He noted down such prototype characters as "the vanishing American, the big free by [sic], the American indian, the last of the pioneers, the last of the hoboes".
The bold prototype characters of Plautus (the boasting soldier, the old miser, the rascally parasite), with the intricacies of his farcical plotting, and the sensational content and stoical attitudes of Seneca's drama reappeared centuries later when classical literature was rediscovered.
The prototype characters were kept as non-specific as possible to encourage identification - only a first name (gender) was provided to make the prototype more understandable.
If it's any consolation, while shows like Girls and Sex In The City (even if indirectly) foreshadow or reinforce these millennial prototypes, characters like Rory from Gilmore Girls serve us comfort and relief in not feeling alone.
The similarities between prototype and character are not instantly apparent.
Effi Eitam, prototype for character Shmulik Shoham (photo credit Juda S. Engelmayer).
In this sense, Porphyry is a modernist prototype: the character who lacks an audience, the alienated actor.
Based on a new modification of elastic matching, using multiple prototypes per character, the optimal prediction rate is predicted for the learned parameter (length of sampling interval) considered most likely by MDL, which is shown to coincide with the best value found experimentally.
Similarly, although Catilina has probably disappeared for a reason, Ibsen scholars have found there to be prototypes of characters and themes later perfected in mature plays such as Hedda Gabler, John Gabriel Borkman and The Master Builder, currently at the Old Vic in a new version by David Hare.
I mentioned Lear earlier, but the more obvious prototype for this character is Job, the archetypal man of faith brought low by relentless affliction.
