Character: what he things; what others think

Playing Thruio is interesting. He is the guy no one wants to get the girl. Your not supposed to wan him to get the girl. But he's supposed to want to get the girl and he's not supposed to think of himself in the same way as the other characters and even everyone talking about the play. We all refer to him negatively. Even a the Arden, lists him as "the foolish rival of Valentine." But for all that, I have found a way to like the guy. The reason we don't like him is because he is living, wooing, by set of social norms that no one else in the play cherishes. Not even the Duke, in the end. You see, as I begin trying to figure out character motivations and the like, I have decided that Thurio wants to marry Silvia for social reasons, not romantic ones. For him it is a financial and political arrangement. So it is natural that he would go to the duke and not Silvia. He isn't malicious or trying to ruin her happiness. He is just not concerned with romance. I think he understands his world in terms of social position and political status and that affects all of his affectations. This doesn't make him a nice guy by our standards but he doesn't think by our standards. Obviously, this is just my reading of the character, but for me understanding why a character does something that we don't like is important for being able to play the character. So for me Thurio is the protagonist of his own narrative: this one is a tragedy, in which sticking by his ideals of marriage as a social contract, he looses a most advantageous marriage to a very beautiful woman.