I don’t
believe that any of the characters can really serve as solid protagonist by the
definitions that we use today. In term of a central character, none of the
characters really demands a significant amount more of the script time than all
of the others. The five main character; The Queen, Bolingbroke, The Duchess,
Masham, and Abigail all seem to not only hold an equal amount of stage time,
but there individual story lines seemed to get equal attention as well. The
characters with the most stage time didn't seem to have the highest risk stake
situations. Another quality that all the characters share somewhat equally is
their pathos. As a reader I seemed to identify with all their plights equally,
whether their goals were politically or romantically driven. The other aspect
of the parameters of a protagonist is the idea of an antagonist. Throughout the
play the goals of; the Queen and the Duchess, and the Whigs and the Tories are at
odds. Identifying one character might then turn another character into and
antagonist even if they to have the potential to be a protagonist. The fact
that a protagonist seems to be almost impossible to pin point is more helpful
to the telling of this story than if you try to find one. It seems that writing
this after having written my analysis, what became clear to me was that this
play was more about people in general than distinct persons. My unifying principle
was “to invest in the trivial,” and my paper issued the authors message of the equal
influence of fate in everyone’s lives no matter their station. I believe that
Scribe purposefully left an ambiguity about a protagonist in order to emphasize
his message in the script.
I agree with you, even though I had put that Abigail was the central character in my blog post. I found it extremely hard to find the central character and only after I read it a couple of more times before I finally decided on Abigail only through a process of elimination. I'm glad I was not the only one who had difficulty with this and I think you argued your case very well.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was trying to figure all of this out, I decided that the duchess seemed like she was the antagonist. But I definitely see your point of view, too. In fact, it’s causing me to question mine and even go back and look at the script again and see if I could view the duchess in a different light. To be honest, I think that your points about everyone being so equal, like you said, makes sense to the story.
ReplyDeleteI put the Queen as the protagonist. Everyone was always trying to make her happy. Even though the duchess was somewhat against her, she still wanted to please the Queen. The Queen also was too nice to all the characters and was on everyone's side. She was also in most of the scenes so that's why I chose her to be the protagonist. Even though I completely agree that it's so hard to choose just one because the characters each get a lot of time on stage and we see each of their struggles throughout. The duchess would definitely be my antagonist though.
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