Piggybacking off my GQ thread but expanding the scope: can anyone think of any fictional characters who are relatively well-known for not being able to keep secrets (or one important secret in particular)? The more classical, the better: Greek mythology, Shakespeare, Grimms’ fairy tales, Jane Austen, the Maltese Falcon, what have you.
Who comes to mind when I say: “fictional character who couldn’t keep a secret”?
Hagrid.
How many times has Robie Coltrane had to say, “I shouldn’t have told yiz that”?
Then there was the barber of King ___ (I’ve heard numerous versions with different kings… sometimes it’s Midas).
Story goes that Midas (or whatever king it is in the version you’ve heard) had the ears of a donkey. Nobody knew, because he always kept them under his hair and his crown, but once a year, a barber would be brought in to give him a haircut. The barber was ordered (under threat of execution) never to tall anyone about the king’s ears. But after years of keeping this to himself, the barber just had to tell SOMEONE, so he whispered it to the grass.
Then a breeze blew through the grass, and the words “The king has ass ears” wafted through the land, until EVERYBODY knew it.
Ooh, I like that one. We’d still have to provide some context for it, though. Hmm. I just gotta believe there’s a well-known character out there for whom the immediate connotation is “can’t keep his mouth shut.”
that aside, does such fluff really belong in a judicial brief? I’d be pissed, defendant or plantiff.
Frankie the Squealer from The Simpsons
Sylvia (Mrs. Howard) Fowler (Rosalind Russell) and Edith (Mrs. Phelps) Potter (Phyllis Povah) in “The Women”. http://imdb.com/title/tt0032143/
Phyllis Povah, btw, had one of the greatest showbiz names, IMHO.
VCNJ~
Another valid consideration. It probably won’t come to anything for precisely that reason.
Lighten up, Francis. One throwaway line in one legal brief. Big deal.
Not “classic” in any sense of the word, but the first one I thought of was Cindy Brady.
Not classic, yet, but Hagrid, from the Harry Potter books.
It’s a comic/literary cliche that a man should never confide a secret to his wife. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Cauchemars_de_l’amateur_de_fondue_au_Chester2.jpg
Rosencrantz. Or was it Guildenstern?
Which secret did they fail to keep? That Claudius was planning to have the King of England execute Hamlet? That the Players were on their way to Elsinore? That Hamlet is but mad north-northwest?
ACT II SCENE II. A room in the castle.
KING CLAUDIUS
Welcome, dear Rosencrantz and Guildenstern!
Moreover that we much did long to see you,
The need we have to use you did provoke
Our hasty sending. Something have you heard
Of Hamlet's transformation; so call it,
Sith nor the exterior nor the inward man
Resembles that it was. What it should be,
More than his father's death, that thus hath put him
So much from the understanding of himself,
I cannot dream of: I entreat you both,
That, being of so young days brought up with him,
And sith so neighbour'd to his youth and havior,
That you vouchsafe your rest here in our court
Some little time: so by your companies
To draw him on to pleasures, and to gather,
So much as from occasion you may glean,
Whether aught, to us unknown, afflicts him thus,
That, open'd, lies within our remedy.
…
HAMLET
No such matter: I will not sort you with the rest
of my servants, for, to speak to you like an honest
man, I am most dreadfully attended. But, in the
beaten way of friendship, what make you at Elsinore?
ROSENCRANTZ
To visit you, my lord; no other occasion.
HAMLET
Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks; but I
thank you: and sure, dear friends, my thanks are
too dear a halfpenny. Were you not sent for? Is it
your own inclining? Is it a free visitation? Come,
deal justly with me: come, come; nay, speak.
GUILDENSTERN
What should we say, my lord?
HAMLET
Why, any thing, but to the purpose. You were sent
for; and there is a kind of confession in your looks
which your modesties have not craft enough to colour:
I know the good king and queen have sent for you.
…
GUILDENSTERN
My lord, we were sent for.Ha! Ah, yes.
Guildenstern: What about our evasions?
Rosencrantz: Oh, our evasions were lovely. “You were sent for,” he says. “My lord, we were sent for.” I didn’t know where to put myself.
George Costanza.
How 'bout Dr. Chilton from The Silence of the Lambs? He ran the prison where Hannibal Lecter was being kept and went blabbing to him the minute he got wind the FBI was gonna offer Hannibal the Cannibal a phony deal and whatnot. Thanks to Chilton’s big mouth, Lecter was able to…
Well, I won’t spoil it for the one or two people out there who don’t know the story.
Me too. No one likes a tattletale.
I was thinking Loki of the norse mythology, but I don’t think anybody really trusted him to begin with.