The character, usually an unhappy outsider, but always dissatisfied, observes and comments on the action, and is sometimes metafictionally aware that they are in a play.
Shakespeare's Richard III, Iago in Othello, and Jaques in As You Like It are typical malcontents.
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 the character is malcontent—unhappy, unsettled, displeased with the world of the play, eager to change it somehow, or to dispute with it.
[citation needed] The concept has much to do with the Renaissance idea of humorism and a surfeit of "black bile" which caused melancholy.