Comparative English Literature

Shakespeare, produced both comedies and tragedies, prevailingly romantic but with elements of realism; most of them wrote more often in collaboration than did Shakespeare; they all shared the Elizabethan vigorously creative interest in life; but none of them attained either Shakespeare's wisdom, his power, or his mastery of poetic beauty. The Elizabethan tendency to sensational horror finds its greatest artistic expression in two plays of John Webster, 'The White Devil, or Vittoria Corombona,' and 'The Duchess of Malfi.' The main difference between the protagonists, for example Sherlock Holmes and Miss Marple, is in the approach they take to investigation. Having patterned the character of Sherlock Holmes after one of his professors, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, himself a physician, incorporated many of the didactic qualities of the 19th century medical diagnostician into the character of Holmes.