The Malcontent is a character type often used in early modern

English Renaissance theatre

English Renaissance theatre, also known as early modern English theatre, refers to the theatre of England, largely based in London, which occurred between the Reformation and the closure of the theatres in 1642...

 drama

Drama

Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...

. The character is discontent with the social structure and other characters in the play. He or she is often an outsider, who observes and offers commentary on the action and may even show awareness that they are in a play. Shakespeare's Richard III

Richard III (play)

Richard III is a history play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in approximately 1591. It depicts the Machiavellian rise to power and subsequent short reign of Richard III of England. The play is grouped among the histories in the First Folio and is most often classified...

 and Iago

Iago

Iago is a fictional character in Shakespeare's Othello . The character's source is traced to Giovanni Battista Giraldi Cinthio's tale "Un Capitano Moro" in Gli Hecatommithi . There, the character is simply "the ensign". Iago is a soldier and Othello's ancient . He is the husband of Emilia,...

 in Othello

Othello

The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in approximately 1603, and based on the Italian short story "Un Capitano Moro" by Cinthio, a disciple of Boccaccio, first published in 1565...

are typical malcontents.

The role is usually both political and dramatic; with the malcontent voicing dissatisfaction with the usually 'Machiavellian' political atmosphere and often using asides to build up a kind of self-consciousness and awareness of the text itself which other characters in the play will lack to the same extent.

Important malcontents include Bosola in Webster's The Duchess of Malfi

The Duchess of Malfi

The Duchess of Malfi is a macabre, tragic play written by the English dramatist John Webster in 1612–13. It was first performed privately at the Blackfriars Theatre, then before a more general audience at The Globe, in 1613-14...

, Vindice in Middleton's The Revenger's Tragedy

The Revenger's Tragedy

The Revenger's Tragedy is an English language Jacobean revenge tragedy, in the past attributed to Cyril Tourneur but is sometimes considered to be the work of Thomas Middleton by "Middletonians"...

, Malevole in Marston's The Malcontent

The Malcontent

The Malcontent is an early Jacobean stage play written by the dramatist and satirist John Marston ca. 1603. The play was one of Marston's most successful works....

, and Hamlet in Shakespeare's Hamlet

Hamlet

The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...

.

The morality and sympathy of the malcontent is a massive variable, as we can see in the examples listed above. Sometimes, as in Hamlet and The Malcontent, they are the sympathetic centre of the play, whereas Iago is a very unsympathetic character.

The most important thing about the malcontent, is that he is malcontent—unhappy, unsettled, displeased with the world as he sees it—not at ease with the world of the play in which he finds himself, eager to change it somehow, or to dispute with it. He is an objective or quasi-objective voice that comments on the concerns of the play and comments as though he is somehow above or beyond them.

The concept has a lot to do with the Renaissance idea of 'humours'

Humorism

Humorism, or humoralism, is a now discredited theory of the makeup and workings of the human body, adopted by Greek and Roman physicians and philosophers, positing that an excess or deficiency of any of four distinct bodily fluids in a person directly influences their temperament and health...

 and a surfeit of 'black bile'

Bile

Bile or gall is a bitter-tasting, dark green to yellowish brown fluid, produced by the liver of most vertebrates, that aids the process of digestion of lipids in the small intestine. In many species, bile is stored in the gallbladder and upon eating is discharged into the duodenum...

 which caused melancholy

Melancholia

Melancholia , also lugubriousness, from the Latin lugere, to mourn; moroseness, from the Latin morosus, self-willed, fastidious habit; wistfulness, from old English wist: intent, or saturnine, , in contemporary usage, is a mood disorder of non-specific depression,...

.

This can be related with Don John the bastard in 'Much Ado About Nothing.'

The word itself is named after Niccolò Machiavelli, His piece "The Prince" has the first Malcontent