Short Plays · Characters
Character guide
Key figures in Short Plays by George Bernard Shaw.
Skim names here — open a free preview to see character cards and Character Web beside the page as you read.
Eliza Shakespeare
major
Also known as Shakespeare, Master Shakespeare, Elizabeth, Elizabeth Master Shakespeare, great Elizabeth
She slips through the shadows of Shakespeare's London, a figure whose identity flickers between sovereign and muse, leaving even the Bard uncertain whom he addresses. Her presence forces a collision between royal authority and artistic desire, making every exchange a duel of wit and concealment. Whether flesh or fantasy, she embodies the dangerous intimacy between power and the imagination that gives the play its charge.
O'Flaherty
major
Also known as O'Flaherty Furious, Mrs. O'Flaherty, O'Flaherty V.C., Private O'Flaherty V.C.
O'Flaherty stands trapped between two irreconcilable loyalties: the British army that decorated him and the rebel mother who raised him to pray for England's ruin. His easy charm and evasions cannot disguise the panic beneath, for he loves the old woman too much to shatter her illusions. The comedy of his homecoming sharpens into something more painful as every greeting threatens to expose the lie he never quite told.
Cashel Byron
major
Also known as Cashel, Byron, Cashel Noisome quack, Cashel Thou, Cashel True, Cashel Flush, Bingley Bumpkin FitzAlgernon de Courcy Cashel Byron
Cashel moves through the world with a boxer's blunt honesty and an unexpected gift for blank verse, equally at home trading blows with Zulu kings and trading barbs with aristocrats. His love for Lydia Carew pulls him toward a life he was never bred for, while his profession drags him back into the ring. The tension between raw physical power and the delicate manners of the drawing room makes him both ridiculous and genuinely admirable.
Gregory Juno
major
Also known as Mrs. Juno, Gregory, Gregory One, Mrs. Juno Gracious, Gregory Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted, Mrs. Juno Rising, Seraphita, Gregory Seraphita, Juno, Juno Look
Gregory is a self-described good man who promised his dying mother he would never make love to a married woman, a promise he is currently breaking with agonizing awareness. His paralysis is both comic and genuinely painful: he wants to flee, knows he should, and finds his will utterly useless against the woman beside him. His helpless honesty about his own weakness exposes the absurd gap between moral principle and human impulse that the play exists to probe.
Lydia Carew
major
Also known as Lydia, Lydia Panting, Lucian, Lydia Lucian, Lydia Hurrah, Lydia Proceed, Lucian Death, Lydia The king, Lydia Carew, Lydia Lord Worthington, Lydia Oh
Lydia owns Wiltstoken and everything in it, yet her wealth and wisdom have only taught her how isolated she is, surrounded by suitors who bore her and books that fail to satisfy. When Cashel Byron crashes into her solitude, his raw vitality offers exactly the escape she has been craving. Her struggle to reconcile her intellectual pride with her attraction to a man of the ring drives the play's central comedy of class and desire.
Mrs. Lunn
major
Also known as Mrs. Lunn Mr. Juno, Juno, Lunn, Mr. Juno, Mrs. Lunn Rising, Juno Rising, Mrs. Juno, Mrs. Lunn Gregory, Mrs. Lunn Tops
Mrs. Lunn is attractive, witty, and disarmingly honest about the pleasure she takes in dangerous flirtation, even as she insists she does not wish to be wicked. Her clear-eyed observation that virtue holds only when the parties are two or three yards apart gives the play its sharpest comic insight. She and Gregory are mirrors of each other's weakness, and their mutual inability to part makes the drawing room a battlefield of manners and appetite.
Blanco Posnet
major
Also known as Blanco, Blanco Shortly, Blanco Retreating, Blanco Terrified, Blanco Forcibly, Blanco Oh, Blanco Mocking, Blanco Sheriff, Blanco Lord, Blanco Feemy
Blanco is the outlaw every man in the territory wants hanged, and the play opens with him already caught, already defiant, already spoiling for a fight with anyone holding a Bible or a badge. His contempt for respectable piety collides with a sudden, unwelcome impulse toward mercy when a dying woman's child is laid at his feet. Shaw uses him to test whether a man with no use for religion can still stumble into something that looks like grace.
Lord Reginald Fitzambry
major
Also known as Reginald, Reginald Deprecating, Reginald Retreating, Reginald Aha, Reginald Horrified, Reginald Breaking, Reginald Fine old chestnut, Reginald Helpless, Reginald Angel, Reginald Transported
Reginald is a pampered young man of twenty-two whose parliamentary seat exists only because his father is a Duke, and whose chief talent is vamping popular tunes at the piano. Terrified that his shady share-buying will be exposed, he barricades himself in a hotel drawing room and begs the doctor for pills, then starts seeing crocodiles. His comic hysteria sets the farce in motion and gives Shaw a target for skewering inherited privilege and fashionable quackery alike.
Georgina Mitchener
major
Also known as Georgina, She Poor dear Georgina, Mitchener Georgina, Mitchener, Mitchener Explosion, Mitchener Rising, Mitchener Calmly, Mitchener Show Mr. Balsquith, Mitchener Silence, Mitchener Nettled, Mitchener Cowards, Bismarck, Mitchener Bismarck
Georgina runs the domestic side of the suffragette campaign, fielding phone calls, calming panics, and keeping the Prime Minister's household in order while the men around her lose their heads. Her calm practicality contrasts sharply with the blustering generals and flustered politicians who cannot decide whether to arrest her or apologize. She anchors the play's satire of anti-suffrage hysteria, showing that the woman everyone wants to silence is the only one in the room behaving like an adult.
Captain Edstaston
major
Also known as Edstaston, Edstaston Bows, Edstaston Shortly, Edstaston Ironically, Naryshkin, Naryshkin Captain Edstaston, Edstaston Pardon, Edstaston Delicately, Edstaston Resisting, Edstaston Struggling, Edstaston Dignity, Edstaston Precisely, Edstaston Following
Edstaston arrives at the Winter Palace as a model of English propriety, engaged to the jealous Claire and determined to behave like a gentleman in a country that has no interest in gentlemen. Catherine takes one look at him and decides to keep him, subjecting him to mock tortures that are really flirtations while Claire watches in mounting fury. His helplessness between the two women turns him into Shaw's comic specimen of English stiffness melting under foreign heat.
Sir Pearce Madigan
supporting
Also known as Sir Pearce Laughing, Sir Pearce, Sir Pearce Rising, Sir Pearce Unable, Sir Pearce Huffed, Sir Pearce Touched, Sir Pearce Scandalized, Sir Pearce Really, Sir Pearce Running, Sir Pearce Exhausted, Sir Pearce Warmly, Sir Pearce Silence, General Sir Pearce Madigan, General Madigan
Sir Pearce is the local landlord and a British general, delighted to host the famous O'Flaherty V.C. on leave and to hear his own recruiting rhetoric echoed back as gratitude. What he gets instead is O'Flaherty's cheerful confession that he poached the General's rabbits, milked his cows, and was raised by a Fenian mother who prays for England's expulsion. Sir Pearce's pained, well-meaning shock carries the play's argument about Irish loyalty, class, and the gap between the recruiting poster and the man it recruits.
Lord Augustus Highcastle
major
Also known as Blushing, Augustus, Lord Augustus Highcastle, Augustus Tush, Augustus Rising, The great Lord Augustus, Augustus Blushing, Dearest Gus, Augustus Beamish, Augustus Psha, Augustus Hm, Augustus Injured, Augustus Man, Augustus Rising, Augustus Explaining, Augustus Madam
Augustus presides over a government office where he issues contradictory orders, refuses his clerk a raise on patriotic grounds, and boasts into the telephone about the secret document listing anti-aircraft emplacements that he is foolishly carrying around. His pomposity and total incompetence make him the perfect mark for the beautiful woman who comes to steal it. Shaw lets him embody the home-front bluster that mistakes self-importance for service, and the comedy turns on how easily such a man is gulled.
General Mitchener
major
Also known as General Mitchener, Mitchener, Mitchener Horrified, Lady Corinthia Admiring Mrs., Lady Corinthia, Lady Corinthia Smiling, Mitchener Somebody, Lady Corinthia General Mitchener, Mitchener Groaning, Mitchener Impatiently, Mitchener Chubbs - Jenkinson, Chubbs - Jenkinson, Mitchener Damn Who's Who, Mitchener Man, Mitchener Angrily, Mitchener Balsquith, Mitchener Nonsense, Mitchener Fish
Mitchener presides over the War Office on the first of April, 1911, opening letters at his writing table while a chained suffragette howls outside and his own orderly slouches with contempt. He snatches a revolver at the first shout of 'Votes for Women,' then puts it back ashamed — a man whose martial bluster collapses the moment a woman lies down on his doorstep. When a letter from the Prime Minister orders him to release her with a key, his authority is punctured from above and below at once, and the play's satire of militarism and anti-suffrage panic has its perfect, sweating target.
Henry Apjohn
supporting
Also known as Henry Carey, Henry, Henry Apjohn, Apjohn, She Henry, Oh Henry, Mr. Apjohn
Apjohn belongs to the small crowd of admirers competing for Lydia's hand in Shaw's blank-verse burlesque of the prize ring, where a poet's claims to a lady sit awkwardly beside a prizefighter's. His suit is the genteel alternative to brute force, and the comedy turns on whether verse or fists will win her. He matters because his courtship forces the play's central joke: that a poet in love is as much a performer as any boxer, and that the stage, as Shaw's preface insists, has always been shaped by the performers who fill it.
Great Catherine
major
Also known as Great Catherine, Catherine, the Catherine, Empress Catherine II, Catherine Donnerwetter, Catherine Urbanely, Catherine Men, Catherine Pushing Edstaston, Catherine Patiomkin, Catherine To Patiomkin
Catherine rules the Winter Palace with the caprice of a woman who has plenty of character and, as Shaw cheerfully puts it, no morals, keeping court as a species of harlequinade in which she is both monarch and clown. She is a match for Patiomkin and every intriguer in Europe, yet she is humbugged about Russia itself by sham cities run up for her inspection. When a young Englishman stumbles into her favor, her dangerous whimsy becomes the play's engine — she is the virtuoso part Shaw wrote to fit an actress, and the play exists to let her fill the stage.
Anastasia Vulliamy
supporting
Also known as Anastasia To Mercer, Mercer, Anastasia, Anastasia Vulliamy, Miss Anastasia Vulliamy
Anastasia moves through The Fascinating Foundling as the object of a benevolent plot that treats her less as a person than as a problem to be solved by arrangement. Her turning on her assailant in 'outraged majesty' — the Dark Lady falling to her knees in terror — shows a young woman who will not be handled quietly, and whose fury is funnier because it is entirely justified. She anchors the play's early comedy by giving its schemers something with a will of its own to work upon.
Young Strapper
supporting
Also known as young Strapper, Strapper, Strapper Kemp, Strapper Yes, Strapper On Pug Jackson, Strapper Young Jack, Jack
Strapper Kemp is a young fighter in Cashel Byron's orbit, learning the trade in a play that sets the ring against the drawing room and finds the ring considerably more honest. He is the apprentice figure — loyal, game, and a little overshadowed by his celebrated master — and his presence keeps the boxing world concrete rather than merely symbolic. He matters to the early arc because he shows what Cashel's profession actually is: a craft with its own discipline, taught to young men who have few other prospects.
Elder Daniels
supporting
Also known as Elder Daniels, Elder, Daniels, Elder Daniels The Sheriff, Elder Daniels Shocked, Elder Daniels Sheriff, Elder Daniels Morning, Elder Daniels Aye, Elder Daniels There
Elder Daniels represents the piety of the Western town that has caught Blanco Posnet, and his authority is the sort that speaks comfortably of judgment while the sheriff handles the rope. He is a man of God in a place where godliness and hanging sit easily together, and the tension between his professed mercy and the town's appetite for punishment is the play's quiet scandal. He matters because he embodies the respectable frontier morality against which Blanco's rough, unwilling decency will be measured.
Squarcio
supporting
Also known as Squarcio, Squarcio Impressed, Sandro, Father Squarcio, Sandro Father Squarcio, Squarcio One
Squarcio is a working killer in a Renaissance fiefdom where murder is a trade and a wager between lords can turn an assassin into a bodyguard. When Count Ferruccio reveals that the Baron will break Squarcio on the wheel for killing him, the swordsman coolly sheathes his blade and resolves to shadow his intended victim until he leaves the territory. His unshakeable calm and grimly practical logic — that common men endure what noblemen cannot — make him both a comic foil and a genuine threat in the play's opening intrigue.
Patiomkin
supporting
Also known as Patiomkin Carrying Edstaston, Edstaston, Patiomkin, Poor Patiomkin, Edstaston Astonished, Edstaston Delighted, Patiomkin, Superficially Patiomkin, Patiomkin Deliberately, Prince Patiomkin, Patiomkin Darling, Patiomkin Gravely, Darling, Patiomkin Amazed, Patiomkin Unmoved, Patiomkin Thunderously, Patiomkin Roaring, Roaring, Patiomkin Enthusiastically, Patiomkin Madman
Prince Patiomkin is the Empress's lover and most powerful courtier, a man who justifies his excesses by the sheer scale of his personality. Drunk and reckless, he hauls the protesting Captain Edstaston into Catherine's bedroom, then collapses in a heap, tearfully insisting that being made a prince is no reason to stop drinking. His blend of buffoonery and dangerous intimacy with the throne unsettles the court and drives the play's collision between Russian extravagance and English propriety.
Lord Chamberlain
supporting
Also known as the Lord Chamberlain, The Lord Chamberlain, the Japanese Lord Chamberlain, Lord Chamberlain
The Lord Chamberlain presides over the stage with the confidence of a man who believes regulation and taste are the same thing. His pronouncements on actors, authors, and the dangers of the drama reveal a censor more concerned with propriety than with the living theatre he claims to protect. In The Rejected Statement, his fussy authority becomes the target of Shaw's argument that official interference stifles the very art it purports to serve.
Claire
supporting
Also known as Claire Jealous, Claire, Claire Coldly, Claire Darling, Claire Dearest, Claire Pausing
Claire is Edstaston's fiancée, caught in the whirl of a Russian court where her English composure is tested at every turn. Jealous of the Empress's proximity to her intended, she wavers between wounded vanity and fierce loyalty, then erupts into genuine violence when soldiers seize him. Her quick temper and quicker tongue make her a comic counterweight to the play's imperial chaos, and her refusal to be a passive bride drives the farce forward.
Catherine Dashkoff
supporting
Also known as Catherine Dashkoff, Dashkoff, Catherine Rising, Catherine, Catherine Meanwhile, The Princess Dashkoff, The Princess Dashkoff Returning, The Princess Oh
The Princess Dashkoff is a courtier whose sense of imperial dignity is constantly offended by Patiomkin's antics and Catherine's tolerance of them. When she denounces the drunken prince as an insult to the throne, the Empress dismisses her with the observation that she has no sense of humor. Her rigid outrage provides the moral counterpoint that Shaw uses to expose the absurdity of courtly decorum in the face of genuine human appetite.
Ermyntrude
supporting
Also known as Ermyntrude, The Archdeacon Ermyntrude, Ermyntrude Interrupting, Ermyntrude Duval, Captain Duval, Duval, Ermyntrude Captain Duval, Ermyntrude Sir, Ermyntrude Laughing, Ermyntrude But General Von Schinkenburg, Ermyntrude Shocked
Ermyntrude is a woman of expensive habits and frank appetites, raised in a rectory but formed for luxury. When her father's income collapses, she refuses to descend to what he calls respectable poverty and announces she will become a lady's maid to a princess until she can marry another millionaire. Her breezy defiance of clerical thrift and her eye for the main chance set the comic tone of The Inca of Perusalem, where romance and money are never far apart.
Teresa
supporting
Also known as Teresa Shrinking, Teresa, Teresa Impatiently, Teresa Driscoll, Teresa Nicely, a dirty Driscoll
In O'Flaherty V.C., Teresa is the mother whose son Dennis returns home a decorated British Army recruit, and her neighbors' contempt for the uniform is a wound she carries alongside her love for him. She wants to hold her family together and be proud of her boy, but the community's hostility and her own muddled loyalties leave her caught between maternal affection and political disgrace. Her divided heart gives the play's comic patriotism its sting, making the domestic cost of Dennis's enlistment visible before the argument turns rhetorical.
Saint Barbara
minor
Also known as Saint Barbara, Barbara, Giulia, Giulia Saint Barbara, Giulia Rats, Giulia Shuddering, St. Barbara, Giulia Quick
A saintly figure in The Glimpse of Reality, invoked in a religious context.
Feemy Evans
supporting
Also known as Feemy Evans, Feemy, Elder, Elder Daniels Feemy Evans, Elder Daniels, The Elder, Elder Daniels There, Feemy Mr. Kemp, Feemy Morning
In The Showing-Up of Blanco Posnet, Feemy moves among the posse and the saloon crowd as a woman whose past gives her little standing but plenty of knowledge about what men do when they think no one is watching. She is drawn to Blanco and resents him in equal measure, and her testimony about the night in question is tangled with her own bruised pride and desire for attention. Her unreliable but indispensable voice helps establish the play's atmosphere of gossip, judgment, and frontier justice before the moral reckoning arrives.
Phyllis
supporting
Also known as Phyllis, Phyllis Shuddering, Fitz Affecting, Fitz, Fitz Phyllis, Fitz Kneeling, Fitz Solemnly
In Passion, Poison, and Petrifaction, Phyllis is the ingenue whose romantic entanglements and perilous circumstances drive the farcical machinery of the plot. She is earnest where the play is absurd, which makes her the perfect straight face for Shaw's mockery of theatrical convention, and her affections are pulled between suitors and schemes with breathless rapidity. Her sincere distress amid the ridiculous events anchors the comedy's early and middle scenes, giving the parody something like a heart even as it sends up everything around her.
Mrs. Bompas
supporting
Also known as Mrs. Bompas, Bompas
In How He Lied to Her Husband, Mrs. Bompas is the wife whose head is turned by the attentions of a would-be poet, and whose husband's discovery of the affair turns her romantic self-image into a domestic crisis. She is vain enough to enjoy being adored and shrewd enough to see through the boy who adores her, and her real attachment to her husband complicates the flirtation she cannot quite abandon. Her wavering between fantasy and marriage gives the play its comic tension and makes the title's lie land where it hurts.
Ferruccio
supporting
Also known as Ferruccio, Count Ferruccio, Count, Ferruccio Shouting, Ferruccio Killing, Ferruccio Giulietta, Giulietta, Ferruccio There, Ferruccio Soul, Ferruccio Brutally, Ferruccio Old fox
In The Glimpse of Reality, Ferruccio rides into bandit country looking for the man hired to assassinate him, and his furious pride makes him a target even as it makes him dangerous. His father's cynical wager has turned his life into a cheap stake, and the insult of being valued at ten crowns wounds him more than the threat of the sword. His rage and his dawning awareness that he is trapped in someone else's game drive the play's darkly comic meditation on reality and illusion.
General Strammfest
supporting
Also known as General Strammfest, Strammfest, Strammfest Shocked, Strammfest Annajanska, Strammfest Yielding
In Annajanska, the Grand Duchess, Strammfest is the officer charged with managing a volatile political situation and a young woman who refuses to play the part expected of her. He is a man of duty and protocol whose confidence in rank and discipline begins to crack when confronted with a will as strong as his own, and his discomfort is both comic and revealing. His struggle between obedience and reluctant admiration for the insurgent spirit sets up the play's debate about authority, freedom, and who really holds power.
Bashville
supporting
Also known as Bashville Madam, Bashville, Madam, Bashville Cashel, Cashel, Bashville Destruction, Bashville Gods, Bashville Sir, The Admirable Bashville
Bashville serves as Lydia's doorkeeper and champion, standing between her and unwelcome suitors with a fist as ready as his verse. He is secretly a poet, and his devotion to his mistress runs deeper than duty, though he never presumes to speak it. When Cashel Byron forces his way in, Bashville's willingness to fight above his weight reveals the play's central contest between love, class, and the code of the ring.
Gregory Sibthorpe
supporting
Also known as Gregory Sibthorpe, Gregory, Gregory That, Gregory Impossible, Sibthorpe, Mr. Sibthorpe Juno, Sibthorpe Juno, Juno
Gregory Sibthorpe belongs to the world of Overruled, where married couples discover that their spouses have been conducting parallel flirtations abroad. His composure as a husband is tested when the very conventions he relies on begin to expose his own inconsistencies. He matters because his predicament forces the play's early comedy to ask whether marriage is a contract of love or merely a well-managed arrangement.
Magnesia Adolphus
supporting
Also known as Magnesia Adolphus, Adolphus, Magnesia, Magnesia Fitztollemache, Lady Magnesia Fitztollemache, Lady Magnesia, Fitztollemache, the unhappy Magnesia Fitztollemache
Magnesia Adolphus moves between two men, Adolphus and Fitz, in a household where romance and farce are indistinguishable. She declares her love transferable, dedicating to one the caresses and domestic drudgery she once gave the other, while the poisoned Adolphus writhes nearby. Her cheerful ruthlessness exposes how easily affection can be reassigned, making her the engine of the play's comic examination of love as property.
Lieutenant Schneidekind
supporting
Also known as Lieutenant Schneidekind, Schneidekind, Schneidekind Rising, Schneidekind Good God, God, Schneidekind Pointing
Lieutenant Schneidekind serves under General Strammfest, absorbing the General's alarm over the Grand Duchess Annajanska's elopement and defection to the Revolution. Where Strammfest rages and threatens, Schneidekind stays dryly practical, managing the telephone and the search with a soldier's impatience for hysteria. His calm amid the farce anchors the play's early satire of military and royal self-importance.
Strega
minor
Also known as Strega Stopping, Strega Rising, Strega, Strega Pleased, Strega Ironically, Strega Disgusted, Strega Pausing, Strega Satisfied, Strega Right, Strega Thundridge
A character in The Glimpse of Reality, a witch or wise woman.
Sensation Adolphus
supporting
Also known as Sensation, Adolphus, Sensation . Adolphus Rising, poor Adolphus, Adolphus Lime, Adolphus Tush, Adolphus Bastable, Adolphus Satisfied
Adolphus Bastable arrives at the Fitztollemache household in triumph over his new clothes, only to be drawn into a domestic scene of jealousy and poisoned gazogene. He is the rival Fitz would gladly see dead, yet he drinks the fatal toast with oblivious good cheer. His vanity and innocence make him the perfect victim of the play's comic cruelty, and his fate drives the early action toward its absurd crisis.
Varinka
minor
Also known as Varinka Surprised, Varinka, Ask Varinka, Varinka Happy Little Father, Little Father, Varinka Sot, Varinka Rushing, Varinka Disgusted, Varinka Heaven, Varinka Pig, Pig
A servant girl in Great Catherine, involved in the court's antics.
Lord Worthington
minor
Also known as Lord Worthington, Lydia Lord Worthington, Lydia, Lydia Oh, Dear Lord Worthington
A suitor in The Admirable Bashville, competing for Lydia's hand.
Mr. Lunn
supporting
Also known as Mr. Lunn
Mr. Lunn belongs to the quartet of spouses in Overruled whose foreign flirtations collide when they return home. He is part of the machinery by which Shaw tests whether married people can be honest about their wandering desires. His role in the early arc is to keep the comic misunderstandings turning, so that the play's argument about love and convention can unfold.
Queen Elizabeth
supporting
Also known as Queen Elizabeth, Eliza, Queen Elizabeth Belike, Elizabeth
In Shaw's preface she embodies his belief that queens are only worth writing when an actress of virtuoso range can fill them, and that the playwright tailors the part to the performer rather than to history. Within the play she commands the world of court and tavern where Shakespeare and Mistress Fitton collide, her authority and sharp tongue setting the terms of every exchange. Her presence turns the question of who owns a poet's inspiration into a contest of crowns and wills, giving the comedy its regal spine.
Mercer
minor
Also known as Mercer, Mercer Retreating, The Lord Chancellor Mr. Mercer, Mr. Mercer, The Lord Chancellor, Mercer Useless
A character in The Fascinating Foundling, a legal or official figure.
Balsquith
supporting
Also known as Dead, Balsquith, Balsquith Relieved, Balsquith Dead
He belongs to the harried government of Press Cuttings, dodging tapped telephones and martial law while trying to explain why Sandstone has resigned and why the cordon strategy has collapsed. His running argument with Mitchener exposes the gap between civilian squeamishness and military ruthlessness, with Balsquith stammering about public opinion while the general coolly proposes rifle fire. He matters because his wavering conscience is the play's comic barometer, measuring how far respectable politics will bend before it breaks.
Fitz Dastard
supporting
Also known as Fitz Dastard, Fitz
He inhabits Shaw's burlesque of Victorian melodrama, where the dramatis personae are, as the preface admits, of the stage stagey, challenging the actor to act up to them or beyond them. His villainy is a deliberate overcharge, a puppet's wickedness performed with relish rather than psychology, and the plot turns on the poison and petrifaction his schemes set in motion. He matters because he shows Shaw at play, using the stock villain as a springboard for parody and for the sheer theatrical fun of a hissable antagonist.
Lucian
minor
Also known as Lucian Fancies, Lucian, Lucian Sir, Lucian Lo
A character in The Admirable Bashville, a poet or suitor.
Mistress Mary Fitton
supporting
Also known as Bell, Mistress Mary Fitton, Mary Fitton, Mary, Mistress Fitton
She moves between court and tavern as the woman whose identity has tantalized centuries of readers, and in Shaw's play she is no passive muse but a sparring partner who gives as good as she gets. Her tension with Shakespeare turns on who gets to define whom, the poet claiming her for his verse while she insists on being a person rather than a poem. She matters because she makes the mystery of the sonnets flesh and voice, and because her refusal to be merely adored drives the comedy's central duel.
The Inca
major
Also known as the Inca, The Inca, The Inca Schinkenburg, Schinkenburg, Snooks, The Inca Snooks, Inca
He is the play's central absurdity, a monarch reduced to odd jobs and aliases, negotiating with an English princess who mistakes him for a servant and a fortune-hunter. His pride and his poverty collide in every scene, and the comedy turns on the gap between the imperial self-image and the shabby reality of a hotel corridor. He matters because through him Shaw stages the whole farce of deposed majesty, asking what a crown is worth when its wearer must borrow a coat and a name.
Frank Harris
minor
Also known as Frank, Frank Harris, Mr. Frank Harris, Mr. Harris, Harris
A real-life writer and editor, referenced in the preface as a critic of censorship.
Thomas Tyler
minor
Also known as Thomas Tyler, Tyler
A scholar in the preface to The Dark Lady of the Sonnets, discussing Shakespeare's identity.
Signor Count
minor
Also known as Signor Count, Signor
A character in The Glimpse of Reality, a foreign nobleman involved in the plot.
Dennis
minor
Also known as Dennis, Denny ., Denny
A character in O'Flaherty V.C., a local Irishman.
Giuliaccia
minor
Also known as Giuliaccia
A character in The Glimpse of Reality, a woman caught in a love triangle.
Hamlet
minor
Also known as Hamlet
Shakespeare's character, referenced in the interlude as a performed role.
Little Mother Naryshkin
minor
Also known as Little Mother, Naryshkin, dear Little Mother, Naryshkin Little Mother
A character in Great Catherine, a Russian noblewoman and mother figure.
Babsy
minor
Also known as Babsy, Jessie, Emma, Emma A sneak who sides with Babsy or Jessie, Babsy There, Babsy Spitting, Jessie That
Children in The Showing-Up of Blanco Posnet, involved in the town's moral drama.
Miss Evans
minor
Also known as Miss Evans
A character in The Showing-Up of Blanco Posnet, a local woman.
Ned Donnelly
minor
Also known as Ned Donnelly, Teddy
A character in O'Flaherty V.C., a local Irishman and friend.
Mr. Cyril Maude
minor
Also known as Mr. Cyril Maude, Cyril, Mr. Maude
A real-life actor, mentioned in the preface as a performer of Shaw's plays.
Aurora
minor
Also known as Aurora
A character in The Music Cure, a young woman seeking a musical remedy.
Blueloo
minor
Also known as Blueloo, The Lady Blueloo
A character in Press Cuttings, a suffragette or political figure.
Ben Jonson
minor
Also known as Ben Jonson, Jonson, Ben
Shakespeare's contemporary playwright, referenced in the interlude.
George Fitztollemache
minor
Also known as George Fitztollemache, George, Fitztollemache
A character in The Fascinating Foundling, a young man seeking a wife.
Horace Brabazon
minor
Also known as Horace Brabazon, Brabazon, Mr. Brabazon, Brabazon Well, Horatio, Brabazon The Lord Chancellor, The Lord Chancellor
A character in The Fascinating Foundling, a suitor or official.
Lord Gorell
minor
Also known as Lord Gorell
A character in The Inca of Perusalem, a courtier or official.
Sir Henry Irving
minor
Also known as Sir Henry Irving, the late Sir Henry Irving, Henry Irving, Irving
A famous actor-manager, referenced in the preface to The Dark Lady.
Colonel Lockwood
minor
Also known as Colonel Lockwood
A military officer in The Showing-Up of Blanco Posnet.
Oscar Wilde
minor
Also known as Oscar Wilde, Wilde, Oscar
A writer referenced in the preface, as a victim of censorship.
Mrs. Warren
minor
Also known as Mrs. Warren
A character from Shaw's earlier play, referenced in the preface.
Lohengrin
minor
Also known as Lohengrin
A Wagnerian opera character, referenced in The Music Cure.
Ibsen
minor
Also known as Ibsen
The playwright, referenced in the preface as a dramatic influence.
