Friday, December 3, 2010

"Every woman wants to play Hamlet, just as every man wants to play Lady Bracknell."

Via Light reading, another literary-list game. List fifteen memorable fictional characters in less than fifteen minutes. My list is quite narrow in scope and consists mostly of grotesque and/or blinded people:
  1. Lady Bracknell [The Importance of Being Earnest]
  2. Micawber [David Copperfield]
  3. Lord Emsworth [P.G. Wodehouse's Blandings books]
  4. Falstaff [Henry IV]
  5. Leopold Bloom [Ulysses]
  6. Hamlet [Hamlet]
  7. Lucia Lucas [E.F. Benson's Lucia books]
  8. Anton Chigurh [No Country for Old Men -- the movie!]
  9. Pandarus [Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde]
  10. Astrov [Uncle Vanya]
  11. Isabel Archer [Portrait of a Lady]
  12. Mrs. Bennet [Pride and Prejudice]
  13. Mrs. Millamant [The Way of the World]
  14. Mickey Sabbath [Sabbath's Theater]
  15. Panurge [Rabelais]
I suspect that one is rather at the mercy of one's stream-of-consciousness, which in this case was seeded by Micawber, but I would probably have ended up with a list somewhat like this no matter what. If I had had to go up to 20 or more I'd probably have added more medieval types like the Wife of Bath and their descendants like Don Quixote and Squire Western. Charlus probably belongs on the list too. As do the Walrus and the Carpenter, though they're not viable as separate characters.

1 comment:

Jenny Davidson said...

Good list! Hmmm, yes, Pandarus, strikingly memorable minor character....