Character guide

Jack Tanner

major

Also known as John Tanner, Tanner, Mr. John Tanner, Mr. Tanner, Tanner Caught, Tanner Everybody, Jack . Tanner, Tanner Politely, Tanner Brutally, Tanner Seriously, Tanner Impatiently, Tanner Drily, Tanner Rising, Tanner Totally, Tanner Aye, Tanner Chafing, Tanner Ought, Tanner Tavy, Tanner Straker, Tanner Of Louisa

Tanner is a wealthy socialist firebrand and newly appointed guardian to Ann Whitefield, a role he accepted with the confidence of a man who thinks he sees every trap. He lectures Octavius on Maeterlinck's bees, insisting that in courtship it is the man who is the pursued quarry — a theory he applies to everyone's romance but his own. His wit is his armor, and the play's early comedy turns on watching that armor develop cracks.

Ann Whitefield

major

Also known as Ann, Annie, Miss Ann, Whitefield, Miss Whitefield, Miss Ann Whitefield, Ann Resuming, Ann Gently, Ann Flashing, Ann Quietly, Ann All, Ann Oh Jack, Ann Cold, Ann Earnestly, Ann Violet, Ann Rhoda, Ann Supine, Ann Half whispering, Ann Alarmed, Ann Hm

Ann is the orphaned center of the Whitefield household, newly under the guardianship of Ramsden and Tanner, and universally praised for her devotion to duty. When Octavius proposes, she deflects him with tears and talk of her father, then insists propriety requires him to approach her guardians first — a maneuver that quietly redirects everything toward Tanner. Her charm is real, her purpose is deeper than anyone around her suspects, and she drives the play's central chase.

Roebuck Ramsden

major

Also known as Roebuck, Ramsden, Mr. Ramsden, Tanner Ramsden, Miss Ramsden, Ramsden Rising, Ramsden Hmph, Ramsden Don Juan, Ramsden Polonius, Octavius Mr. Ramsden

Ramsden is a respectable man of letters and old friend of the late Mr. Whitefield, chosen as Ann's guardian precisely because he represents everything solid and conventional. He grieves sincerely with Octavius and gently encourages the young man's hopes for Ann, believing her father's wish would be sacred to her. His horror at sharing guardianship with Tanner exposes the gap between his self-image as a freethinker and his actual terror of anyone freer than himself.

Octavius Robinson

major

Also known as Octavius, Tavy, Ricky, Ticky, Poor Ricky Ticky Tavy, poor Tavy, dear Tavy, Octavius Jack, Jack, poor Jack, Octavius Rising, Octavius Raising, Octavius Awkwardly, Octavius Impatiently, Octavius Humiliated, Octavius Smiling, Octavius Affectionately, Octavius Startled, Mr. Octavius Robinson, Mr. Robinson

Octavius — Tavy to his friends — is a generous, honorable young man whose late patron treated him like a son and whose sister Violet is his closest family. He confesses to Tanner that he proposed to Ann the night before and was undone by her sobs and her talk of duty, which he reads as exquisite sensibility rather than strategy. His romantic idealism makes him both the play's most sympathetic figure and its most instructive example of a man who mistakes being loved for being chosen.

Violet Robinson

supporting

Also known as Violet, Octavius Violet, Violet The beast, Vi, Violet Coldly, Ann Violet, Violet Flushing, Violet Promptly, Violet To Straker, Violet Hector, Violet Quietly

Violet moves through the Whitefield circle with the composure of a woman who has already made her decisive choice and is waiting for the rest of society to catch up. Her secret marriage to Hector Malone puts her at odds with both his father's fortune and the drawing-room morality of Ramsden and the elder women. Practical where her brother is poetic, she matters as the play's counterexample: a woman who pursues her own life without Ann's elaborate choreography.

Hector Malone

supporting

Also known as Hector Malone, Hector, Mr. Malone, Mr. Hector Malone, Malone, Malone Grimly, Malone Hotly, old Malone, a Mr. Malone, Mr. Ector Malone, Ector Malone, Ector, young Mr. Malone

Hector is young, impulsive, and caught between two worlds: the American wealth his father controls and the English society he has married into without permission. His secret marriage to Violet makes him a walking scandal waiting to detonate, and his loyalty to her is tested against the practical power of his father's purse. He represents the play's interest in how money, nationality, and romantic will collide when the older generation refuses to bless what the younger has already done.

Mendoza

supporting

Also known as Mendoza Limited, Captain Mendoza, Mendoza Startled, Mendoza Idiot, Mendoza Intercepting Mrs. Whitefield, Louisa Mendoza

Mendoza presides over a band of anarchists and social-democrats who spend three evenings debating courage instead of robbing motorcars, and he keeps the meeting in order with crushing magnanimity and a magnificent fling of his cloak. He is a Jew among brigands, a socialist who has swallowed all the formulas, and a leader who insists that their business is the equitable redistribution of wealth, not abstruse political economy. His comic authority and self-aware oratory make him the dream sequence's most surprising voice of practical idealism.

Don Juan Tenorio

supporting

Also known as Don Juan, Juan, Don Juan Sighing, Don Juan Señor Commander, Don Juan Pshaw, Don Juan Commander, Don Juan Pooh, Don Juan Good . Saluting Doña Ana, Don Juan Sincerity, Molière ’s Don Juan, the first Don Juan, The Don Juan, Ramsden Don Juan

In the dream sequence, Don Juan has traded seduction for speculation, debating the Devil about heaven, hell, and whether man's purpose is to pursue pleasure or to will his own improvement. He is the play's great contrarian, a man whose past reputation as a libertine is constantly at odds with his present role as reluctant moralist. His refusal to accept either the Devil's easy hell or Ana's romantic demands sets up the central argument of the third act.

Doña Ana de Ulloa

supporting

Also known as Ana, Don Juan Doña Ana de Ulloa, Ana What, Don Juan Ana, dear Ana, Ana Hmf, Ana Infamous, Ana Wretch, Ana Father, Ana Monster, Ana Aristophanes

Doña Ana arrives in hell with the fury of a woman who has been wronged and the stubbornness of one who refuses to be forgotten, calling Don Juan infamous and wretch in the same breath. Her presence forces the abstract debate between Juan and the Devil to become personal, since she embodies the romantic and moral claims that Juan's philosophy of the Life Force would rather transcend. She matters because she tests whether Juan's new creed can survive the claims of a woman he once ruined.

The Statue

supporting

Also known as Commander, Don Juan Commander, The Statue Bravo Ana, The Statue Coxcomb, The Statue Superman

The Statue is the outraged patriarch of the old order, a father whose honor has been violated and who pursues Don Juan beyond the grave with the implacable courtesy of a Spanish grandee. He represents the claims of family, duty, and social convention that Juan's philosophy dismisses as trumpery ideals, and his arrival in the dream sequence gives the debate a menacing dramatic weight. He is the past that will not stay buried, and his presence raises the stakes of Juan's refusal to repent.

The Devil

supporting

Also known as the Devil, The Devil Bowing, The Devil Warmly, The Devil It, Devil

The Devil presides over a Hell that is frankly a place of enjoyment, where the damned pursue their pleasures without the hypocrisies of the surface world, and he receives Don Juan with the warmth of a host who expects to be agreed with. He is a philosopher of comfortable cynicism, content to let men be men and women be women, and his debate with Juan exposes the play's central question: whether the Life Force is a genuine purpose or a self-flattering illusion. His genial materialism makes him the most seductive voice against the Superman.

Enry Straker

supporting

Also known as Mr. Enry Straker, Straker, Enry, Henry Straker, Henry, Straker Exasperated . Garn, Straker Five shillins, Straker Garn, Straker Cheerfully, Straker Interested, Straker Drily, Straker Disgusted, Louisa Straker

Straker is the new man in the most literal sense: a working-class Londoner who understands the internal combustion engine better than any gentleman in the play understands anything, and who is not remotely impressed by the intellectual airs of his employer. His running battle with Tanner over the dignity of the chauffeur's profession and the price of a broken spark plug provides the play's sharpest comedy of class and competence. He matters because he embodies Shaw's argument that the future belongs not to the eloquent but to the technically skilled.

Rhoda

minor

Also known as Ann Rhoda, Rhoda, Miss Rhoda, Tanner Rhoda

Ann's younger sister, often present but quiet.

Louisa

minor

Also known as Louisa Mendoza, Tanner Of Louisa

Mendoza's beloved who left him, inspiring his poetic melancholy.

The Superman

minor

Also known as Superman, The Statue Superman

The idealized future human discussed in the Revolutionist's Handbook.

Mrs. Whitefield

minor

Also known as Mrs. Whitefield Hastily, Mrs. Parry Whitefield, Mrs. Whitefield Ann, Mrs. Whitefield Dissatisfied, Mrs. Whitefield Appalled

Ann's mother, a nervous and conventional woman.

Miss Robinson

minor

Also known as Robinson

Octavius and Violet's mother, mentioned but not seen on stage.

Susan

minor

A maid in the Whitefield household.

Duval

minor

Also known as Duval Angliche, Duval Furiously

A French brigand in Mendoza's band.

Arthur Bingham Walkley

minor

Also known as Walkley

The dedicatee of the epistle dedicatory, a critic and friend of Shaw.