Malcontent
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Malcontent is a character type often used in Shakespeare's plays. This character is discontent with the events and other characters in the play. He or she is often an observer who comments on the action and may even show awareness that they are in a play. Shakespeare's Iago in Othello is a typical malcontent.
The malcontent is an important figure in later English Renaissance drama. The role is usually both political and dramatic; with the malcontent voicing dissatisfaction with the usually 'Machiavellian' political atmosphere and often using asides to build up a kind of self-consciousness and awareness of the text itself which other characters in the play will lack to the same extent.
Important malcontents include Bosola in Webster's 'The Duchess of Malfi', Malevole in Marston's 'The Malcontent', Iago in Shakespeare's 'Othello', Hamlet in Shakespeare's 'Hamlet', Mercutio in 'Romeo & Juliet', and many others.
The morality and sympathy of the malcontent is a massive variable, as we can see in the examples listed above. Sometimes, as in 'Hamlet' and 'The Malcontent', they are the sympathetic centre of the play, whereas Iago is a very unsympathetic character.
The most important thing about the malcontent, is that he is malcontent—unhappy, unsettled, displeased with the world as he sees it—not at ease with the world of the play in which he finds himself, eager to change it somehow, or to dispute with it. He is an objective or quasi-objective voice that comments on the concerns of the play and comments as though he is somehow above or beyond them.
The malcontent will almost always be presented wearing black, and is always an isolated figure in the court.
The concept has a lot to do with the Renaissance idea of 'humours' and a surfeit of 'black bile' which caused melancholy. The figure also underwent a great deal of change in English theatre, and must be considered in context.
