‘Shakespeare’, Raleigh once wrote, ‘sought first for a story.’ Most of the persons in his plays have things assigned them to do, things that belong to the plot. Others are commentators on what is done, or purveyors of information, the creatures and agents of a complex expository technique. No rigid classification is possible. What, for instance, are we to make of Benvolio in Romeo and Juliet? We remember Benvolio, a little vaguely, it may be, as the companion of Romeo and Mercutio, with one or both of whom he converses. He listens while Mercutio holds forth on dreams or characterizes Tybalt as a duellist, and through the kind of attention he gives can enhance the effectiveness of these speeches. He fights, seemingly with reluctance, in the turmoil at the beginning of the play, and going to Capulet’s ‘ancient feast’, which he persuades Romeo to attend, presumably dances there. He tells of Romeo’s solitariness and of Mercutio’s death, and twice he explains to the Duke what we in the audience have seen happening. I have known an actor cast as Benvolio, through the impress of his own personality, make Mercutio’s description of his quarrelsomeness take on new interest—as if Mercutio were not merely amusing himself by inventing a character for him. But why his mind was ‘troubled’, so that like Romeo he sought to escape company, walking very early by ‘a grove of sycamore’ to the west of the city, stirs little curiosity. What chiefly matters in the part is the variety of uses which it serves.