Let Wonder Seem Familiar

Dr White examines the ways in which Shakespeare uses formal conventions from romance throughout his writing career, especially in giving formal completion to a play without forfeiting the ‘open-ended’ sense of life’s complexity. In his romantic comedies these conventions are modified to imply that the cosy womb of marriage is not the end of lovers’ lives; in the ‘problem’ comedies they are used to challenge the artifice of the comic ending; in some tragedies they are used to provide an ideal of fulfilment which has been destroyed by the tragic events – and in the last plays or ‘romances’ they are used to invoke the full sense of life’s continuing comprehensiveness.