Shakespeare wrote several ‘problem plays’, psychological dramas

Question

Shakespeare  wrote several ‘problem plays’, psychological dramas treading the line between tragedy and comedy, and embodied  the socio-political norms of his time.

A. wrote several ‘problem plays’, psychological dramas treading the line between tragedy and comedy, and embodied

B. wrote several ‘problem plays’, psychological dramas that tread the line between tragedy and comedy, embodying

C. wrote several ‘problem plays’, psychological dramas treading the line between tragedy and comedy, they embody

D. in his several ‘problem plays’, psychological dramas that tread the line between tragedy and comedy, embodied

E. in his several ‘problem plays’, psychological dramas that tread the line between tragedy and comedy, embodying

AdityaHongunti · Accepted Answer

Shakespeare  wrote several ‘problem plays’, psychological dramas treading the line between tragedy and comedy, and embodied  the socio-political norms of his time.

Meaning : S wrote PP..these PPs are dramas 
in this PPs S emoboided SP norms of his time

Grammar :
eliminate the modifier : Shak wrote several plays and embodied the norms of his time
false parallelism !! how can shak write and embody something in his own time?? It is his play in which he embodided SP norms of his time
also "embody means to consitute or contain something" ...so essentially the plays contanied Sp norms of his time

A.  wrote  several ‘problem plays’, psychological dramas treading the line between tragedy and comedy,  and embodied  
- read above

C. wrote several ‘problem plays’, psychological dramas treading the line between tragedy and comedy,  they embody  
- comma cannot be used before an Independent clause without fanboys

D. in his several ‘problem plays’, psychological dramas that tread the line between tragedy and comedy, embodied 
- S did not embody the norms ...the plays did

E. in his several ‘problem plays’, psychological dramas that tread the line between tragedy and comedy, embodying 
- no verb

Aleksandr1996@gmail.com · Answer

B the only one that correctly conveys the meaning

AdityaHongunti · Answer

Aleksandr1996@gmail.com  please provide detailed analysis so that the fellow members can view your reasoning and clear their doubts..such small posts anyway get deleted within 24 hours.

and welcome to GMATCLUB

SonGoku · Answer

Official Explaination   By  egmat 
Meaning Analysis

Shakespeare
 wrote several ‘problem plays’,
 psychological dramas treading the line between tragedy and comedy,
 and embodied the sociopolitical norms of his time.

The sentence says that Shakespeare wrote many plays known as “problem plays”. These “problem plays” are psychological dramas that are something between tragedy and comedy.

Then the sentence says that he embodied the sociopolitical norms of his time. This meaning is clearly illogical. It is his plays that embody the norms, not Shakespeare himself. 
 Error Analysis

This sentence has the meaning error pointed out in the meaning analysis.
Answer Choices
 
Incorrect: This choice has the error pointed out in the meaning/error analysis.

Correct: 
This is indeed the correct choice as the verb-ing modifier ”embodying” correctly modifies “problem plays”.

Note that in this choice, the verb-ing modifier is not associated with the comma that precedes it. This comma is the second of two commas that bracket the ‘FYI’ modifier “psychological… comedy.” The function of these two commas is to separate this modifier from the rest of the sentence. If we remove this modifier, we get:

Shakespeare wrote several ‘problem plays’ embodying the sociopolitical norms of his time.
So, the verb-ing modifier “embodying” correctly refers to the preceding noun, “‘problem plays’”.

Incorrect:
The two independent clauses “Shakespeare wrote…” and “they embody” are incorrectly connected using just a comma.

Incorrect:
This choice repeats the illogical meaning of the original sentence by saying that Shakespeare embodied the sociopolitical norms of his time.

Incorrect:
There is no verb for the subject “Shakespeare”.

ProfChaos · Answer

GMATNinja   egmat

Hello experts, kindly help with this question!

ArupRS · Answer

Where I am wrong If I consider :

Shakespeare wrote several ‘problem plays’,

psychological dramas
    treading  the line between tragedy and comedy, and 
    embodied  the socio-political norms of his time.
"trading" and "embodied" are the modifiers of psychological dramas. We know verb+ed and verb+ing modifier can be parallel.

generis  ,  Abhi077  ,  daagh  and  BillyZ

Please advise.

Abhi077 · Answer

Yes as a matter of fact, present and past participle phrases or verb-ing/Ed modifiers can be parallel. But ask yourself, is embodied functioning as a verb-Ed modifier? No it’s not. It’s functioning as a verb. Who is the doer of the action? It’s clearly Shakespeare. As per this choice, He did two actions, ‘wrote’ and ‘embodied’. Does it makes sense to say that Shakespeare embodied the socio-political norms? It clearly doesn’t. Its his plays that did. Hope this is clear.

ravigupta2912 · Answer

the verb -ing modifier is modifying the preceeding noun i.e. problem plays or the whole clause aka "S wrote several problem plays"? I don't think the -ing modifier here refers only to the noun (PP) but to the whole clause. If the -ing modifier is placed in the beginning of the sentence, only then, the -ing modifier may modify following "noun" OR the whole clause but if it is placed after a clause, it will modify the preceding clause.

Is my understanding correct?

ArupRS · Answer

Abhi077  : Appreciate your explanation. I understand that embodied cannot be done by Shakespeare. 
My question is whether both embodied and treading both be modifiers of psychological dramas? Is there any meaning issue?

Regards,
Arup

linuschoudhury · Answer

The elimination seems to be easy here.
A&C out because of parallelism, D&E out as the the subject Shakespeare has no meaningful verb.

gayatri259 · Answer

Don't we need and between two modifiers 1)psychological drama and 2)embodying?

AndrewN · Answer

Hello,  gayatri259 . No, we cannot place  and  between the two modifiers you listed, because they are different types of modifiers that should not be held in parallel. For reference, how about we look at the sentence with (B) inserted?

First,  psychological dramas  forms an appositive phrase for the term  problem plays  from the main clause. The relative clause that begins with  that  modifies  psychological dramas  and, by extension, further defines or describes problem plays—these are plays that  tread the line between tragedy and comedy . After the comma,  embodying  forms a participial phrase that comments on the main clause. How do we know? Because there is a reference to  his time , the time in which Shakespeare lived and wrote plays.

A different sentence could hold the verbs within the relative clause parallel— tread  and  embody —but the meaning would be much different from what we see above. (We do not need to get into the specifics of this nonexistent sentence.) However, in the sentence at hand, we would want to see two appositives or two participles to logically connect them with  and .

Perhaps that clarifies the matter. Good luck with your studies.

- Andrew

ExpertsGlobal5 · Answer

Hello  gayatri259 ,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, we do not need an "and" here because the two modifiers act upon different things.

"psychological dramas that tread..." is an appositive that modifies " ‘problem plays’, describing what problem plays are.

By contrast, "embodying" is a present participle that modifies the action "tread the line between tragedy and comedy", providing more information about this action.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team

EtaCarnia · Answer

Shakespeare wrote several ‘problem plays’, psychological dramas treading the line between tragedy and comedy, and embodied the socio-political norms of his time.

A. wrote several ‘problem plays’, psychological dramas treading the line between tragedy and comedy, and embodied

embodied  logically suppose to modify the  problem plays  but by using  and  it triggers a parallel marker which distorts the meaning.

B. wrote several ‘problem plays’, psychological dramas that tread the line between tragedy and comedy, embodying

embodying  correctly modifies  ‘problem plays

C. wrote several ‘problem plays’, psychological dramas treading the line between tragedy and comedy, they embody
 They  has no antecedent .

D. in his several ‘problem plays’, psychological dramas that tread the line between tragedy and comedy, embodied
This construction has no main verb

E. in his several ‘problem plays’, psychological dramas that tread the line between tragedy and comedy, embodying
This construction has no main verb

VerbalBot · Answer

Automated notice from GMAT Club VerbalBot: 

A member just gave Kudos to this thread, showing it’s still useful. I’ve bumped it to the top so more people can benefit. Feel free to add your own questions or solutions.

 This post was generated automatically.

Shakespeare wrote several ‘problem plays’, psychological dramas

Prep Toolkit

Top 5 GMAT Debrief Videos

615 to 715 in 15 Days (Ria's Strategies)

More than Quant/Verbal Abilities: Speed vs. Accuracy

745 with Only Self-Prep and GMAT Club

From 555 to 765: 210-point Improvement

Perfect 805 Score Debrief by Julia

My Rewards

GMAT Sentence Correction (SC - EA only) Questions

Shakespeare wrote several ‘problem plays’, psychological dramas

Prep Toolkit

615 to 715 in 15 Days (Ria's Strategies)

More than Quant/Verbal Abilities: Speed vs. Accuracy

745 with Only Self-Prep and GMAT Club

From 555 to 765: 210-point Improvement

Perfect 805 Score Debrief by Julia

My Rewards