The Robber Bridegroom (musical) - Characters

Characters

• Jamie Lockhart/the Bandit of the Wood - A "gent and a robber all in one," Jamie Lockhart/the Bandit of the Wood is the show's main character. His true identity, Jamie, is an honest, law-abiding man who ends up engaged to Clement Musgrove's daughter Rosamund (though she is in disguise); while his alter-ego, the Bandit, is a swindling robber who comes across the undisguised Rosamund in the wood and becomes her lover.

• Rosamund - Clement Musgrove's beautiful, naive, doted-upon daughter by his first wife. She meets the Bandit of the Wood and falls in love with him; she disguises herself and makes herself undesirably dim-witted when Jamie Lockhart comes to visit, unaware that he and the Bandit are the same person (and he is unaware Rosamund is the girl he met in the wood).

• Salome - Clement's second wife. Older and ugly, she calls herself the "prickly pear" to the "lily bud" that was Rosamund's late mother, who was just as beautiful as Rosamund. However, she is quite a bit more intelligent than her husband and stepdaughter; detesting Rosamund, she puts her intelligence to use and spends the duration of the show thinking up schemes to kill Rosamund, enlisting the help of the "village idiot," Goat.

• Clement Musgrove - Rosamund's father, Clement is the richest planter on the Natchez Trace. Clement still harbours longings for his first wife (often he compares his daughter to his first wife, though it always accidentally is in a sexual manner), and this makes Salome, his second wife, incredibly jealous. Clement vows to marry Rosamund off to Jamie, who he doesn't realise is the Bandit of the Wood.

• Little Harp - The most gruesome bandit in the history of the Trace, Little Harp is a horny, dirty man. He is violent and seems to only fear the Bandit of the Wood. He spends the show looking for money to steal and women to rape - particularly helpless girls who are tied up - but through this, he becomes intricately involved in the show's mayhem. He is the brute half of the Harp brothers duo. However, he does prove to have some of his brother's intelligence, as he comes up with several ingenious schemes (though they all fail in the end and cause his death).

• Goat - The dumb boy with a brain the size of a scuppernong seed, Goat is enlisted by Salome to carry out her plans to kill Rosamund in exchange for a suckling pig, though Goat's many attempts to do as she asks go awry. In the end, he strikes a better deal with Little Harp. His sister is Airie.

• Big Harp - A "cut off head in a trunk," Big Harp was Little Harp's elder brother and the brain half of the duo. He was put to death for thieving, but his brother rescued his severed head and carries it around in a trunk. However, Little Harp makes a deal with Goat and exchanges his brother's head for "Rosamund" (who in reality is Airie, Goat's sister).

• Raven - The Harp brothers' talking raven. Accompanying the brothers initially in the show, Raven is stolen by Jamie and appears throughout the show advising the characters to "turn back, my bonny." Little Harp eventually kills Raven.

• Airie - Goat's sister. Just as dumb as her brother, Airie has no lines, but plays a pivotal part when Goat decides to trick Little Harp and put Airie in a sack and claim it's Rosamund. Airie escapes while Jamie/the Bandit knocks Little Harp out.

• Goat & Airie's mother - Only moderately more intelligent than her children, Goat's mother all but forces Goat to make a deal with Salome.