Why does Shakespeare include servants in the play?

Answer 1

Shakespeare often starts his plays with minor characters and lets the major ones come on later. This gives the audience a chance to settle down and realize that the play has started before the real action starts.

In Romeo and Juliet, this has the added benefit of demonstrating how things escalate: first the servants fight, then Benvolio and Tybalt get into it and finally Montague and Capulet are calling for their swords. It shows how the heads of families get trapped in the quarrels started by their servants. (A similar situation occurs between the white and red rose factions in Henry VI Part II)

Answer 2

Shakespeare frequently had servants in his plays because it was a social reality. People who could afford it had servants to help with the household duties. This was a source of employment to a lot of people who would otherwise be starving, and so it was not by any means a bad thing. Servant-characters had important functions in the commedia del'arte which had an influence on some of Shakespeare's comedies particularly. Of note are the comic servants: Launce in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Moth in Love's Labour's Lost, Launcelot Gobbo in The Merchant of Venice. All of these roles in early plays were written for the comedian of the company, who after 1594 would have been Will Kemp. Servant characters can include female servants who can be confidantes of and foils to the heroine (Lucetta in Two Gentlemen) or movers of the action (Maria in Twelfth Night) or both (Emilia in Othello). Servants can also be useful as messengers (think Balthazar in Romeo and Juliet). However, as Shakespeare matured, he tended more and more to use the servants for more subtle and serious purposes. For example, in Twelfth Night, Malvolio is a "humorous man", a person with a distinctive character trait which will cause him to be laughed at: in this case, his pride which makes him think that he is above the other servants and a suitable mate for his mistress. In this play the view of servants as social inferiors is reinforced (and also subverted when the servant Maria marries Sir Toby who is above her station, or when Olivia believes she is marrying Orsino's servant Cesario). We get a close look at the situation of servants in King Lear, in which the loyal but banished Kent disguises himself as a servant and perforce has to lead a servant's life. This is part of a larger theme in the play where proud aristocrats (Kent, Lear, Edgar), must "expose themselves to feel what wretches feel" and learn about the plight of the poor by living their life.