Another scene in which we get a fleeting meeting with minor characters who are nevertheless memorable occurs during the preparation for the Capulets' masquerade ball (1.5). The servants who are readying the setting are engaging in the primary topic of conversation of employees everywhere and to this day: who is and who isn't working hard enough. Then there's some angling for perks ("marchpane" has become "marzipan" in modern parlance, by the way), which is another frequent activity in the working world. Shakespeare's ear (these characters have a poetry of their own) and insight into the psychological effects of virtually every type of activity is unerring. And even his seemingly small moments can lead to large thinking. Here's the excerpt:

FIRST SERVANT

Where's Potpan, that he helps not to take away? He

shift a trencher? he scrape a trencher!

SECOND SERVANT

When good manners shall lie all in one or two men's

hands and they unwashed too, 'tis a foul thing.

FIRST SERVANT

Away with the joint-stools, remove the

court-cupboard, look to the plate. Good thou, save

me a piece of marchpane; and, as thou lovest me, let

the porter let in Susan Grindstone and Nell.

Antony, and Potpan!

SECOND SERVANT

Ay, boy, ready.

FIRST SERVANT

You are looked for and called for, asked for and

sought for, in the great chamber.

SECOND SERVANT

We cannot be here and there too. Cheerly, boys; be

brisk awhile, and the longer liver take all.

George Kittredge, the great Shakespeare scholar from Boston, in writing on Macbeth, gave all the credit for the existence of the Porter to the requirements that Shakespeare needed to fulfill at that particular point in the play: He needed a character to fill a period of time between the murder and the re-entry of the cleaned-up Macbeths, but it couldn't be a major character and it couldn't advance the story. The play also needed relief from the "extreme tensions" of the bloody regicide and the discovery of the body by Macduff et al, and the type of relief had to be of a dark comic variety. Thus the Porter was born. It's an intriguing theory - as it shows how Shakespeare's understanding of what the audience would need at a given point may have been crucial to the creation of some of his great minor characters. Others of this type that come immediately to mind: the Apothecary in Romeo and Juliet, the Gravediggers in Hamlet, the Clown (carrying the asp and figs) in Antony and Cleopatra, and the Gardener in Richard II. If the theory is true, and necessity was integral to their development, it shows once more Shakespeare's unparalleled emphasis on detail: even the smallest characters in the plays are fascinating and believable.