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STEVE CAVERNO: I'm Steve Caverno on behalf of Expert Village, here today to talk to you
about building a character. Now we're going to talk about the antagonist. We'll picture
Claudius, they're a lot more alone on Hamlet but Claudius is the antagonist of Hamlet in
Shakespeare's Hamlet. Claudius is the person who has the most to lose by the character
accomplishing their goal. In this case, Hamlet wants to take Claudius' life and Claudius,
you know, obviously doesn't want to die like a logical person. So, each of these characters
are invested in what they want. Now, Claudius, a good trait of an antagonist, is Claudius
has the power. Claudius is the king of Denmark. Claudius has people in his back can call:
Polonius, Laertes. Claudius has tricks up his sleeve. Claudius is a smart villain, okay?
You don't want to have a stupid protagonist. You want to have some guy that--isn't very
crafty. You don't want to have a protagonist unless that protagonist is very strong and
the point of the protagonist is to defeat the antagonist physically. Then maybe, you
might not have to deal so much with intelligence. It depends on what kind of battle is going
on here. But in this play, we have an antagonist that had leverage over the protagonist. They
might underestimate the protagonist; that might be their downfall. The antagonist will
always have a downfall. It's more of a reversed tragic story but obviously, the focus is--you're
not rooting for the antagonist. You're rooting for the protagonist to overtake the antagonist
and that's why you want to have the leverage towards the antagonist 'cause that makes an
underdog struggle and everyone loves an underdog.