-knowledge, humiliation of the pompous and the bickering of lovers. At the root of comic alienation is a tacit assumption that what is isolated will eventually be absorbed and lead to a happy and life-affirming conclusion. Tragic alienation leads to despair, to violence, to the tragic irony of a cruel act based on erroneous information, to spiritual estrangement and to self-destruction. At the root of tragic alienation is an assumption that what is isolated will be made further isolated for the sake of restoring society to balance. Society seeks order, and this order exists on a hierarchical plane which is valued more highly than the individual. Restoration in tragedy is frequently a restoration of social balance, regardless of the price that individuals have to pay, whether innocent or not.
Shakespeare's romances, or problem plays, also use alienation and restoration as themes, but for a purpose lying midway between the happy unions of the comedies and the dispassionate restoration of balance of the tragedies. The alienation in the romances is frequently of a serious nature. It is not merely the alienation of two lovers who misunderstand each other. It may be a character's complete isolation from the accepted rules of a just society. Within the romances live characters who are decidedly devilish, who have unmistakably malevolent intentions, and who could easily be removed from the context of their own plays and placed with no change of temperament into the midst of a tragedy. In fact, the problem plays, notably Measure for Measure and The Winter's Tale, are for the bulk of their action indistinguishable from tragedies. Yet the underlying tone of the romances is that the devices of the wicked will be flustered and that the completion of the play will result in harmony, celebration and marriage. The romances are a melding of two sensibilities: the optimistic nature of comedy and the dark motives of tragedy. As a result, the romances ...