Protagonist (pronounced proh-tag-uh-nist)
(1) The
leading character or hero of a performance or literary work.
(2) A
proponent for or a political or other cause (from an incorrect construction but
now widely used).
(3) The
leader or principal advocate of a political or other cause.
(4) The
first actor in ancient Greek drama, who played not only the main role, but also
other roles when the main character was off-stage and was thus first amongst deuteragonists and tritagonists.
1671: From the Ancient Greek πρωταγωνιστής (prōtagōnistḗs) (actor who plays the first part; principal character in a story, drama), the literal translation being “first combatant” and according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the word first appeared in English in 1671 in the writings of the English poet, literary critic, translator and playwright John Dryden (1631–1700). The construct was πρῶτος (prôtos) (first) + ἀγωνιστής (agōnistḗs) (one who contends for a prize; a combatant; an actor), from the primitive Indo-European root per (forward (hence "in front of, first, chief")) + agōnistēs (actor, competitor), from agōn (contest), from the primitive Indo-European root ag- (to drive, draw out or forth, move). The link between the two is the notion of one who contends for some prize in a contest (agōn). The general meaning "leading person in any cause or contest" is from 1889. The mistaken sense of "advocate, supporter" (1935) is from misunderstanding of the Greek prōt- meaning the same as the Latin pro- (for; in favor of) (thus the comparison with antagonist (ie "pro" vs "anti")). The Deuteragonist "second person or actor in a drama", is attested from 1840. The general meaning "leading person in any cause or contest" seems first to have been used only as late as 1889. Linguistic sloppiness saw some, by 1935, add the sense of "advocate or supporter", probably from a misreading of the Greek prōt & prōtos, either equating or confusing it with the Latin pro (for). More than tolerated, it seems in English to have become a standard meaning and is often used in sub-electoral politics. Protagonist & protagonism are nouns, protagonistic is an adjective and protagonistically is an adverb; the noun plural is protagonists.
The protagonist’s opponent is the antagonist (from the Ancient Greek ἀνταγωνιστής (antagōnistḗs) (opponent)) and in classical Greek drama, the protagonist was the hero, the antagonist the villain. A protagonist was central to the plot although there could be sub-plots, each narrative with its own protagonist. There were plays with two protagonists tangled in one plot, but that happened often where the first had died, the second then assuming the role while some playwrights would introduce false protagonists, soon to vanish. Modern material (as opposed to the modernist), does not always adhere to the classical Greek form; for content-providers, especially in on-screen material, having multiple protagonists within the one plot is far from unusual. The structures (as evolved) of drama remain but only the words “protagonist” & “antagonist” remain in general use. Linguistically the now rare silver medallist, “deuteragonist” (secondary actor in a drama), is attested from 1840 while the bronze “tritagonist” (third actor) came into use in the 1880s. Although the terms from Antiquity continue to be used, operationally, over the centuries there’s been a bit of mission-creep and the structural conventions of the Greek tradition need to be understood to appreciate the latter-day nuances. The sense in the Greek of the protagonist being the “first combatant” gives the flavour of what Greek tragedy was, the playwright originally limited to protagonist (first actor), deuteragonist (second actor) and tritagonist (third actor) and although the texts or artistic depictions (a valuable form of source documents from which information can be derived) don’t exist for conclusions to be definitive, it’s thought probable the earliest Greek dramas consisted of a Chorus and leader of the Chorus. Probably not until the sixth century BC was a protagonist added as a device to (1) provide variety to attract audiences (2) extend the possibilities available to playwrights. The second and third actors followed later but the protagonist endured to become often in modern use, the “hero”. Deuteragonist was from the Ancient Greek deuteragōnistḗs (literally “second combatant or participant); in narratology it described a “secondary character” and, by tradition, the “second most important” although in a production the actor could be vital because it was not uncommon for a single “second actor” to play all of the various characters at various points interacting with the protagonist. Tritagonist was from the Ancient Greek tritagōnistḗs (literally “second combatant or participant”).
All that history would seem to imply an “antagonist” was also a “deuteragonist” and while there were instances of that, it’s was not necessarily true. In the classical system: (1) the protagonist was the principal character around whom the action was organised, (2) the antagonist was the character (that could be a force, institution or group) opposing the protagonist and (3) the deuteragonist was the “second actor” in the dramatic hierarchy and second in importance to the protagonist. So, an antagonist could be a deuteragonist, but need not be. In William Shakespeare’s (1564–1616) Othello (1603), Iago can be classified as both antagonist & deuteragonist because he is both Othello's (the protagonist) principal opponent and the play's second-most prominent character. That can be contrasted with Claudius in Shakespeare’s Hamlet (circa 1600). Claudius certainly is the antagonist, but whether he can also be classed a deuteragonist depends on the weight one attaches to the character’s dramatic prominence in the narrative (to illustrate the point, Horatio has a substantial structural and narrative role without being Hamlet's antagonist). So, the terms protagonist, deuteragonist & tritagonist are about ranking of importance whereas antagonist is about “opposition to the protagonist”. By Shakespeare’s time that was clear but in Greek drama the terms were also part of the jargon of industrial relations because the actors (especially the “second” & “third”) could in the one production perform multiple roles, the modern distinctions (“main character,” “second-most-important character”) in roles evolving later.
In his highly recommended book The Surgeon of Crowthorne (1998), historian Simon Winchester (b 1944) noted the dispute between two of the great authorities in the matter of the English language: the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and Henry Watson Fowler (1858–1933), author of A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926). The OED quoted Dryden’s passage from 1671 (the first known instance in English of “protagonist”) in which the poet used the word in the plural whereas, as Henry Fowler well knew, in any Greek drama there should only ever be one protagonist. It had of course always been possible for a critic to write about protagonists if comparing two or more productions but that was a function of syntax, not meaning. Henry Fowler disapproved of much which was modern and in the matter of a play with two protagonists, he rules not only was that wrong but also “absurd” because, a protagonist being the most important figure in the text, there couldn’t be two: “One is either the most important person or one is not”. So Fowler’s entry of 1926 and the OED’s of two years later stood for decades as contrary judgements, factions in support of one or the other presumably forms from the handful of earnest souls on the planet who care about such things. When Sir Ernest Gowers (1880–1966) revised A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (the second edition published in 1965), he retained Fowler’s original condemnatory paragraphs but added a coda, noting the original sense from Antiquity but acknowledging that in a dynamic, living language like English, meanings can shift and words can be re-appropriated, adding that in the case of “protagonist”, it seemed “The temptation to regard protagonist as the antonym of antagonist seems irresistible…” In 1981 when the OED published one of their supplements, it was made clear Fowler was correct if the word is used in the context of Greek theatre (for which it was coined) but that English had moved on and there had for at least centuries been works of fiction with two or more characters of equal importance and it was both convenient and well understood by all when they were so labelled.
Lindsay Lohan, vampiric protagonist
It was Lindsay Lohan’s first film since The Canyons (2013). In Among the Shadows, she played a character married to an EU politician, a hint it’s somewhere on the horror continuum, the twist being she’s also a vampire. Which makes sense. When you think about it. What unfolded was a murky mix of political intrigue and mass-murder in which the vampire and a woman with her own secrets are thrown together as protagonists struggling to stop the politician being horribly slaughtered by a pack of werewolves. That may have been the flaw in the plot. A film in which most of the members of the European Council, European Commission and (perhaps especially) the European Parliament are murdered by werewolves, preferably in the bloodiest ways imaginable, would probably have been a blockbuster. Even without social distancing, from Bristol to Berlin, the queues outside cinemas likely would have stretched for blocks. As it was, without the bodies of eurocrats piled high, critical and commercial reaction was muted, some interesting technical points raised about the editing and even the sequence of filming. Still, it’s Lohan-noir, Lindsay as a vampire, gruesome killings, werewolves and a Scottish detective, just the movie for a first date during a pandemic. There is a trailer.
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