Characters
- Count Almaviva, Governor of Andalusia
- Countess Rosine, his wife
- Figaro, the Count's valet and major-domo; engaged to Suzanne
- Suzanna, the Countess' maid; engaged to Figaro
- Marceline, the housekeeper; in love with Figaro, unknowingly Figaro's mother
- Antonio, gardener of the castle; uncle of Suzanne, father of Fanchette
- Fanchette, daughter of Antonio, girlfriend to many
- Chérubin, the Count's page, the Countess' godson; in love with every woman
- Bartholo, a doctor from Seville; unknowingly Figaro's father
- Bazile, music master to the Countess
- Don Guzman Brid'oison, a judge.
- Doublemain, clerk to Don Guzman Brid'oison
- Gripe-Soleil, a shepherd lad
- Pedrillo, the Count's huntsman
- An usher
- A shepherdess
- An alguazil
- A magistrate
- Servants, valets, peasants, and huntsmen
Beaumarchais wrote detailed notes on the characters, printed in the first published text of the play, issued in 1785. The author prescribed that Figaro must be played without any suggestion of caricature; the Count with great dignity yet with grace and affability; the Countess with restrained tenderness; Suzanne as intelligent and lively but without brazen gaiety; Chérubin as a charming young scamp, diffident only in the presence of the Countess. Chérubin is traditionally played as a trouser role by a woman. Beaumarchais said that in the original company, there were no boys available who were both the right age and who could understand all the subtleties of the role: most of the character's comic traits come from the view of an adult looking back on puberty with amusement.
The ridiculous character of Don Guzman was a jab at a corrupt judge, Louis Valentin Goëzman. Beaumarchais gained public acclaim for directly challenging the judge in a series of pamphlets collectively published as Mémoires dans l'affaire Goëzman. Beaumarchais was hailed as a hero of the people with the public embarrassment he brought upon Goëzman.
Fanchette is around twelve years old. At the time, the age of consent throughout most of Europe was around that same age; hence, the revelation that she and the adult Count are sleeping together was not meant to be quite as shocking as it is often perceived these days.
Read more about this topic: The Marriage Of Figaro (play)
Famous quotes containing the word characters:
“Philosophy is written in this grand book—I mean the universe—
which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and interpret the characters in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it.”
—Galileo Galilei (1564–1642)
“To marry a man out of pity is folly; and, if you think you are going to influence the kind of fellow who has “never had a chance, poor devil,” you are profoundly mistaken. One can only influence the strong characters in life, not the weak; and it is the height of vanity to suppose that you can make an honest man of anyone.”
—Margot Asquith (1864–1945)
“Socialist writers are made of sterner stuff than those who only let their characters steeplechase through trouble in order to come out first in the happy ending of moral uplift.”
—Christina Stead (1902–1983)