Posted by andy the flea at paflemng.memphis.edu on December 11, 2003 at 11:53:47:
much obliged.. i got it done at midnight, and i owe yall a lot, specifically O In Phantoms and louiegirl.
and if anyone's interested.. here it is:
Character development is one of the key elements to make a play work, and it has to be done within a certain amount of time, or else the audience just doesn’t care about the character. The audience has to understand not only a character, but also that character’s way of thinking, in order to grasp the play. In Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the two playwrights exhibit their characters’ personalities to us by showing us four main things: how the characters deal with their problems, how the characters interact with one another, how other characters speak about them, and how characters convey their thoughts.
Both playwrights introduce their title characters in the midst of their dealing with personal problems (both of which also happen to be governmental problems). Hamlet has just watched his mother marry his uncle so soon after his father’s death that “the funeral baked meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables,” and he senses foul play. His suspicions are confirmed, when the ghost of his father tells him that “the serpent that did sting thy father’s life now wears his crown.” Hamlet becomes obsessed with trying to get the king and his wife to admit to the crime for which he knows they are guilty, rather than vengefully dispatching his father’s dispatchers. Finally, at the end of the play, when he is near death himself, he takes action against the king.
Oedipus the King’s land is in disrepair due to a plague, and Oedipus wants to find out why as soon as possible, and how it can be fixed. He learns that to save Thebes, he must find the murderer of the king before him, Laius. Oedipus promises to find the killer and expel him from Thebes, no matter what it takes. He even goes to a fortuneteller, the blind prophet Teiresias. Teiresias then tells Oedipus that Oedipus himself is the “cursed polluter of this land.” When Oedipus later realizes this is the truth, he wastes no time in exiling himself, thus carrying out the sentence he promised against Laius’ killer.
Both Shakespeare and Sophocles show us things about their character by showing us how they handle problems. Hamlet is a generally passive character, and would rather settle for the king and queen to own up to the crime, while Oedipus is more active, and will stop at nothing to right the wrong that has been committed against his kingdom, even when it means exiling himself from his own land. Also, one can learn about Oedipus’ pride, or hubris, when, at first, he refuses to believe what Teiresias tells him. Immediately, he starts to wonder if it’s all part of a plot by Creon to take the thrown. Oedipus would rather live in paranoid denial than to accept the truth. This is all learned just from watching how the characters handle themselves when trouble arises.
The next major way that characters are developed is through their communication with others. The character in Hamlet about whom one can learn the most through his interactions is Polonius. Polonius is an old fool with an inflated sense of importance, and this is most observable during two specific scenes. In Act I, Scene III of Hamlet, Polonius finds Laertes hasn’t left yet, and tells him to hurry up, then spends the next twenty-three lines giving his son a “few” precepts. Later, in Act II, Scene II, he gives a fifty-two-word speech to explain that he will be brief, causing the queen to tell him, “More matter, less art.” But Polonius’ response indicates that he is not even aware of his long-windedness. When watching Polonius speak to others, it becomes clear that Polonius just likes the sound of his own voice.
Sophocles doesn’t use this method as much as Shakespeare, since Sophocles appears to be more concerned with plot advancement than character development. Even so, the listener is still able to get a good image of Oedipus’ brother/uncle Creon from his dialogue. From his very entry, he is respectful of Oedipus, and offers to tell him in private what news the oracle sent with him, rather than blurting it out immediately. Even later when Oedipus falsely accuses him, he leaves, respectful, but protestant. Thus, one can gather that Creon is probably a chivalrous man with respect for authority, but still with enough guts to stand up for himself.
Other character’s opinions of a character can also help to develop that character. Whenever another character talks about Hamlet, they are usually using the word “mad.” Polonius inquires about Hamlet’s sanity to his daughter, and the king and queen even pay two of Hamlet’s old friends to try and get a peak inside his head. After hearing this, the audience begins to take Hamlet’s sanity with a grain of salt, and in later events it appears that he may just be a little mad.
The person who is most preceded by his reputation in Oedipus Rex is Teiresias. The chorus refers to Teiresias as “the god-inspired seer in whom above all other men, truth is reborn.” The listener is already impressed with Teiresias’ seer abilities before he even enters the play, and he indeed lives up to his reputation.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, audiences can most easily understand a character when they are given a window into his or her thoughts. Shakespeare does this directly, utilizing soliloquies. Characters literally verbalize their thoughts to no one but themselves. For instance, in Act III, Scene III, Claudius gives a soliloquy showing, for the first time, remorse for the murder of his brother. This could give some audience members sympathy for Claudius for the first time.
Earlier in the play, in what is probably the most famous soliloquy of all time, Hamlet reveals his suicidal tendencies. He wonders aloud rather it is more respectable to live and to suffer, or to put it all to an end with death. In society, suicide is a stigma usually associated with mental sickness. So, Hamlet’s monologue contemplating suicide may lead listeners to wonder if Hamlet could be as crazy as other characters portray him to be.
Sophocles doesn’t use soliloquies, but, rather, uses the chorus to let us into the heads of his characters, usually through conversations with them. Some people would say this is dialogue, but the chorus isn’t so much a character or group of characters as a plot device. The chorus exists for two reasons: To explain the plot, and to draw forth thoughts from the main characters.
For instance, when Oedipus converses with the chorus before speaking with Teiresias, we learn a few things about him. For a moment, he lets his guard down, and speaks of a feeling of hopelessness regarding his ability to catch Laius’ killer. Then his hubris takes over, and he begins to curse the murderer, and assure him, if he’s listening, that he will be caught.
The two greatest playwrights in history have many similarities and differences in their methods of character development. Shakespeare was a lot more interested in developing his characters through his flowery dialogue, while Sophocles wrote in a time that was much more interested in story telling than characters, and most of his characters spoke the same way. Shakespeare gave each character specific speech patterns. For instance, Polonius spoke in much more puffed up ways than was necessary, and Hamlet spoke a bit crazily. Sophocles’ character development was more implied, while Shakespeare went to great lengths to give us very vivid characters. But both of the writers used four main ways to build up their characters: problem solving, interaction, reputation, and thoughts.