# Fanny’s First Play: every role by lines, words, and stage time > George Bernard Shaw. 21 speaking roles, 21,531 words, about 154 minutes of speech. - URL: https://www.offbook.com/plays/fannys-first-play - Last updated: 2026-10-08 **Margaret** has the most to say in Fanny’s First Play: about 357 lines and 3,033 words, 14.1% of the play. Fanny’s First Play is Shaw’s play within a play, framed by an Induction and Epilogue in which critics debate a new play by an unknown author. The load is spread widely: Margaret is the largest role at about 14% of the words. The Count and Savoyard speak only in the frame, and the inner-play roles each appear in two sections. - Speaking roles: 21 - Scenes: 5 - Words: 21,531 - Speech time: 154 min ## Every role, largest first | Role | Lines | Words | Share | Minutes | Scenes | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Margaret | 357 | 3,033 | 14.1% | 21.7 | 2 | | The Count | 237 | 2,088 | 9.7% | 14.9 | 2 | | Gilbey | 253 | 2,085 | 9.7% | 14.9 | 2 | | Dora | 229 | 1,963 | 9.1% | 14.0 | 2 | | Mrs. Knox | 206 | 1,738 | 8.1% | 12.4 | 2 | | Knox | 173 | 1,399 | 6.5% | 10.0 | 2 | | Juggins | 177 | 1,346 | 6.3% | 9.6 | 2 | | Savoyard | 158 | 1,341 | 6.2% | 9.6 | 2 | | Bobby | 154 | 1,200 | 5.6% | 8.6 | 1 | | Trotter | 143 | 1,190 | 5.5% | 8.5 | 2 | | Duvallet | 120 | 1,073 | 5% | 7.7 | 2 | | Fanny | 115 | 900 | 4.2% | 6.4 | 2 | | Mrs. Gilbey | 124 | 875 | 4.1% | 6.3 | 2 | | Gunn | 50 | 419 | 1.9% | 3.0 | 2 | | Bannal | 49 | 384 | 1.8% | 2.7 | 2 | | Vaughan | 39 | 330 | 1.5% | 2.4 | 2 | | Footman | 9 | 65 | 0.3% | 0.5 | 1 | | Count O’Dowda | 5 | 48 | 0.2% | 0.3 | 1 | | Dora’s voice | 4 | 40 | 0.2% | 0.3 | 1 | | Margaret’s voice | 1 | 10 | 0% | 0.1 | 1 | | The critics | 1 | 2 | 0% | 0.0 | 1 | ## Who speaks in which scene Words each role speaks in each scene (scene: words). Scenes: Ind = Induction; Act 1 = Act 1; Act 2 = Act 2; Act 3 = Act 3; Epi = Epilogue. - **Margaret**: Act 2 (2,035), Act 3 (998) - **The Count**: Ind (1,485), Epi (603) - **Gilbey**: Act 1 (940), Act 3 (1,145) - **Dora**: Act 1 (1,526), Act 3 (437) - **Mrs. Knox**: Act 2 (635), Act 3 (1,103) - **Knox**: Act 2 (641), Act 3 (758) - **Juggins**: Act 1 (108), Act 3 (1,238) - **Savoyard**: Ind (1,319), Epi (22) - **Bobby**: Act 3 (1,200) - **Trotter**: Ind (1,057), Epi (133) - **Duvallet**: Act 2 (231), Act 3 (842) - **Fanny**: Ind (766), Epi (134) - **Mrs. Gilbey**: Act 1 (600), Act 3 (275) ## The longest speeches | Speech | Scene | Words | Lines | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Duvallet: “Ah, madam, my daughters are French girls. That is very different. It would not be correct for a French girl to go about alone and speak to men as English and American girls do. That is why I so immensely admire the English people. You are so free—so unprejudiced—your women are so brave and frank—their minds are so—how do you say?—wholesome. I intend to have my daughters educated in England. Nowhere else in the world but in England could I have met at a Variety Theatre a charming young lady of perfect respectability, and enjoyed a dance with her at a public dancing saloon. And where else are women trained to box and knock out the teeth of policemen as a protest against injustice and violence? Your daughter, madam, is superb. Your country is a model to the rest of Europe. If you were a Frenchman, stifled with prudery, hypocrisy and the tyranny of the family and the home, you would understand how an enlightened Frenchman admires and envies your freedom, your broadmindedness, and the fact that home life can hardly be said to exist in England. You have made an end of the despotism of the parent; the family council is unknown to you; everywhere in these islands one can enjoy the exhilarating, the soul-liberating spectacle of men quarrelling with their brothers, defying their fathers, refusing to speak to their mothers. In France we are not men: we are only sons—grown-up children. Here one is a human being—an end in himself. Oh, Mrs. Knox, if only your military genius were equal to your moral genius—if that conquest of Europe by France which inaugurated the new age after the Revolution had only been an English conquest, how much more enlightened the world would have been now! We, alas, can only fight. France is unconquerable. We impose our narrow ideas, our prejudices, our obsolete institutions, our insufferable pedantry on the world by brute force—by that stupid quality of military heroism which shows how little we have evolved from the savage: nay, from the beast. We can charge like bulls; we can spring on our foes like gamecocks; when we are overpowered by reason, we can die fighting like rats. And we are foolish enough to be proud of it! Why should we be? Does the bull progress? Can you civilize the gamecock? Is there any future for the rat? We can’t even fight intelligently: when we lose battles, it is because we have not sense enough to know when we are beaten. At Waterloo, had we known when we were beaten, we should have retreated; tried another plan; and won the battle. But no: we were too pigheaded to admit that there is anything impossible to a Frenchman: we were quite satisfied when our Marshals had six horses shot under them, and our stupid old grognards died fighting rather than surrender like reasonable beings. Think of your great Wellington: think of his inspiring words, when the lady asked him whether British soldiers ever ran away. “All soldiers run away, madam,” he said; “but if there are supports for them to fall back on it does not matter.” Think of your illustrious Nelson, always beaten on land, always victorious at sea, where his men could not run away. You are not dazzled and misled by false ideals of patriotic enthusiasm: your honest and sensible statesmen demand for England a two-power standard, even a three-power standard, frankly admitting that it is wise to fight three to one: whilst we, fools and braggarts as we are, declare that every Frenchman is a host in himself, and that when one Frenchman attacks three Englishmen he is guilty of an act of cowardice comparable to that of the man who strikes a woman. It is folly: it is nonsense: a Frenchman is not really stronger than a German, than an Italian, even than an Englishman. Sir: if all Frenchwomen were like your daughter—if all Frenchmen had the good sense, the power of seeing things as they really are, the calm judgment, the open mind, the philosophic grasp, the foresight and true courage, which are so natural to you as an Englishman that you are hardly conscious of possessing them, France would become the greatest nation in the world.” | Act 3 | 722 | 73 | | Margaret: “He did, just as if he had known me for years. We got on together like old friends. He asked me would I have some champagne; and I said it would cost too much, but that I would give anything for a dance. I longed to join the people on the stage and dance with them: one of them was the most beautiful dancer I ever saw. He told me he had come there to see her, and that when it was over we could go somewhere where there was dancing. So we went to a place where there was a band in a gallery and the floor cleared for dancing. Very few people danced: the women only wanted to show off their dresses; but we danced and danced until a lot of them joined in. We got quite reckless; and we had champagne after all. I never enjoyed anything so much. But at last it got spoilt by the Oxford and Cambridge students up for the boat race. They got drunk; and they began to smash things; and the police came in. Then it was quite horrible. The students fought with the police; and the police suddenly got quite brutal, and began to throw everybody downstairs. They attacked the women, who were not doing anything, and treated them just as roughly as they had treated the students. Duvallet got indignant and remonstrated with a policeman, who was shoving a woman though she was going quietly as fast as she could. The policeman flung the woman through the door and then turned on Duvallet. It was then that Duvallet swung his leg like a windmill and knocked the policeman down. And then three policemen rushed at him and carried him out by the arms and legs face downwards. Two more attacked me and gave me a shove to the door. That quite maddened me. I just got in one good bang on the mouth of one of them. All the rest was dreadful. I was rushed through the streets to the police station. They kicked me with their knees; they twisted my arms; they taunted and insulted me; they called me vile names; and I told them what I thought of them, and provoked them to do their worst. There’s one good thing about being hard hurt: it makes you sleep. I slept in that filthy cell with all the other drunks sounder than I should have slept at home. I can’t describe how I felt next morning: it was hideous; but the police were quite jolly; and everybody said it was a bit of English fun, and talked about last year’s boat-race night when it had been a great deal worse. I was black and blue and sick and wretched. But the strange thing was that I wasn’t sorry; and I’m not sorry. And I don’t feel that I did anything wrong, really. Now that it’s all over I’m rather proud of it; though I know now that I’m not a lady; but whether that’s because we’re only shopkeepers, or because nobody’s really a lady except when they’re treated like ladies, I don’t know.” | Act 2 | 525 | 53 | | Margaret: “I’m not hardened, mother. But I can’t talk nonsense about it. You see, it’s all real to me. I’ve suffered it. I’ve been shoved and bullied. I’ve had my arms twisted. I’ve been made scream with pain in other ways. I’ve been flung into a filthy cell with a lot of other poor wretches as if I were a sack of coals being emptied into a cellar. And the only difference between me and the others was that I hit back. Yes I did. And I did worse. I wasn’t ladylike. I cursed. I called names. I heard words that I didn’t even know that I knew, coming out of my mouth just as if somebody else had spoken them. The policeman repeated them in court. The magistrate said he could hardly believe it. The policeman held out his hand with his two teeth in it that I knocked out. I said it was all right; that I had heard myself using those words quite distinctly; and that I had taken the good conduct prize for three years running at school. The poor old gentleman put me back for the missionary to find out who I was, and to ascertain the state of my mind. I wouldn’t tell, of course, for your sakes at home here; and I wouldn’t say I was sorry, or apologize to the policeman, or compensate him or anything of that sort. I wasn’t sorry. The one thing that gave me any satisfaction was getting in that smack on his mouth; and I said so. So the missionary reported that I seemed hardened and that no doubt I would tell who I was after a day in prison. Then I was sentenced. So now you see I’m not a bit the sort of girl you thought me. I’m not a bit the sort of girl I thought myself. And I don’t know what sort of person you really are, or what sort of person father really is. I wonder what he would say or do if he had an angry brute of a policeman twisting his arm with one hand and rushing him along by the nape of his neck with the other. He couldn’t whirl his leg like a windmill and knock a policeman down by a glorious kick on the helmet. Oh, if they’d all fought as we two fought we’d have beaten them.” | Act 2 | 400 | 40 | | Dora: “Only fancy! he stopped to laugh at the copper! He thought the copper would see the joke, poor lamb. He was arguing about it when the two that took me came along to find out what the whistle was for, and brought me with them. Of course I swore I’d never seen him before in my life; but there he was in my hat and I in his. The cops were very spiteful and laid it on for all they were worth: drunk and disorderly and assaulting the police and all that. I got fourteen days without the option, because you see—well, the fact is, I’d done it before, and been warned. Bobby was a first offender and had the option; but the dear boy had no money left and wouldn’t give you away by telling his name; and anyhow he couldn’t have brought himself to buy himself off and leave me there; so he’s doing his time. Well, it was two forty shillingses; and I’ve only twenty-eight shillings in the world. If I pawn my clothes I shan’t be able to earn any more. So I can’t pay the fine and get him out; but if you’ll stand 3 pounds I’ll stand one; and that’ll do it. If you’d like to be very kind and nice you could pay the lot; but I can’t deny that it was my fault; so I won’t press you.” | Act 1 | 237 | 24 | | The Count: “Then, sir, tomorrow I start for Venice, never to return. I must believe what you tell me. I perceive that you are not agitated, not surprised, not concerned; that my own horror (yes, gentlemen, horror—horror of the very soul) appears unaccountable to you, ludicrous, absurd, even to you, Mr. Trotter, who are little younger than myself. Sir: if young people spoke to me like that, I should die of shame: I could not face it. I must go back. The world has passed me by and left me. Accept the apologies of an elderly and no doubt ridiculous admirer of the art of a bygone day, when there was still some beauty in the world and some delicate grace in family life. But I promised my daughter your opinion; and I must keep my word. Gentlemen: you are the choice and master spirits of this age: you walk through it without bewilderment and face its strange products without dismay. Pray deliver your verdict. Mr. Bannal: you know that it is the custom at a Court Martial for the youngest officer present to deliver his judgment first; so that he may not be influenced by the authority of his elders. You are the youngest. What is your opinion of the play?” | Epilogue | 211 | 22 | | Mrs. Knox: “No, Jo: you know I’m not. What better were my people than yours, for all their pride? But I’ve noticed it all my life: we’re ignorant. We don’t really know what’s right and what’s wrong. We’re all right as long as things go on the way they always did. We bring our children up just as we were brought up; and we go to church or chapel just as our parents did; and we say what everybody says; and it goes on all right until something out of the way happens: there’s a family quarrel, or one of the children goes wrong, or a father takes to drink, or an aunt goes mad, or one of us finds ourselves doing something we never thought we’d want to do. And then you know what happens: complaints and quarrels and huff and offence and bad language and bad temper and regular bewilderment as if Satan possessed us all. We find out then that with all our respectability and piety, we’ve no real religion and no way of telling right from wrong. We’ve nothing but our habits; and when they’re upset, where are we? Just like Peter in the storm trying to walk on the water and finding he couldn’t.” | Act 3 | 207 | 21 | | Fanny: “I don’t mind this play shocking my father morally. It’s good for him to be shocked morally. It’s all that the young can do for the old, to shock them and keep them up to date. But I know that this play will shock him artistically; and that terrifies me. No moral consideration could make a breach between us: he would forgive me for anything of that kind sooner or later; but he never gives way on a point of art. I daren’t let him know that I love Beethoven and Wagner; and as to Strauss, if he heard three bars of Elektra, it’d part us forever. Now what I want you to do is this. If he’s very angry—if he hates the play, because it’s a modern play—will you tell him that it’s not my fault; that its style and construction, and so forth, are considered the very highest art nowadays; that the author wrote it in the proper way for repertory theatres of the most superior kind—you know the kind of plays I mean?” | Induction | 179 | 18 | | Dora: “I’m coming to it, old dear: don’t you be so headstrong. Well, it was a beautiful moonlight night; and we couldn’t get a cab on the nod; so we started to walk, very jolly, you know: arm in arm, and dancing along, singing and all that. When we came into Jamaica Square, there was a young copper on point duty at the corner. I says to Bob: “Dearie boy: is it a bargain about the squiffer if I make Joe sprint for you?” “Anything you like, darling,” says he: “I love you.” I put on my best company manners and stepped up to the copper. “If you please, sir,” says I, “can you direct me to Carrickmines Square?” I was so genteel, and talked so sweet, that he fell to it like a bird. “I never heard of any such Square in these parts,” he says. “Then,” says I, “what a very silly little officer you must be!”; and I gave his helmet a chuck behind that knocked it over his eyes, and did a bunk.” | Act 1 | 176 | 18 | | Duvallet: “I came in at your invitation—at your amiable insistence, in fact, not at my own. But you need have no anxiety on my account. I was concerned in the regrettable incident which led to your daughter’s incarceration. I got a fortnight without the option of a fine on the ridiculous ground that I ought to have struck the policeman with my fist. I should have done so with pleasure had I known; but, as it was, I struck him on the ear with my boot—a magnificent moulinet, I must say—and was informed that I had been guilty of an act of cowardice, but that for the sake of the entente cordiale I should be dealt with leniently. Yet Miss Knox, who used her fist, got a month, but with the option of a fine. I did not know this until I was released, when my first act was to pay the fine. And here we are.” | Act 2 | 159 | 16 | | The Count: “Afford it! My dear Mr. Savoyard, if you are a man with a sense of beauty you can make an earthly paradise for yourself in Venice on 1,500 pounds a year, whilst our wretched vulgar industrial millionaires are spending twenty thousand on the amusements of billiard markers. I assure you I am a poor man according to modern ideas. But I have never had anything less than the very best that life has produced. It is my good fortune to have a beautiful and lovable daughter; and that girl, sir, has never seen an ugly sight or heard an ugly sound that I could spare her; and she has certainly never worn an ugly dress or tasted coarse food or bad wine in her life. She has lived in a palace; and her perambulator was a gondola. Now you know the sort of people we are, Mr. Savoyard. You can imagine how we feel here.” | Induction | 156 | 16 | ## Small roles that can be doubled These pairs of small roles never speak in the same scene, so one actor could play both. Check entrances and silent appearances in your script before you cast it this way. - Fanny and Mrs. Gilbey - Fanny and Dora’s voice - Fanny and Margaret’s voice - Mrs. Gilbey and Gunn - Mrs. Gilbey and Bannal - Mrs. Gilbey and Vaughan - Mrs. Gilbey and Footman - Mrs. Gilbey and Count O’Dowda - Mrs. Gilbey and The critics - Gunn and Dora’s voice - Gunn and Margaret’s voice - Bannal and Dora’s voice ## Questions actors ask ### Who has the most lines in Fanny’s First Play? Margaret, with about 357 lines and 3,033 words, 14.1% of everything spoken in the play. The Count is next, with about 237 lines (9.7%). ### How long is Fanny’s First Play? The full text has 21,531 spoken words, about 154 minutes at 140 words a minute before pauses, scene changes, and cuts. Most productions cut the text, so running times vary. ### How many speaking roles are in Fanny’s First Play? 21 named roles speak in this edition, across 5 scenes. 8 of them have less than 2% of the words, which is why small parts are often doubled. ## How we count Counts are computed from the full text of the [Standard Ebooks edition](https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/george-bernard-shaw/fannys-first-play) (public domain; retrieved 2026-10-08). Words are every spoken word, with stage directions removed. Lines are verse lines as printed, plus prose at 10 words a line, because prose has no fixed line breaks; editions differ, so other sources give slightly different line counts. Time is words at 140 words a minute, before pauses and stage business. A role is counted in a scene when it speaks there. To count a script that is not in the library, paste it into the [script line counter](https://www.offbook.com/tools/script-line-counter).