Fifth Business by Robertson Davies Commentary on passage from page 227
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'You don't know what this is? Well, in opera in a perma-
nent company of the kind we keep up in Europe you must
have a prima donna always a soprano, always the heroine,
often a fool; and a tenor who always plays the lover to her;
and then you must have a contralto, who is a rival to the sop-
rano, or a sorceress or something; as a basso, who is the villain
or the rival or whatever threatens the tenor.'
'So far, so good. But you cannot make a plot work without
another man, and he is usually a baritone, and he is called in
the profession Fifth Business, because he is the odd man out,
the person who has no opposite of the other sex. And you must
have Fifth Business because he is the one who knows the secret
of the hero's birth, or comes to the assistance of the heroine
when she thinks all is lost, or keeps the hermitess in her cell,
or may even bet he cause of somebody's death if that is part of
the plot. The prima donna and the tenor, the contralto and the
basso, get all the best music and do all the spectacular things,
but you cannot manage the plot without Fifth Business! It is
not spectacular, but it is a good line of work, I can tell you, and
those who play it sometimes have a career that outlasts the
golden voices. Are you Fifth Business? You had better find
out.'
The passage is taken from page 227 of Fifth Business by Robertson Davies...