Glass of Water

The characters in Glass of Water all play a very important and central role in presenting the plot of this play.  That makes it extremely difficult to narrow down just one protagonist.  It is relatively easy to figure out the antagonist.  The duchess makes it pretty obvious that her motives are not quite pure all of the time.  She messes things up in people’s communication with each other.  She convinces the queen of untrue things.  She behaves in very selfish ways.  And it’s just rather easy to figure out that she’s kind of the one blocking the way of many—well actually all—of our central characters.

 When it comes to the protagonist, though, I’m much more stumped.  Sometimes, I gauge who the protagonist in a play is based on how much time they spend on the stage.  I’m not really sure if that’s 100% correct.  I think it probably factors in to some degree, but that’s definitely not the only thing that makes a protagonist a protagonist.  And even if it was, it wouldn’t help me in this play because all of the characters have a pretty close to equal amount of time on the stage.  The character that I landed on, though, after much consideration was Bolingbroke.  It seems like much of the plot centers around his desires and his actions.  He is trying so hard to create peace between the two nations.  We see him planning his actions and understand his motives.  I feel like we get to know him more than some of the others.  Although, I do notice Abigail and Masham.  They are also extremely central.  They are affected in some way by every single decision that is made.  Some of the decisions affect whether or not Abigail will be able to have a place in the queen’s household.  Some of the decisions affect whether Masham will be caught after killing the laughing man.  And other decisions affect their love life. 

As far as protagonists go, though.  I’d have to say I’m a bit undecided.  I think that that’s alright though.  I think that the story is told through several different perspectives and that is part of what makes the plot work.  There aren’t really many ambiguities or revelations later in the play because we know what everyone is planning and thinking.  This gives much more dramatic irony and much less ambiguity, which is one of the defining characteristics of this play.