# You Never Can Tell — Character guide

> Key figures in You Never Can Tell by George Bernard Shaw.

- [Valentine](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/you_never_can_tell_se/characters/mr_valentine.md): Valentine is a young professional with a practice in Madeira and a habit of falling in love, which lands him in Mrs. Clandon's parlor being interrogated about his intentions toward Gloria. He meets her moral seriousness 
- [Mrs. Clandon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/you_never_can_tell_se/characters/mrs_clandon.md): Mrs. Clandon is a celebrated writer and freethinker who has built her family life around advanced principles, raising Gloria and Dolly in deliberate independence from conventional society. When she confronts Valentine ab
- [Gloria Clandon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/you_never_can_tell_se/characters/gloria_clandon.md): Gloria has been educated to be rational, self-possessed, and devoted to serious causes, and she carries herself with a composure that makes her seem older than her years. When Valentine kisses her publicly and she does n
- [Mr. Crampton](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/you_never_can_tell_se/characters/mr_crampton.md): Crampton is a physically imposing, coarsened man whose intense critical listening and terrifying manner make him a disquieting presence the moment he enters the hotel. He is estranged from his family and desperate for re
- [Dolly Clandon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/you_never_can_tell_se/characters/dolly_clandon.md): Dolly is the livelier of Mrs. Clandon's daughters, given to ravenous tea-drinking, boat rides, and teasing her siblings with gleeful precision. She and her brother Phil function as a comic duo, narrating Gloria's kiss wi
- [Philip McComas](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/you_never_can_tell_se/characters/philip_mccomas.md): Philip McComas is the son of the family solicitor, a bright young man who joins Dolly in breathlessly reporting Gloria's terrace kiss to Mrs. Clandon with all the gravity of a Greek chorus. He is also the one who coaches
- [Finch McComas](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/you_never_can_tell_se/characters/finch_mccomas.md): McComas arrives at the seaside hotel as the Clandons' old friend and legal adviser, but he is also Crampton's ally, which makes him the only man both sides will tolerate in the room. He coaches Crampton to bear and forbe
- [Mr. Bohun](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/you_never_can_tell_se/characters/mr_bohun.md): Bohun sweeps into the hotel as the legal heavyweight everyone has been waiting for, imposing, disquieting, and armed with a ruthlessly critical ear. His authority cuts both ways: he commands the room, yet his own father 
- [Waiter](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/you_never_can_tell_se/characters/waiter.md): William, whose real name is Walter, serves the seaside hotel with a waiter's sharpened wits and a running commentary on the guests who mistake him for Shakespeare's bust or their own fathers. He is also Mr. Bohun's fathe
- [William](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/you_never_can_tell_se/characters/william.md): The Clandon family's elderly servant, loyal and practical.
- [The Young Lady](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/you_never_can_tell_se/characters/the_young_lady.md): An unnamed young woman at the restaurant.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/you_never_can_tell_se/characters