Robert Bolts A Man For All Seasons Essay -- Robert Bolt Man Seasons E

Robert Bolt's "A Man For All Seasons" In the play, written by Robert Bolt, 'A man for all seasons' the Common Man is a very important character and also a very important part of the play, not in the plot but in the way the play has been presented, he is both a narrator and a role player who makes the play more interesting and separates it from reality. The Common Man also introduces some of the ideas from Bertolt Brecht's work. The idea of the Common Man is a rare and rather unusual one. Robert Bolt used him intentionally to be like no other character in his play. One of the distinctive functions of the Common Man is obvious from his name. The word, 'common' meaning, 'common to us all.' Everybody in the audience should be able to relate to him. The Common Man plays a very plain and simple man and he sustains this through all his roles, especially the Boatman, who when asked to describe the life of a boatman says, 'its common.' We see the boatman as a typical hard working man as he talks about the strains of his job, 'from Richmond to Chelsea, downstream, from Chelsea to Richmond, upstream..' Yet this character is still able to make a joke about his wife to show that he is not bitter. The boatman is also the first to introduce the motif of the river, water imagery in the play. This involves the members of the play using the characteristics of water and portraying them into their own lives, an example being society figures as dry land. Throughout all the roles played by the Common Man, including the Steward, Boatman, Publican, Jailer, Foreman of the jury and a Headsman, he will always express a similar attitude, the attitude of the 'plain and simple man,' as the jailer says. The speech used amongst ... ... shows self-preservation at one point and a way in which he is not so simple and ordinary, when he declines the bribe, where as a simple man might have just taken the money, The Common Man understands the wrong and refuses the money. During his role as the Foreman of the Jury, The Common Man seems to bring all the roles together I think a quote that very well sums up the Common Man is when the jailer says, 'Better alive and no conscience, than dead with morals.' But I think the Common Man's most major function in the play is his part as narrator, if it wasn't for the Common Man the story would be told alone just by the characters, this could mean the story might be harder to understand as it goes along. Furthermore the story would be less interesting as well as harder to grasp. The Common Man is a very important part of the play 'A man for all seasons.'