The presence of the confidant in
Western literature may be traced back to
Greek drama and the work of
Euripides. The characters of Agamemnon in
Hecuba and Pylades in
Orestes serve as confidants, acting as both counsellors for the protagonists and expositors of their character. The role of the confidant assumed particular significance in 17th-century French drama, however, coming to prominence in the plays of
Jean Racine and
Pierre Corneille. In Racine and Corneille, the confidant became a more complex and partial character—though the
abbé d'Aubignac complained that Corneille's use of the confidant was "without grace".
Shakespeare scholar Francis Schoff argued that in
Hamlet,
Horatio serves "even more than the Racinian confidant [as] a mere reporter of events and auditor for the protagonist". Interpreters such as
Georg Lukács have remarked that the role of the confidant has diminished in modern literature, pointing to "the significant absence of the confidant(e) in the isolated situations in which the protagonists of the new drama find themselves", and the eclipse of the relationship of trust that exists between a hero and a confidant by a characteristically modern sense of dislocation and absence. == References ==