Unseen character

Character referred to but not directly known to the audience
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An unseen character in theatre, comics, film, or television, or silent character in radio or literature, is a character that is mentioned but not directly known to the audience, but who advances the action of the plot in a significant way, and whose absence enhances their effect on the plot.[1]

History

Unseen characters have been used since the beginning of theatre with the ancient Greek tragedians, such as Laius in Sophocles' Oedipus Rex and Jason's bride in Euripides' Medea, and continued into Elizabethan theatre with examples such as Rosaline in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.[2] However, it was the early twentieth-century European playwrights Strindberg, Ibsen, and Chekhov who fully developed the dramatic potential of the unseen character. Eugene O'Neill was influenced by his European contemporaries and established the absent character as an aspect of character, narrative, and stagecraft in American theatre.[1]

Purpose and characteristics

Unseen characters are causal figures included in dramatic works to motivate the onstage characters to a certain course of action and advance the plot, but their presence is unnecessary. Indeed, their absence makes them appear more powerful because they are only known by inference.[1] The use of an unseen character "take[s] advantage of one of the simplest but most powerful theatrical devices: the manner in which verbal references can make an offstage character extraordinarily real [...] to an audience," exploiting the audience's tendency to create visual images of imaginary characters in their mind.[3]

In a study of 18th-century French comedy, F. C. Green suggests that an "invisible character" can be defined as one who, though not seen, "influences the action of the play".[4] This definition, according to Green, would rule out a character like Laurent (Lawrence), Tartuffe's unseen valet, whose sole function is merely to give the playwright an opportunity to introduce Tartuffe.[4][5]

Unseen characters can develop organically even when their creators initially did not expect to keep them as unseen, especially in episodic works like television series. For instance, the producers of Frasier initially did not want to make the character Niles Crane's wife Maris an unseen character because they did not want to draw parallels to Vera, Norm Peterson's wife on Cheers, of which Frasier was a spin off. They originally intended that Maris would appear after several episodes, but were enjoying writing excuses for her absence so eventually it was decided she would remain unseen, and after the increasingly eccentric characteristics ascribed to her, no real actress could realistically portray her.[6]

Examples

Comics

Theatre

Unseen characters occur elsewhere in drama, including the plays of Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams, and Edward Albee.[9][10] Author Marie A. Wellington notes that in the 18th-century, Voltaire included unseen characters in a few of his plays, including Le Duc d’Alençon and L’Orphelin de la Chine.[11]

UK television and radio

US television

References

  1. ^ a b c Mahfouz, Safi Mahmoud (22 June 2012). "The Presence of Absence: Catalytic and Omnipresent Offstage Characters in Modern American Drama.(Critical essay)". The Midwest Quarterly. 53 (4). Pittsburg State University - Midwest Quarterly: 392(18). ISSN 0026-3451. Retrieved 8 August 2016.
  2. ^ a b Gray, Henry David (November 1914). "Romeo, Rosaline, and Juliet". Modern Language Notes. 29 (7): 209–212. doi:10.2307/2916173. JSTOR 2916173. Retrieved 4 February 2018.
  3. ^ Lawson, Mark (8 April 2015). "Missing in action: meet the invisible stars of contemporary drama". The Guardian. Trinity Mirror. Retrieved 4 February 2018.
  4. ^ a b c Frederick Charles Green (1961). "Some Marginal Notes on Eighteenth-Century French Comedy". In Jones, Percy Mansell; Austin, L. J.; Reed, Garnet; Vinaver, Eugène (eds.). Studies in Modern French Literature. Manchester: Manchester University Press. pp. 133–137. Retrieved 4 February 2018. The invisible character may best be defined as a character who, although never shown to the audience, nevertheless influences the action of the play.
  5. ^ Poquelin, Jean-Baptiste (1664). "Act II, Scene II" . Tartuffe or the Hypocrite . Translated by Curtis Hidden Page – via Wikisource.
  6. ^ Barbour, Jon (Producer); Khammar, Gary (Producer) (24 November 2003). Behind the Couch: The Making of 'Frasier' (DVD). Vol. Season 1. Paramount Home Entertainment. Archived from the original on 2021-12-12.
  7. ^ "Basil Wolverton". lambiek.net.
  8. ^ "Merho". lambiek.net.
  9. ^ Byrd, Robert E. Jr. (1998). "Unseen characters in selected plays of Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams, and Edward Albee". Dissertation Abstracts International. 58 (12A). New York: New York University: 4497.
  10. ^ Ade, George (6 December 1914). "Introducing "Nettie"; Who Is the Leading But Unseen Character in a New Princess Playlet". The New York Times.
  11. ^ Wellington, Marie (1987). The Art of Voltaire's Theater: An Exploration of Possibility. New York: Lang. p. 176. ISBN 9780820404837.
  12. ^ Miller, Michael (27 September 2013). "'Romeo and Juliet' meets Jeff Buckley in 'The Last Goodbye'". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 16 May 2014.
  13. ^ Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Grundy, Mrs" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 12 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 641.
  14. ^ "The Women". Internet Broadway Database. Retrieved 21 September 2013.
  15. ^ Goldstein, Malcolm (2007). "The Women". In Cody, Gabrielle H.; Sprinchorn, Evert (eds.). The Columbia Encyclopedia of Modern Drama. Vol. 2. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. p. 1489. ISBN 9780231144247.
  16. ^ Bennett, Michael Y. (2011). "The Parable of Estragon's Struggle with the Boot in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot". Reassessing the Theatre of the Absurd: Camus, Beckett, Ionesco, Genet, and Pinter. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 27. doi:10.1057/9780230118829. ISBN 9780230118829. Retrieved 4 February 2018.
  17. ^ Styan, John L. (1960). "The Meaning of the Play as a Whole". The Elements of Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 209. ISBN 9780521092012.
  18. ^ Chekhov, Anton (1916). "Act IV". The Three Sisters . Translated by Julius West – via Wikisource. NATASHA: Mihail Ivanitch Protopopov will sit with little Sophie, and Andrey Sergeyevitch can take little Bobby out. […] [Stage direction] ANDREY wheels out the perambulator in which BOBBY is sitting.
  19. ^ Lawson, Mark (8 April 2015). "Missing in action: meet the invisible stars of contemporary drama". The Guardian. Retrieved 8 March 2019.
  20. ^ Hogan, Michael (March 2, 2018). "From Twin Peaks' Diane to Mrs Columbo: TV's 10 greatest unseen characters". The Telegraph – via www.telegraph.co.uk.
  21. ^ a b "Top 30 Characters You Never See: out of sight, but in your mind". The Independent, February 16, 2015.
  22. ^ "'Er indoors enters the lexicon". The Independent. 30 August 1992. Retrieved 15 May 2014.
  23. ^ "The Top Ten Unseen TV Characters". 20 June 2008.
  24. ^ "The Only Fools and Horses conspiracy theory about four characters you never see". 19 May 2021.
  25. ^ Cunningham, Jennifer (25 March 2011). "In praise of … silent Archers characters". The Herald. Glasgow: Herald & Times Group. Archived from the original on 28 December 2014. Retrieved 9 November 2014.
  26. ^ McManus, Bridget (January 17, 2015). "TV's best invisible characters outed". The Sydney Morning Herald.
  27. ^ "9 important characters we never actually saw on 1980s TV".
  28. ^ "Profile of Columbo". Encyclopedia of Television. The Museum of Broadcast Communications. Archived from the original on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 16 May 2014.
  29. ^ a b c NME Picture Desk (14 June 2016). "The 25 Best TV Characters You Never See On Screen - NME". NME. Retrieved 4 February 2018.
  30. ^ "Kate Loves a Mystery". Retrieved May 14, 2016.
  31. ^ "Mrs. Columbo Revealed!". Retrieved July 29, 2016.
  32. ^ a b c Lascala, Marisa (25 November 2015). "11 Famous TV Characters We Never Actually Saw". Mental Floss. Retrieved 15 May 2014.
  33. ^ Macauley, Marnie (29 October 2018). "10 Legendary TV Characters We've Never Seen". Top TENZ. Retrieved 4 October 2014.
  34. ^ "11 Famous TV Characters We Never Actually Saw". 25 November 2015.
  35. ^ Fitzpatrick, Kevin (8 December 2010). "TV's Best Characters (That You're Not Allowed To See)". UGO. IGN Entertainment. p. 2. Archived from the original on 17 May 2014. Retrieved 15 May 2014.
  36. ^ a b c "The 25 Best TV Characters You Never See On Screen". NME, June 14, 2016.
  37. ^ Pierce, Scott D. (28 November 1995). "Maris is missing in another great episode of 'Frasier'". Deseret News. Maris Crane is missing! Actually, Maris Crane has always been missing. The thin and Caucasian wife of Dr. Niles Crane (David Hyde Pierce) has never actually been seen on "Frasier" - although she's been a frequent presence on the show. And the unseen Maris plays a major part in a don't-miss episode of this excellent, Emmy-winning comedy.
  38. ^ Hines, Ree (5 January 2009). "Favorite TV characters that no one ever played". NBC TODAY. NBCUniversal. Retrieved 4 February 2018.
  39. ^ Endrst, James (12 December 1995). "These TV Series Stars Are Out of Sight". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 4 February 2018. Like so many of TV's unseen stars, Maris is one of our most beloved characters, someone we're free to color in the way we choose, a figure who adds mystery, imagination, an X-factor to the show.
  40. ^ Matheson, Whitney (22 March 2005). "Some things onscreen are best left unseen". USA Today. Retrieved 4 February 2018.
  41. ^ Dawidziak, Mark (7 December 2012). "'Big Bang Theory's' Mrs. Wolowitz is the latest in a long line of enigmatic invisible TV characters". cleveland.com. Advance Ohio. Retrieved 4 February 2018.
  42. ^ a b "12 Television Characters We Never See (Even Though They Were On TV)". CollegeHumor, July 1, 2009.
  43. ^ Garber, Megan (20 December 2019). "I Can't Stop Watching Frasier. I Can't Stop Thinking About Maris". The Atlantic. Retrieved 27 December 2019.
  44. ^ "Who Is Erica From BoJack Horseman, Anyway?". The Dot and Line. 19 September 2018. Retrieved June 11, 2020.
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