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The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

Chapter 5: Dramatis Personæ
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About This Book

This collection gathers dramatic works and lyrical poems spanning comedies, tragedies, histories, and a sonnet sequence, presenting plays in verse and prose alongside narrative poems. The pieces examine human experience through recurring themes of love, ambition, jealousy, power, fate, and the tension between appearance and reality, moving between comic confusion and tragic collapse. Language and theatrical craft are central, employing vivid imagery, rhetorical invention, puns, and varied poetic forms to probe identity, political conflict, and moral choice across intimate moments and public spectacle.

Dramatis Personæ

KING OF FRANCE.
THE DUKE OF FLORENCE.
BERTRAM, Count of Rossillon.
LAFEW, an old Lord.
PAROLLES, a follower of Bertram.
Several young French Lords, that serve with Bertram in the Florentine War.
RYNALDO, servant to the Countess of Rossillon.
Clown, servant to the Countess of Rossillon.
A Page, servant to the Countess of Rossillon.
COUNTESS OF ROSSILLON, mother to Bertram.
HELENA, a Gentlewoman protected by the Countess.
An old WIDOW of Florence.
DIANA, daughter to the Widow.
VIOLENTA, neighbour and friend to the Widow.
MARIANA, neighbour and friend to the Widow.

Lords attending on the KING; Officers; Soldiers, &c., French and Florentine.

SCENE: Partly in France, and partly in Tuscany.