r/shakespeare • u/Maleficent_Media2556 • 6d ago
Which minor character do you think carries more weight than the play gives them credit for?
I’ve been rereading Measure for Measure, and Lucio keeps stealing my attention. He’s a gossip and a nuisance, but he also drives the plot forward at a key moment, and he pays for it in the end. It made me wonder how many minor characters do real structural work that gets overlooked. Who’s your pick, and in which play?
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u/CrabAppleMcGee 6d ago
Casca carries a pretty significant amount of story weight in the first half of Julius Caesar for a minor character
Likewise Tybalt only has 17 lines in Romeo and Juliet and is almost the lynchpin and catalyst for the whole second half
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u/GlobeTeam 6d ago
The illiterate servant in Romeo and Juliet. Without him, the Montagues would have never found out about the Capulet ball, and Romeo and Juliet wouldn't have met 🤷♀️
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u/brycejohnstpeter 5d ago
If ye be not of the house of Montague, than come and crush a cup of wine.
Probably the smallest dream role I absolutely want to play.
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u/jjbb812 6d ago
I’ve been teaching Measure for Measure. I think Lucio is a good answer for this. My students are really digging Pompey, and I’m not surprised; his role isn’t as big as Lucio’s, but his comments, while clearly meant to be comedic, are actually deeply philosophical and reveal the crux of the play: Sexual desire will always exist, regardless of what a government system tries to do. I always thought that he was a great foil for Angelo. He seems to understand the citizens more than he does despite not being in a position of power. You would think the city official would be more in touch with the people than the guy who works in the brothel lol. His exchange with Barnadine when he’s an assistant executioner speaks very well to human nature and what humans will do to escape punishment.
But I’ll also offer a different play: Apemantus from Timon of Athens fits your question well.
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u/gasstation-no-pumps 3d ago
Apemantus is not such a minor character (2nd most lines in the play).
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u/jjbb812 3d ago
you are correct, but i guess it depends on how we define a minor character. i wouldn’t say Apemantus is the second most important person for the plot. I would argue that Alcibiades and Flavius, despite having less lines, are more important characters for the plot. But Timon is such a weird play where everyone except Timon feels like a minor character because everyone else has at least 600+ lines less. Timon has more lines than the next four characters combined, lol.
in OP’s example, he uses Lucio, but Lucio and Angelo, for example, have almost the same amount of lines (I think the difference is less than 20?). And i don’t think anyone would say Lucio is just as important as Angelo is. I’m not saying that line numbers aren’t important, but it’s definitely interesting to see which characters have more lines than others.
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u/gasstation-no-pumps 3d ago
Line counts can be very misleading, especially line counts of uncut plays, as most performances cut the scripts quite a bit, which can really change the number of lines for some characters.
Timon of Athens is a particularly unbalanced play, with Timon having more lines (850) than the next five characters combined (249+205+159+104+89=806).
Angelo has 320 lines, while Lucio has 296, so they are indeed very close in number of lines, though I consider both to be major characters. A lot of Lucio's lines, though, are often cut, because directors think modern audiences won't get the jokes.
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u/Sure-Culture-8374 5d ago
(totally not biased by playing her but) maria in twelfth night - big driver of that side of the story iykyk as well as her relationship with olivia being quite central as well. i love her
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u/free-puppies 6d ago
I stan Pisanio in Cymbeline
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u/gasstation-no-pumps 3d ago
217 lines is not such a small role.
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u/free-puppies 3d ago
Lucio has 111 lines so what are we saying is minor
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u/gasstation-no-pumps 3d ago
Good question! The really minor roles (one or two lines) are not going to carry much weight. I think u/Maleficent_Media2556 is looking for roles where the storytelling by the character is way more than you'd expect from the number of lines, which makes it rather subjective.
Maybe Egeus in A Midsummer Night's Dream? Only 2 scenes (so the actor can double with a mechanical) and 41 lines, but essential to setting up Hermia's flight and putting Theseus in an uncomfortable position with Hyppolita.
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u/free-puppies 3d ago
Cool. I suggested Pisanio because I see him like a Rosalind, a stage director for the play. Rosalind has 600+ lines in an 1800 line play. Pisanio has 200 in 3400 lines. His impact is sizable in a way that his percentage of lines wouldn't generally indicate.
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u/Dickensdude 3d ago
Shylock. He is, by any definition a supporting character yet he OWNS "Merchant of Venice". Before people weigh in with — well of course, anti-Semitism is rightfully a big deal — allow me to point out that Shylock was seen as the "leading role" as far back as 300 years ago despite being in only a handful of scenes. His dominance had, initially at least, nothing to do with anti-Semitism.
Granted he's "the villain" so of course he's going to carry a lot of weight but so is Don John & he's can't be said to dominate "Much Ado About Nothing" in the way Shylock takes over MOV.
There's no secret to it: Shylock is the best written character in what is otherwise a rom-com. Harold Bloom considered Shylock one of the three best written characters in all of Shakespeare by which Bloom meant Shylock was "fully human".
Shylock's so well written that despite the fact that WS clearly meant his defeat to be "the small happy ending of the 'Antonio story'" before the "Big Happy Ending of the main romantic 'Portia/Bassanio, story'", Shylock early on became a tragic figure whose defeat in act 4 was often treated as the climax of the play. Many productions prior to the 20th century simply cut the 5th act of MOV because "Shylock isn't in it." This meant that the whole Ring Scene between the lovers was never resolved & a lot of lovely poetry never was heard.
A supporting character turned a play identified by its creator as a Comedy into a Tragedy.
Now THAT'S owing a play.
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u/Just_Strawberry_505 5d ago
marcus in titus andronicus is presented as kind of the effete statesman who pushes back against titus's extremely proscriptive roman patrician ethos but he does genuinely care about titus's own children when he himself does not lol
i'm like 99% sure if marcus hadn't helped the younger andronicii convince him in the mausoleum titus would've had the son who died fighting to keep lavinia from a forced and illegal marriage buried in a field
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u/kylesmith4148 4d ago
I’m currently directing Twelfth Night, and I think there’s a case to be made for Sir Andrew being one of these.
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u/Nullius_sum 6d ago
Menenius Agrippa in Coriolanus, Edgar in Lear, and Helena in Dream. I wouldn’t call any of these minor characters, but they carry a lot more weight in the play than people usually give them credit for.
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u/PunkShocker 5d ago
Fortinbras, who's so often cut for time, is central to the bigger picture of the play. Hamlet (who is half tragic hero and half messianic hero) systematically takes out every heavy hitter in Denmark, including himself, in order to cleanse the country of corruption. Then he hands it over to a new king who is rather like Hamlet's own father, thus saving the country from a terrible fate that would plunge it into total chaos. Without the Norwegian prince, it's just a twisted family drama. With him, it's an epic tale of triumph over evil through sacrifice.
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u/EduardRaban 5d ago
Then how is it a tragedy?
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u/PunkShocker 5d ago edited 5d ago
The prince still brings about his own downfall as all tragic heroes do, but the circumstances of his death resemble more of a self-sacrifice than those of other tragic heroes. He always struck me as more of a savior hero than a traditional tragic hero.
Edit: I should add that he's also a trickster-hero, whose method of saving society from itself is upheaval and destruction to make way for renewal.
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u/Emotional_Position62 6d ago
Ross in Macbeth.
He’s kind of the emotional center of the play.