Rounds 1, 2, and 3 voting have closed.
Click here to vote in Round 4!
Shakespeare created hundreds of compelling and memorable characters, there can be no doubt. But we at the Mousetrap dare to seek the ultimate answer: Which one is BEST?
We’ve chosen our favorite characters from Shakespeare’s Tragedies, Histories, Comedies, and Romances and bracketed them up, to pit them one against another until only one remains: Shakespeare’s true Champion!
A quick explanation on methodology:
-For comedies and tragedies, we picked our favorites as best we could. Choosing 16 characters from all Shakespeare’s menagerie was agony, but we winnowed the field ruthlessly.
-In history plays, we elected to cast people, not roles; to avoid a Hal vs Henry V matchup or a face-off between Falstaff and Falstaff, we distilled Shakespeare’s historical characters (for example, Margaret of Anjou appears in Henry VI 1,2,3, and Richard III) down into one representative for the tournament, taking into account their roles in all the plays in which they appear.
-There are only five Romance plays, so we limited Romance characters to 11 contestants instead of the 16 from other genres. The other five slots were granted to the last characters from the other brackets that we felt just couldn’t be left out. These Wild Cards were seeded lowest to grant as much advantage as possible to the Romance characters whose bracket they invaded.
And finally: To avoid endless arguments about match-ups, all seeding within the brackets was arranged strictly by line counts. Accordingly, the tournament’s 1-4 overall seeds are as follows:
1. Hal/Henry V
2. Hamlet
3. Leontes
4. Rosalind
Voting for Round 4 closes Friday April 6, so keep an eye on this space for all the drama and excitement of March Madness a la Shakespeare!