Curated category
Male Shakespearean characters
- Prince HamletPrince Hamlet of Denmark stands at the center of what is likely the most analyzed character in the English literary tradition.
- Touchstone (As You Like It)Touchstone stands in the court of Duke Frederick, a usurper who seized power from his brother. He wears the motley cap and bells that mark him as a licensed…
- Henry VIIIHenry VIII once dressed all in yellow, with a white feather in his bonnet, the day after he learned that Catherine of Aragon had died.
- IagoIago has more lines in Shakespeare's Othello than Othello himself. With 1,097 lines, the villain of the play speaks more than its hero, a structural fact…
- Othello (character)Othello, the Venetian general at the center of Shakespeare's tragedy, was first brought to life on stage on the 1st of November 1604, performed before the…
- Philip II of FrancePhilip II of France was born on the 21st of August 1165 in Gonesse, the only son of King Louis VII and his third wife, Adela of Champagne.
- TheseusA young man named Theseus stood before a massive stone on the road from Troezen to Athens. It was a rock with a hollow just large enough to receive objects…
- John FalstaffSir John Falstaff arrives on stage fat, drunk, and deeply in debt, and somehow the audience loves him anyway. He is a fictional knight who appears in three…
- ShylockShylock loans 3,000 ducats to a Christian merchant named Antonio, and he sets the security at a pound of Antonio's flesh.
- Thomas WolseyThomas Wolsey was born in about 1473 in Ipswich, the son of a man his enemies would mock as a common butcher. By 1515, he wore a cardinal's red hat…
- John Howard, 1st Duke of NorfolkJohn Howard, 1st Duke of Norfolk, rode into the Battle of Bosworth Field on the 22nd of August 1485 knowing something was wrong.
- DogberryDogberry, the bumbling constable of Messina, is one of William Shakespeare's most enduring comic creations. He arrives on stage armed with an inflated sense…