Egaeus
Egaeus is the narrator and main character of this story. As a narrator, Egaeus is unreliable due to his self-professed mental illness. Egaeus does not share his family’s last name with the audience, implying that…
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Berenice
Berenice is Egaeus’s cousin and was raised alongside Egaeus in his ancestral home. Nothing is said of Berenice’s parents or why she was raised with Egaeus. Unlike the sickly and gloomy Egaeus, Berenice is…
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Minor Characters
Menial
Described only as a “menial,” this is the servant who enters the library to tell Egaeus that Berenice had been buried alive and helps Egaeus realize that he was the one to exhume her body and steal her teeth.
Maid
The unnamed “servant maiden” is the one who finds Berenice in a catatonic state and tells Egaeus that she is dead, which leads to Berenice mistakenly being buried alive.
