I do not have the answer, but it has gotten me thinking. It is from Futility Closet, a web site I love. I’ll quote them and link over to the site so you can see the original post there.
The futility closet guy does not have the answer. Anyone know what it is?
Perhaps the bear, in The Winter’s Tale. It’s essential to the plot, because it kills Antingonus (off stage).
Wikipedia has a list of ghost characters from Shakespeare, not characters who appear as ghosts, but characters who have no lines and do nothing but enter and exit. I don’t have enough familiarity with the plays to know if any of these are essential to the plot.
Yorick?
Definitely the bear – it only appears as “Exit, pursued by bear” and the off-stage death is very important to the plot.
That was my first thought.
My first thought was Banquo’s ghost. It’s been way too long since I’ve read Macbeth and I couldn’t remember how often he appeared or even if he spoke.
Yup definitely the bear from The Winter’s Tale. I remember that being a big deal because I believe it’s the only time ever a character was mentioned in a stage direction in a Shakespeare play.
No, none of them are – although Innogen opens up some interesting staging possibilities, in that there are several lines in Much Ado that play quite differently if Hero’s mother is present.
I’m not sure the bear counts as a “character,” so my guess would be the infant Princess Elizabeth in Henry VIII. (Banquo’s ghost is a tempting alternative, but of course he does have a fairly substantial part while he’s alive; does being dead really make him a different “character”? Now I’m thinking this question opens up all sorts of interesting philosophical possibilities.)
The corpse of Henry VI in Richard III is another possibility, but he does return as a ghost later in the play, and he has some lines then.
Arguably Rosaline in Romeo and Juliet.
Rosaline was my first thought, but she isn’t actually mentioned in a stage direction – she presumably is one of the nameless “guests and gentlewomen” who enter at 1.5, but this is never made explicit.
How about Brabantio’s Jewish lawyer in OTHELLO? When he discovers his daughter is missing, he cries out “Get Moe Tapers!”
I’ll bet it’s the Third Murderer in Macbeth, who appear out of nowhere.
Third Murderer appears out of nowhere, but has several lines. Also probably isn’t important to the plot since the first two murderers were planning on doing the killing themselves. Maybe Third Murderer gets in the way (since the other two don’t seem too happy with his presence) and that allows Fleance to escape, but that’s about it for influence as far as I can see.
You’re assuming that the question in William Bliss’s book has an answer that really does fit the constraints of the question. I’m guessing that it doesn’t. I’m guessing that Bliss hasn’t carefully formulated the question he asked and that the answer he had in mind doesn’t really exactly fit the question. Would someone like to make a list of all the answers we’ve proposed so far, so we can look at all of them and think about which of them comes closest to make any sense of the question?
I also think it’s the bear in The Winter’s Tale. “Exit, pursued by a bear” is a famous stage direction, the bear doesn’t appear again in the play, and the bear doesn’t have any lines.
Could be the bear, but Banquo’s ghost is another possibility. You can argue the the ghost is not Banquo along several lines. Including that he is only MacBeth’s delusion, or an apparition made by the witches to screw with Mackers, or that a ghost is not the same as the person and of course is pretty damn important to the story.
Doesn’t Banquo’s ghost appear more than once, though?
Is there a character who says only “nothing”?
Does a bear really count as a “character”, though?