Henry 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.