Mav
Not denying the glory of complexity that is the Shakespearian canon - just pointing out that certain plays (Measure for measure, Coriolanus, and Troilus and Cressida spring to mind) are problematic in that the over-riding theme appears to be less one of reconciliation (a Shakespearian favourite) and more that of Machiavellian moral barter (more Jacobean than Elizabethan, if you know what I mean). Lear is a bloody play, and so is Julius Caesar, but neither has the life-sapping cynicism that seems to permeate some of the other plays I have mentioned.
[off-thread digression/rant emoticon]
And, of course, some of the earlier comedies seem inchoate (!!!! I knew I'd use that word someday!!!!) - The Comedy of Errors, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, while one, though masterly, can disgust - The Taming of the Shrew (and yes, I've read innumerable apologetics - how it's supposed to be about true love and so on, but for me it is still brutally misogynistic).
To be honest, now that I've started on my rant, I think the only Shakespearian comedies I think of as trule 'life-affirming' are Much ado..., As you like it, The Tempest (hardly a comedy, though) and A Midsummer Night's Dream (reddemed primarily by the character of Bottom). Even The Merchant of Venice seems soiled to me because of the arrogant nastiness of Antonio towards Shylock - the easy acceptance by all the play's 'positive' characters of the 'naturally' lower place of the Jewish money-man.
I suppose this is what comes of bringing a mind brought up in the late twentieth century into contact with an oeuvre from the late sixteenth...[glum emoticon - indicating end of off-thread digression/rant]
cheer
the sunshine warrior
