Character Profiles

A note on language: Among his many interests, Shaw was an advocate for reforms of English language usage, spelling and punctuation. In our quotations in this guide we use Shaw’s original punctuation, some of which is decidedly non-standard. Terms appear in the order in which they appear in the text.

VIVIE WARREN

A Cambridge graduate and the epitome of the “New Woman” circa 1895. According to Shaw: “She is an attractive specimen of the sensible, able, highly educated young middle-class Englishwoman. Age 22. Prompt, strong, confident, self-possessed. Plain, business-like dress, but not dowdy.”

Vivie
I shall set up chambers in the City, and work at actuarial calculations and conveyancing. Under cover of that I shall do some law, with one eye on the Stock Exchange all the time. I've come down here by myself to read law: not for a holiday, as my mother imagines. I hate holidays.

Praed
You make my blood run cold. Are you to have no romance, no beauty in your life?

Vivie
I don't care for either, I assure you

Praed
You can't mean that.

Vivie
Oh yes I do. I like working and getting paid for it. When I'm tired of working, I like a comfortable chair, a cigar, a little whisky, and a novel with a good detective story in it. (Act I)

MRS. WARREN

Vivie’s mother. “Mrs. Warren is between 40 and 50, formerly pretty, showily dressed in a brilliant hat and a gay blouse fitting tightly over her bust and flanked by fashionable sleeves. Rather spoilt and domineering, and decidedly vulgar, but, on the whole, a genial and fairly presentable old blackguard of a woman.”

O Lord! I don't know which is the worst of the country, the walking or the sitting at home with nothing to do. I could do with a whisky and soda now very well, if only they had such a things in this place. (Act II)

Don't you be led astray by people who don't know the world, my girl. The only way for a woman to provide for herself decently is for her to be good to some man that can afford to be good to her. If she's in his own station of life, let her make him marry her; but if she's far beneath him she can't expect it: why should she? it wouldn't be for her own happiness. Ask any lady in London society that has daughters; and she'll tell you the same, except that I tell you straight and she'll tell you crooked. Thats all the difference. (Act II)

PRAED

An architect and friend of Mrs. Warren. “A gentleman…hardly past middle age, with something of the artist about him, unconventionally but carefully dressed, and clean-shaven except for a moustache, with an eager, susceptible face and very amiable and considerate manners.”

Praed
…You know, my dear Miss Warren, I am a born anarchist. I hate authority. It spoils the relations between parent and child; even between mother and daughter. Now I was always afraid that your mother would strain her authority to make you very conventional. It's such a relief to find that she hasnt.

Vivie
Oh! have I been behaving unconventionally?

Praed
Oh no: oh dear no. At least, not conventionally unconventionally, you understand. [She nods and sits down. He goes on, with a cordial outburst] But it was so charming of you to say that you were disposed to be friends with me! You modern young ladies are splendid: perfectly splendid! (Act I)

SIR GEORGE CROFTS

Mrs. Warren’s friend and business partner. “Crofts is a tall powerfully-built man of about 50, fashionably dressed in the style of a young man. Nasal voice, reedier than might be expected from his strong frame. Clean-shaven bulldog jaws, large flat ears, and thick neck: gentlemanly combination of the most brutal types of city man, sporting man, and man about town.”

Crofts
…when I say a thing I mean it; and when I feel a sentiment I feel it in earnest; and what I value I pay hard money for. Thats the sort of man I am.

Vivie
It does you great credit, I'm sure.

Crofts
Oh, I don't mean to praise myself. I have my faults, Heaven knows: no man is more sensible of that than I am. I know I'm not perfect: thats one of the advantages of being a middle-aged man; for I'm not a young man, and I know it. But my code is a simple one, and, I think, a good one. Honor between man and man; fidelity between man and woman; and no cant about this religion or that religion, but an honest belief that things are making for good on the whole. (Act III)

FRANK GARDNER

Vivie’s friend. “He is pleasant, pretty, smartly dressed, cleverly good-for-nothing, not long turned 20, with a charming voice and agreeably disrespectful manners.”

What you actually said was that since I had neither brains nor money, I'd better turn my good looks to account by marrying someone with both. (Act I)
…
Oh, I'm not a fool in the ordinary sense: only in the Scriptural sense of doing all the things the wise man declared to be folly, after trying them himself on the most extensive scale. (Act IV)

REVEREND SAMUEL GARDNER

Frank’s father. “The Rev. Samuel Gardner, a beneficed clergyman of the Established Church, is over 50. Externally he is pretentious, booming, noisy, important. Really he is that obsolescent phenomenon the fool of the family dumped on the Church by his father the patron, clamorously asserting himself as father and clergyman without being able to command respect in either capacity.”

Rev. Samuel
Well, sir. Who are your friends here, if I may ask?

Frank
Oh, it's all right, gov'nor! Come in.

Rev. Samuel
No, sir; not until I know whose garden I am entering.

Frank
It's all right. It's Miss Warren's

Rev. Samuel
I have not seen her at church since she came.

Frank
Of course not: she's a third wrangler. Ever so intellectual. Took a higher degree than you did; so why should she go to hear you preach?

Rev. Samuel
Don't be disrespectful, sir…I advised you to conquer your idleness and flippancy, and to work your way into an honorable profession and live on it and not upon me. (Act I)