Audience surrogates - "Simple, dear Hastings !"

Many detective novels – from the Sherlock Holmes to the Inspector Morse and the Hercule Poirot series of tales, Conan Doyle, Dexter and Agatha Christie, use what is known as an audience surrogate – a character who ‘learns things’ from the wiser, more insightful solver of crimes leaning against the fireplace in his Baker Street home, propping a bar up in Oxford, or adjusting his immaculate clothing.

This minor character – Dr. Watson, Sergeant Lewis or Captain Hastings, frequently asks the man how he accomplished something germane to the solving of the crime.

In Shakespeare’s day, the thoughts of protagonists were the subject of long, personally delivered soliloquies. Of course, the genres bore no resemblance to crime novels, but nevertheless, the audience surrogate was needed to explain motivations that might otherwise go to the grave with Hamlet or Macbeth for example, and were voiced in ‘To be or not to be’, ‘Is this a dagger..’, among others, so that the audience were privy to what was going on.

Next time you watch a whodunit, look out for your surrogate asking his pointed questions, which inevitably get perfectly formed and intelligible replies.
Robert L. Fielding