Supporting Characters: The Meat And Potatoes Of A Good Play

In every play, story, book, and movie, you’ve always got a few main things that are always the same. One is that you always have some sort of flowing story involved that tells the reader, watcher, etc. something. The second is that you have main characters to convey this story and all the emotions intertwined to the audience, whatever the medium may be. We all seem to forget though, that there is much more to the story than what the main characters do. Without a supporting cast of characters, no story would ever be as good as it was with them. Imagine Othello without Iago. Imagine Frodo without Sam. I shudder to think of a world where Luke doesn’t have Han Solo by his side! All kidding aside, supporting characters are what make stories great and memorable, and these three plays prove that amazingly.

Oedipus Rex, what a sad poor man. But he himself wasn’t really all that deep or memorable of a character. Yes the story revolved around him, but it never made him into a hero or anything better than a common man. Why then, is this story still being told tod

In a Midsummer Night’s Dream, we find one of my favorite small role characters in Puck. Basically a court jester of sorts to the fairies. With him the story takes an almost whimsical feel to it, him casting the spells on our jilted lovers. He is was truly turns this play into a comedy, even though his role is considerably smaller than all of the other main characters. Without Puck Shakespeare wouldn’t have ever turned this kind of blah story into the classic that it is today, albeit a rather annoying one to read and understand. Out of the three plays we read, this one is one best watched rather than read..

In all the plays there is a common thread, and that’s the fact they are old. Very old. But on a more serious note, they are all classics in their own right. They have all outlasted their peers in the play world, and they have all made an impact on countless millions of people since their first drafts. Why have these plays succeeded where others fail? They seem to make you care about even the simplest of characters, the ones who never show up again, but all the while you ask yourself where they could have gone. An

Some topics in this essay:
Oedipus Rex, Puck Shakespeare, Oedipus King, Potatoes Play, Puck Basically, Han Solo, Frodo Sam, Night’s Dream, main characters, characters puck, supporting cast, role play, supporting characters, story told,