Character guide

Mirabell

major

Also known as Mr. Mirabell, Edward Mirabell

Mirabell moves through Lady Wishfort's circle as a man of wit, credit, and careful schemes, managing other people's secrets while concealing his own. His courtship of Millamant is less romance than bargaining: he trades conditions with her, matching her demands for liberty clause by clause, and he has already married his servant to Foible to spring a trap on her aunt. His composure is his weapon and his flaw — he trusts design more than feeling, and the early plot turns on whether his intricate machinery can survive the people it entangles.

Mrs. Millamant

major

Also known as Millamant, Madam Millamant

Millamant is the prize of the play's marriage market, pursued by Mirabell, proposed to Sir Wilfull, and watched over by her aunt, yet she treats the whole business as an occasion for brilliant conditions. She refuses the cant of wifely endearments, demands her closet inviolate and her tea-table sovereign, and insists she and her husband remain 'as strange as if married a great while, and as well-bred as if not married at all.' Her wit is genuine and her independence real, which is why the question of whether she can be loved without being owned drives the middle of the comedy.

Lady Wishfort

major

Also known as Wishfort, My Lady Wishfort

Lady Wishfort presides over her household with wax lights, liveried footmen, and an appetite for admiration that makes her both comic and dangerous. She holds the purse strings to Millamant's inheritance and the power to bless or block any match, yet she is so hungry for courtship that a forged portrait and a pretended Sir Rowland can set her aflame. When Foible reports Mirabell's insults — 'superannuated,' 'old frippery' — her fury becomes the engine of the plot, driving her toward a marriage that others have already rigged.

Fainall

major

Also known as Mr. Fainall

Fainall is married to Mrs. Fainall, Mirabell's former mistress, and carries on an affair with Mrs. Marwood while scheming to strip his wife of her fortune. He speaks of love as leverage — 'Have I no other hold to keep you here?' — and of marriage as a contract to be exploited, promising Marwood he will 'rob her of all she's worth' and retire with her anywhere. His coldness toward his wife and his readiness to weaponize her past make him the play's most credible threat, the man whose outward reputation excuses the very vices he profits from.

Mrs. Fainall

supporting

Also known as cousin Fainall

Mrs. Fainall married Fainall on Mirabell's advice to save her reputation, and she has regretted it ever since — 'While I only hated my husband, I could bear to see him; but since I have despised him, he's too offensive.' She is privy to Mirabell's entire design and holds the power to ruin or advance his fortune, which makes her both ally and liability. Her bitter exchange with Mirabell about why he made her marry such a man exposes the play's darker arithmetic: reputation purchased at the cost of a life, and a woman whose loyalty is the only thing keeping the scheme upright.

Mrs. Marwood

supporting

Also known as Marwood, Madam Marwood

Mrs. Marwood plays the trusted friend to Lady Wishfort while conducting an affair with Fainall and nursing a thwarted love for Mirabell. Her soliloquy over Foible's closet — 'Why this wench is the passe-partout, a very master-key to everybody's strong box' — reveals a woman who reads other people's intrigues as instruments and resents being anyone's assistant. She urges Lady Wishfort toward the Sir Wilfull match and whispers against Mirabell, positioning herself at the center of every confidence; her malice is personal, patient, and the kind that reshapes the plot's middle.

Witwoud

supporting

Also known as Tony Witwoud, Tony

Witwoud moves through Mirabell's circle as a professional talker, forever defending Petulant while exposing him, and insisting that a wit should no more be sincere than a woman constant. His loyalty is real but performed, and his fluency is both his charm and his limit: he can argue any side and commit to none. He matters because he sets the comic temperature of the play's world, showing how easily cleverness substitutes for character in the marriage market.

Petulant

supporting

Petulant wants to be seen as a man of appetite and consequence, so he manufactures the evidence: coach-hire for women, a summons he refuses to answer, a cruelty he wears as a humour. His rudeness is not confidence but performance, and it collapses the moment anyone tests it. He matters as the play's study in affectation taken to absurdity, the friend Witwoud cannot quite excuse and the foil that makes Mirabell's self-command look like virtue.

Sir Wilfull Witwoud

supporting

Also known as Sir Wilful, Sir Wilfull

Sir Wilfull arrives in town as the family's blunt instrument, half-brother to Witwoud and a prospective husband nobody consulted. He is wary, literal, and disarmingly without guile, asking only for further acquaintance before he breaks his mind — a caution that reads as cowardice to the drawing-room and as decency to the audience. He matters because his plainness throws the town's polished insincerity into relief, and because his awkward presence complicates the marriage plot without ever pretending to be clever.

Foible

supporting

Also known as Mrs. Foible

Foible lives by her wits in the gap between what her lady wants to hear and what her lady's enemies need her to say. Caught between Mirabell and Lady Wishfort, she improvises a tale of his insults so vivid that it turns suspicion into rage and rage into a wedding date. She matters because she is the play's engine of intrigue, the servant whose quick tongue moves the plot while her betters congratulate themselves on their own cleverness.

Waitwell

supporting

Waitwell takes on the role of a lifetime — a wealthy, vengeful uncle courting Lady Wishfort — and plays it with a straight face while privately longing for a cordial and an end to the charade. His disgust at the part is comic, but his skill is real: he feeds her vanity, echoes her grievances, and promises a revenge that keeps her pliant. He matters because the entire plot against Lady Wishfort rests on his performance, and because his exhaustion reminds us how much the town's elegance depends on servants who see through it.

Mincing

minor

Also known as Mrs. Mincing

Millamant's affected and gossipy maid.

Betty

minor

A servant in Mirabell's household.

Messenger

minor

A servant who delivers messages.

Peg

minor

A servant mentioned in passing.

Dame Partlet

minor

A character referenced in a joke about a hen.

Sir Rowland

minor

A fictional suitor impersonated by Waitwell to court Lady Wishfort.