays of Philip Massinger

Dramaturgy and Dramatic Character: A Long View

Methodological Problems in the Psychoanalytic Interpretation of Literature: A Review of Studies on Sophocles': Antigone

More Greek than Jonson thought? Euripides' Medea in The Merchant of Venice

'The flower of suffering' : a study of Aeschylus' Oresteia in the light of Presocratic ideas