Problem Fathers in Shakespeare and Renaissance Drama is an ambitious work that examines the role of paternity in early modern drama. Tom MacFaul surveys a vast body of early modern dramatic texts to trace changing perceptions of paternal authority across various dramatic genres. Because the study connects dramatic representations of fathers with political history and genre development simultaneously, it is arranged chronologically. This allows readers to follow MacFaul's overarching argument—fathers are central to Renaissance drama owing to, or even perhaps in spite of, their doubleness, which arises from tensions between the private/emotional and public/sacred father figure. Eventually the father figure's authority is conscripted; this conscription is ultimately accepted and parallels the period's cultural crisis of patriarchal authority.

Each of the book's four sections focuses on a particular stage in the evolution of paternal limitations. MacFaul's first section examines early Elizabethan drama up to The Spanish Tragedy. In these early plays, he argues, fathers are represented as stays or restraints. Their ability to restrain is not, however, a position of power, because these father figures are often portrayed as impotent. To further his argument, MacFaul demonstrates this pattern by subdividing the chapter into three sections: early tragedy, starting with Gorboduc (1561); comedy and romance; and the deepening of tragedy. This chapter demonstrates the gradual movement of fathers from idealized sacred figures in early tragedy to more emotionally complex tragic characters, a transition that is developed by alterations in the comedic and romantic father figure.

In the next section, MacFaul suggests that in drama of the 1590s an overidentification with father figures leads to impasse. The chapter contains several divisions to demonstrate this evolution: history plays, comedy, romance comedy, and tragedy. The author begins with history plays to reveal that the centrality of paternity within these texts creates a need for fathers to escape increasing pressures surrounding paternity. In regard to comedy, this desire to escape patriarchal pressures is often portrayed as ridiculousness. The emotional development of fathers is then furthered with a return to romance comedy, in which conventions allow for a larger emotional range in characters, leading fatherhood to eventually be presented as sinful. This notion is picked up and developed in tragedy, where the sinful father figure allows for the expansion of a more individualized, emotional, and thus vulnerable, character.

Chapter 4 examines the limits of father figures in the 1600s, which MacFaul considers one of the major dramatic themes of the period. In an attempt to limit paternal authority, Jacobean drama unfurls the knotty doubleness of the father figure. This section is divided once again based on genre: revenge tragedy, political drama, prodigal comedy, and tragicomedy. Revenge tragedy looks different in this chapter, because Jacobean revenge tragedy separates virtue from paternity. Political drama, replacing the chronicle histories of the previous chapter, raises questions about limiting patriarchal authority in the public, political sphere while at the same time removing the ardent violence of revenge tragedy. Whereas revenge tragedy and political dramas are more focused on the public side of paternity, prodigal comedy examines fatherly disempowerment via the sacred status of fathers. For MacFaul, several issues concerning paternity culminate in King Lear, a play he sees as a fusion of genres. King Lear addresses excessive identification within father-child relationships, the uncertainty of paternity, the conundrum of passing on power or choosing to have it forcibly removed, paternal sin, and the prospect of degradation. The author suggests that tragicomedy emerges because comedies and tragedies, like King Lear, cannot provide solutions to the questions surrounding limited paternal power; tragicomedy attempts to do so.

Once these limits have been accepted, the sacredness of paternity is debunked, and a new model of paternity must emerge in a post-Tempest dramatic world. To that end, the structure of the fifth chapter is different. It is divided by themes rather than by genres: contingent history, the increasing authority of women, honor and virtue, politics, uncertainty, and the tragic return of the father. MacFaul shows how representations of early concerns surrounding paternal authority, such as those about honor and virtue, shift in this final phase of Renaissance drama. The power of the father, at this point, is now negotiable and constructed through speech and social systems. This study is compact, yet dense. Problem Fathers in Shakespeare and Renaissance Drama covers a wide swath of issues surrounding representations of father figures in early modern drama—paternal authority, historical contexts, genre development—and does so by surveying a large number of texts. Because of the range and depth of this study, Problem Fathers in Shakespeare and Renaissance Drama is sure to initiate wider critical conversations about the roles of fathers in early modern drama, and it may well prove a seminal text in Renaissance studies.