The Characters: Esmeralda; or The Deformed of Notre Dame

Esmeralda

Esmeralda, like in many adaptations, is not a particularly well developed. There's a bit more to her than the interpretation from La Esmeralda, but not by much. Esmeralda acts as a sort of martyr figure, and manages to tug at the heartstrings a bit when saying goodbye to the gypsy women who she considered family. As for her personality, she's mostly  She's defined by her love for a man, Phoebus, and not much else.
benign.

Quasimodo is probably the most well rounded of the characters in this. He has conflicting emotions regarding his lovalty to his master and his love for Esmeralda. Quasimodo is given several long monologues that run a little over dramatic. It feels like every other scene with him has some long, existential soliloquy about his appearance and his despairing ability to love.

Frollo

Claude Frollo is usually referred to as "the monk." Part of me wonders if this is call back to the 1796 novel The Monk, which was quite popular at the time. This is a fairly standard Frollo, a large portion of his dialogue is from the book, but it's nothing too special. Edward Fitzball explores the relationship between Quasimodo and Frollo fairly competently. Usually these early stage versions ignore this element of the story.

Phoebus is typically portrayed in these early adaptations as a heroic figure. This is a trend that didn't really end until the 1923 movie came out. To be honest, the 1923 film has a lot of influence from this play, more than I had considered.

Gringoire is a comic relief character, which, like the heroic Phoebus, was a trend in 19th century plays and operas. He's vain, he's pompous, and, in a bizarre addition, is a puppeteer. This is interesting, because in the 1996 Disney animated version, Clopin is a puppeteer. Perhaps this is just a coincidence.

Captain Phoebus

There's not much to say about Clopin. he's there, I guess. He is given the role of Mathias Hungadi from the book, being the leader of the Gypsies as apposed to the king of beggars.

I'd like to take this opportunity to discuss the new characters for this version: Captain Earnest and Coucou.

Captain Earnest is essentially Phoebus with a different name. He's noble, he's a soldier, and a companion.

Coucou fills some of the roles that Esmeralda had in the book. The biggest thing she does is save Gringoire by marrying him. Unlike Esmeralda in the novel, Coucou actually wants Gringoire as a husband. There's a running gag of her bossing Gringoire around and ocasionally beating him when he disobeys. Maybe it's because of the play's vintage, but her comedy doesn't really resonate with me. I don't really find spousal abuse that funny, to be honest.

None of the characters are really that well developed, which is a shame. I do like some of Quasimodo's overwritten monologues, and there's occasionally a bit of enjoyable comedy, but on the whole these characters are pretty flat.

Next: An Overview of the Dick's Standard Plays Version

(Unfortunately, because of the age of the play, I don't have many images to show. There were no photographs, and the only illustrations I could find were from the published version by Dicks' Standard Plays. As a result, I have no images for Quasimodo, Gringoire, or the majority of the cast.)