1.5 Dramatis personae
Most dramatists draw up a provisional Dramatis Personae before beginning the serious work of constructing the play. Ibsen mostly did so, but then shortened the list later. Some saved up the characters rejected from one play, and used them in another. There are essential characters in every play, without whom the theme would be unthinkable, and auxiliary characters that are simply convenient for filling in the canvas and carrying on the action, but not indispensable to the theme. It depends upon how we define the theme whether a character is essential or auxiliary. The auxiliaries might all have been utterly different, or might never have existed at all, and yet the essence of the play would remain intact. The modern dramatist has a wide latitude of choice in the technical matter of working out his plot with the smallest possible number of characters, or he may introduce a crowd of auxiliary personages. The nature of his theme will be the guide to this. In a broad social study or a picturesque romance, many auxiliary figures are in order, but in a subtle comedy, or a psychological tragedy, the essential characters should have the stage as much as possible to themselves.
As to nomenclature, some peculiar names were regarded as acceptable in “The Comedy of Manners,” but may have become offensive today. The fashion of label-names came down from the Elizabethans, who borrowed it from the Mediaeval Moralities. Shakespeare gave us Master Slender and Justice Shallow. A slave might be called
Onesimus, meaning “useful,” or a soldier Polemon, to imply his warlike function. But it was in the Jonsonian comedy of types that the practice of advertising a “humour” or “passion” in a name (English or Italian) established itself. Examples are: Sir Epicure Mammon, Sir Amorous La Foole, Morose, Wellbred, Downright and Fastidius Brisk.
Names should be characteristic without eccentricity or punning. Farcical names are, within limits, admissible in farce, eccentric names in eccentric comedy, while soberly appropriate names are alone in place in serious plays. The appropriateness of some of Ibsen’s names may be lost upon foreign audiences.
The absence of a list of “Dramatis Personae” in some printed plays adds to the difficulty which some readers experience in picking up the threads of a play and it deprives other readers of the pleasure of anticipation. It is charming to looking down a list of names, and thinking that very soon they and their hearts will be known and some of them may be our friends forever.