The Bald Soprano: Analysis of Major Characters
"The Bald Soprano" is a play that satirizes the absurdity of communication and the nature of modern relationships through its exploration of major characters. Mr. Smith is portrayed as a dull and illogical husband, trapped in trivial discussions with his wife and guests, reflecting a lack of genuine connection and the banality of suburban life. Mrs. Smith, his equally mundane counterpart, engages in nonsensical conversations, often veering towards dark themes like death, which underscores the play's critique of gluttony and superficiality. The Martins, Donald and Elizabeth, are depicted as a couple whose relationship lacks depth, emphasizing the absurdity of marriage when they struggle to recall significant moments together. The character of Mary, the maid, highlights the theme of mistaken identity and the ridiculousness of amateur creativity through her awkward interactions and repetitive poetry. Additionally, the fire chief embodies the tension between duty and commercialism, serving as a comically ineffective authority figure. The interplay of these characters reveals the hollowness of their existence, with the title character, the "bald soprano," symbolizing a loss of essential qualities in their lives. Overall, the play invites reflection on communication, identity, and the absurdity inherent in everyday life.
The Bald Soprano: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Eugène Ionesco
First published: La Cantatrice chauve, 1954 (English translation, 1956)
Genre: Play
Locale: London, England
Plot: Absurdist
Time: The late 1940's or early 1950's
Mr. Smith, an utterly boring, illogical husband living in the suburbs of London. He discusses inconsequential trivia with his wife and with their guests, the Martins, then subsequently with the fire chief. Mr. Smith does not engage in genuine communication with his wife; they do not listen to each other. His absence of rational arguments and his numerous fallacies are satirized. These include sweeping generalization, ignoring the question, circular reasoning, faulty argument by analogy, non sequitur, oversimplification, and faulty assumptions. He frequently makes contradictory statements. His reference to all the members—both men and women—of a large, extended family having the name Bobby Watson satirizes lack of individuality and the blurring of sex lines. He refers to someone as a “living corpse,” reflecting the author's view that the characters in the play are, indeed, living corpses.
Mrs. Smith, a middle-class housewife married to Mr. Smith. She opens the play by discussing the three helpings she and her husband each had at dinner, gluttony thus being satirized. She often misuses words. Her topics of conversation are utterly trivial. She turns the conversation quickly to death. She, like her husband, abounds in illogical arguments. She criticizes men as effeminate only to have Mr. Smith counter that women are doing masculine things, such as drinking whiskey.
Mary, the maid at the Smiths' house. She enters, stating the obvious, that she is their maid, as if they did not know. Having been given permission by Mrs. Smith to go out for the afternoon, she, on returning, finds the Smiths' dinner guests at the door, waiting for Mary to return home: They did not dare enter by themselves. When the Smiths leave to change into dinner clothes, she invites the Martins in. She uses faulty logic to “prove” that Mr. and Mrs. Martin are not who they say they are. When the fire chief arrives later, she embraces him, glad to see him again at last. She insists on reading to the guests her poem, “The Fire,” which is woefully repetitious and atrocious verse. Through Mary, the author satirizes amateur poets.
Donald Martin, a middle-class friend of the Smiths and husband to Elizabeth. As the Martins wait in the living room for the Smiths to enter, Mr. Martin reveals that he does not know where he has met Mrs. Martin, as if they are strangers. They make so little impression on each other that they cannot even remember being together. They finally deduce that they sleep in the same bed. the author, through the Martins, satirizes marriage as lacking real unity. Mr. Martin's conversation when the Smiths appear is preposterously banal. At the end of the play, the dialogue begins to repeat from the beginning, but with the Martins speaking the lines previously spoken by the Smiths.
Elizabeth Martin, a middle-class woman married to Mr. Martin. Both are rather embarrassed and timid. She reports seeing a man on the street bend down to tie his shoelaces, a hardly believable sight; the ordinary seems to her extraordinary. Her class prejudice against Mary is also satire.
The fire chief, who has come on official business to ascertain if there is a fire in the house because he has orders to extinguish all fires in the city. He complains that his business is poor now because there are few fires; he notes that his profits on output are very meager, an attack on commercialism in public service. the fire chief points out that he does not have the right to extinguish clergymen's fires. This ties in with Mrs. Smith's comment that a fireman is also a confessor. That is, she sees him in a religious light, in that fire involves warmth, which is related to life and also to love, which religion aims to foster. Thus, the fire chief is like a priest and hears confessions. Mrs. Smith inverts the relationship, however, seeing the fire chief as the confessor. Mrs. Smith earlier had misused the word “apotheosis,” which refers to exaltation to the rank of a god. the author's irony indicates that these people are degraded instead. When Mary enters, she embraces the fire chief. He observes that she had extinguished his first fires, implying, perhaps, a previous hot relationship. the fire chief refers to a bald soprano, from which term the play takes its title; the reference implies a lack of something customary and desirable, such as hair.