dramatis personae
dramatis personae.Lists of ‘the persons of the play’, now a standard feature in editions of Shakespeare, are rarely found in the early printed texts. None of Shakespeare's plays printed in quarto includes a dramatis personae. Only seven of the 36 plays in the First Folio incorporate lists of characters; the fact that such lists appear in The Tempest, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and Measure for Measure (three out of the first four plays in the Folio) has suggested to some that the lists were specifically drawn up by the editor when preparing copy for the collection. The dramatis personae for 2 Henry IV and Timon of Athens are printed in large type on pages by themselves, suggesting that they were supplied as padding when it was found that the plays would not fill the space allotted to them.
The First Folio calls these lists ‘The Names of the Actors’, a misnomer since it is the names of characters rather than...
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