Heartbreak House · Characters
Character guide
Key figures in Heartbreak House by George Bernard Shaw.
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Captain Shotover
major
Also known as The Captain, Captain, old Captain Shotover, Captain Shotover Looking, Captain Shotover Stopping, Captain Shotover Shouting, Captain Shotover Since Easter, Captain Shotover Guinness, Captain Shotover Dunn, The Captain Dunn
Shotover rules Heartbreak House with rum, nautical bluster, and a pistol he keeps for burglars and daughters alike. He has spent a lifetime seeking a 'seventh degree of concentration' and now senses his household, like Europe, is a ship without a helmsman. His erratic wisdom and prophetic outbursts give the play its moral weather, making him both its comic relic and its clearest seer.
Ellie Dunn
major
Also known as Ellie, Miss Ellie, Ellie Dunn, Ellie Dropping, Ellie Almost, Ellie Protesting, Ellie Groaning, Ellie Hesione, Ellie Nobody, Ellie Rising, Ellie Flushing, Ellie Musically, Ellie Quite, Ellie Certainly, Ellie Shakespeare, Ellie Othello
Ellie arrives at Heartbreak House as Boss Mangan's fiancée, a transaction she defends with unnerving composure: 'a woman's business is marriage.' She is in love with Hector Hushabye, a fact she shares with his wife, and she matches Mangan's cynicism with her own. Her cool bargaining exposes the play's central question—whether love, money, and power can ever be disentangled.
Hesione Hushabye
major
Also known as Mrs. Hushabye, Hesione, Mrs. Hushabye To Mangan, Mrs. Hushabye Hector, Mrs. Hushabye Lady Utterword, Mrs. Hushabye One, Mrs. Hushabye Laughing, Mrs. Hushabye Papa, Mrs. Hushabye Hospitably shaking hands, Mrs. Hushabye Who, Mrs. Hushabye Rising, Mrs. Hushabye Impatiently, Mrs. Hushabye Anybody, Mrs. Hushabye Ellie, Mrs. Hushabye Poor Ellie, Mrs. Hushabye Stop, Mrs. Hushabye Alfred, Mrs. Hushabye Slain, Mrs. Hushabye Desdemona, Mrs. Hushabye Ah
Hesione presides over her father's chaotic house with charm, laughter, and an unnerving talent for emotional manipulation. She has told Ellie she knows of the girl's love for Hector, and she keeps Mangan dangling as a suitor while her husband drifts in fantasy. Her hospitality is genuine and predatory at once, making her the play's engine of romantic mischief and its most seductive embodiment of the house's moral vacuum.
Hector Hushabye
major
Also known as Hector, Hector Certainly, Hector The, Hector Bitterly, Hector Hushabye, Hector Randall Mrs. Hushabye, Hector Rising, Hector Alfred, Hector Mother, Mr. Hushabye
Hector Hushabye is the kind of man women fall in love with on sight and men dismiss as a fraud—which he cheerfully admits to being. He spins tales of tigers and duels, plays at being a romantic hero, and declares the household 'useless, dangerous, and ought to be abolished.' His self-awareness is genuine but sterile; he sees the rot and does nothing, making him the play's most charming symptom of Heartbreak House's paralysis.
Lady Utterword
major
Also known as Lady Utterword, Lady Utterword Hesione, Lady Utterword Randall, Lady Utterword Randall the Rotter, Lady Utterword Papa, Lady Utterword Nurse, Lady Utterword Providence, Ariadne, Meanwhile Ariadne
Lady Utterword has spent years abroad as the wife of a colonial governor and returns to Heartbreak House with the air of someone inspecting a badly run estate. She diagnoses the house's problem as a lack of horses—the equestrian classes versus the neurotic—and dismisses her brother-in-law Randall as an obvious rotter. Her practical, equestrian worldview collides with Hesione's cultured hedonism, sharpening the play's contrast between two kinds of English futility.
Boss Mangan
major
Also known as Mangan, Mangan Rising, Mangan Shortly, Mangan Shaking, Mangan No, Mangan Snifflng, Boss Mangan, the Mangans, ten Boss Mangans, Boss
Mangan arrives at Heartbreak House as the embodiment of capitalist power—a man who has 'stuck a ramrod into the other fellow's machinery' and been offered a government post for it. But under Hesione's and Ellie's cross-examination he confesses he has no money, no real authority, and no idea how his own factories work. His bluster collapsing into bewilderment makes him both a comic figure and a damning portrait of power without substance.
Mazzini Dunn
supporting
Also known as Mazzini Dunn, Mazzini, Mr. Dunn, Mazzini Smiling, Mazzini Dazed, Dunn, Mr. Mazzini Dunn, Mazzini Resigned, Mazzini Rising, Mazzini Ellie
Mazzini Dunn drifts through Heartbreak House as the amiable ghost of failed idealism, a man who trusted the wrong partners and lost everything while keeping his conscience intact. His daughter Ellie loves him, yet his helplessness shadows her every calculation about marriage and money. He matters because his ruin quietly indicts the world of business predators around him, and because his trusting nature makes the house's casual cruelties land harder.
Randall Utterword
supporting
Also known as Randall, Randall Only nerves, Randall Angrily, Randall Rising, Randall Hastings, Hastings, Randall Dynamite, Randall Ariad, Mr. Randall, Sir Hastings Utterword, Hastings Utterword
Randall Utterword trails after his brother's wife with an infatuation that is part romance, part humiliation, and entirely public. He is all injured dignity and explosive temper, a man whose devotion curdles into sulks and scenes whenever he is overlooked. His restless pursuit of Lady Utterword threads through the house's emotional crossfire, exposing how love in this world becomes another form of idle self-torment.
Nurse Guinness
supporting
Also known as Nurse Guinness, Nurse, Guinness, Nurse Guinness Grimly
Nurse Guinness moves through Heartbreak House with the authority of someone who has watched its inhabitants misbehave for years and has long since stopped being impressed. She speaks plainly where others perform, and her familiarity with the family's tangled past makes her both servant and witness. Her presence grounds the play's floating talk in something like reality, hinting that the house's chaos has a history older than any guest suspects.
Alfred
supporting
Also known as Alfred, poor Alfred, Hector Alfred, Little Alf, Alf
Alfred arrives at Heartbreak House as an intruder, but his real weapon is what he knows about the men who ruined him and others like him. He is neither villain nor victim in any simple sense, but a reminder that the world outside the drawing-room has scores to settle. His intrusion forces the house's comfortable inhabitants to confront the human cost of the fortunes they live on.
The Burglar
minor
Also known as The Burglar, the Burglar, Billy Dunn, Mr. William Dunn
A comic burglar who breaks into Heartbreak House, later revealed as an old acquaintance.
Addy
minor
Also known as Miss Addy, Addy
A friend of the family, mentioned in passing as a social acquaintance.
Miss Hessy
minor
Also known as Miss Hessy
A minor character referenced in the household's social circle.
Marcus Darnley
minor
Also known as Marcus Darnley, Mr. Marcus Darnley, Marcus
A name used by Hector in his romantic fantasies and aliases.
Frederick Keeling
minor
Also known as Frederick Keeling
A historical figure briefly alluded to in the play's philosophical discussions.
