Role n. A part, or character, performed by an actor in a drama; hence, a part of function taken or assumed by any one; as, he has now taken the role of philanthropist.
Title role, the part, or character, which gives the title to a play, as the part of Hamlet in the play of that name.
... whom "life had always cast for the leading business" and who "bears himself in a manner befitting the title role." In pursuance of this destiny he becomes a mining speculator, betrays his confiding partner and everybody else who will trust, and when success seems within his grasp is thwarted by the discovery of a man he had supposed to be dead. The woman he would have married ... — Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
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