# Heartbreak House: every role by lines, words, and stage time > George Bernard Shaw. 27 speaking roles, 26,316 words, about 188 minutes of speech. - URL: https://www.offbook.com/plays/heartbreak-house - Last updated: 2026-10-08 **Ellie** has the most to say in Heartbreak House: about 610 lines and 4,943 words, 18.8% of the play. Heartbreak House is Shaw’s comedy of a strange English country house and its guests on the eve of war. Ellie has the largest part, close to a fifth of the words, with Mrs. Hushabye close behind. Lady Utterword, Captain Shotover, and Mangan each hold about a tenth, and all eight largest roles speak in every act. - Speaking roles: 27 - Scenes: 3 - Words: 26,316 - Speech time: 188 min ## Every role, largest first | Role | Lines | Words | Share | Minutes | Scenes | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Ellie | 610 | 4,943 | 18.8% | 35.3 | 3 | | Mrs. Hushabye | 554 | 4,414 | 16.8% | 31.5 | 3 | | Lady Utterword | 383 | 3,104 | 11.8% | 22.2 | 3 | | Captain Shotover | 367 | 2,960 | 11.2% | 21.1 | 3 | | Mangan | 346 | 2,840 | 10.8% | 20.3 | 3 | | Hector | 308 | 2,374 | 9% | 17.0 | 3 | | Mazzini | 255 | 2,119 | 8.1% | 15.1 | 3 | | Randall | 119 | 933 | 3.5% | 6.7 | 3 | | The Burglar | 87 | 749 | 2.8% | 5.4 | 2 | | The Captain | 78 | 674 | 2.6% | 4.8 | 1 | | Nurse Guinness | 48 | 399 | 1.5% | 2.9 | 2 | | Guinness | 32 | 257 | 1% | 1.8 | 1 | | The Gentleman | 19 | 138 | 0.5% | 1.0 | 1 | | The Young Lady | 12 | 92 | 0.3% | 0.7 | 1 | | The Man | 8 | 72 | 0.3% | 0.5 | 1 | | The Womanservant | 9 | 71 | 0.3% | 0.5 | 1 | | Nurse | 5 | 40 | 0.2% | 0.3 | 1 | | Dunn | 3 | 29 | 0.1% | 0.2 | 1 | | Mrs. Hubhabye | 3 | 22 | 0.1% | 0.2 | 1 | | A Woman’s Voice | 2 | 15 | 0.1% | 0.1 | 1 | | Ladt Utterword | 2 | 14 | 0.1% | 0.1 | 1 | | Mrs. Hushaye | 1 | 10 | 0% | 0.1 | 1 | | Lady Utterorrd | 1 | 8 | 0% | 0.1 | 1 | | Mrs. Husahbye | 1 | 6 | 0% | 0.0 | 1 | | Mazzini’s Voice | 1 | 4 | 0% | 0.0 | 1 | | Mrs. Husharye | 1 | 3 | 0% | 0.0 | 1 | | The Captain’s Voice | 1 | 2 | 0% | 0.0 | 1 | ## Who speaks in which scene Words each role speaks in each scene (scene: words). Scenes: Act 1 = Act 1; Act 2 = Act 2; Act 3 = Act 3. - **Ellie**: Act 1 (1,853), Act 2 (2,590), Act 3 (500) - **Mrs. Hushabye**: Act 1 (2,385), Act 2 (1,494), Act 3 (535) - **Lady Utterword**: Act 1 (1,129), Act 2 (734), Act 3 (1,241) - **Captain Shotover**: Act 1 (1,008), Act 2 (1,328), Act 3 (624) - **Mangan**: Act 1 (258), Act 2 (1,642), Act 3 (940) - **Hector**: Act 1 (947), Act 2 (822), Act 3 (605) - **Mazzini**: Act 1 (200), Act 2 (1,361), Act 3 (558) - **Randall**: Act 1 (69), Act 2 (826), Act 3 (38) - **The Burglar**: Act 2 (717), Act 3 (32) - **The Captain**: Act 1 (674) ## The longest speeches | Speech | Scene | Words | Lines | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Mangan: “Of course you don’t understand: what do you know about business? You just listen and learn. Your father’s business was a new business; and I don’t start new businesses: I let other fellows start them. They put all their money and their friends’ money into starting them. They wear out their souls and bodies trying to make a success of them. They’re what you call enthusiasts. But the first dead lift of the thing is too much for them; and they haven’t enough financial experience. In a year or so they have either to let the whole show go bust, or sell out to a new lot of fellows for a few deferred ordinary shares: that is, if they’re lucky enough to get anything at all. As likely as not the very same thing happens to the new lot. They put in more money and a couple of years’ more work; and then perhaps they have to sell out to a third lot. If it’s really a big thing the third lot will have to sell out too, and leave their work and their money behind them. And that’s where the real business man comes in: where I come in. But I’m cleverer than some: I don’t mind dropping a little money to start the process. I took your father’s measure. I saw that he had a sound idea, and that he would work himself silly for it if he got the chance. I saw that he was a child in business, and was dead certain to outrun his expenses and be in too great a hurry to wait for his market. I knew that the surest way to ruin a man who doesn’t know how to handle money is to give him some. I explained my idea to some friends in the city, and they found the money; for I take no risks in ideas, even when they’re my own. Your father and the friends that ventured their money with him were no more to me than a heap of squeezed lemons. You’ve been wasting your gratitude: my kind heart is all rot. I’m sick of it. When I see your father beaming at me with his moist, grateful eyes, regularly wallowing in gratitude, I sometimes feel I must tell him the truth or burst. What stops me is that I know he wouldn’t believe me. He’d think it was my modesty, as you did just now. He’d think anything rather than the truth, which is that he’s a blamed fool, and I am a man that knows how to take care of himself. Now what do you think of me, Miss Ellie?” | Act 2 | 444 | 45 | | Lady Utterword: “I know what you must feel. Oh, this house, this house! I come back to it after twenty-three years; and it is just the same: the luggage lying on the steps, the servants spoilt and impossible, nobody at home to receive anybody, no regular meals, nobody ever hungry because they are always gnawing bread and butter or munching apples, and, what is worse, the same disorder in ideas, in talk, in feeling. When I was a child I was used to it: I had never known anything better, though I was unhappy, and longed all the time—oh, how I longed!—to be respectable, to be a lady, to live as others did, not to have to think of everything for myself. I married at nineteen to escape from it. My husband is Sir Hastings Utterword, who has been governor of all the crown colonies in succession. I have always been the mistress of Government House. I have been so happy: I had forgotten that people could live like this. I wanted to see my father, my sister, my nephews and nieces (one ought to, you know), and I was looking forward to it. And now the state of the house! the way I’m received! the casual impudence of that woman Guinness, our old nurse! really Hesione might at least have been here: some preparation might have been made for me. You must excuse my going on in this way; but I am really very much hurt and annoyed and disillusioned: and if I had realized it was to be like this, I wouldn’t have come. I have a great mind to go away without another word.” | Act 1 | 277 | 28 | | Captain Shotover: “A man’s interest in the world is only the overflow from his interest in himself. When you are a child your vessel is not yet full; so you care for nothing but your own affairs. When you grow up, your vessel overflows; and you are a politician, a philosopher, or an explorer and adventurer. In old age the vessel dries up: there is no overflow: you are a child again. I can give you the memories of my ancient wisdom: mere scraps and leavings; but I no longer really care for anything but my own little wants and hobbies. I sit here working out my old ideas as a means of destroying my fellow-creatures. I see my daughters and their men living foolish lives of romance and sentiment and snobbery. I see you, the younger generation, turning from their romance and sentiment and snobbery to money and comfort and hard common sense. I was ten times happier on the bridge in the typhoon, or frozen into Arctic ice for months in darkness, than you or they have ever been. You are looking for a rich husband. At your age I looked for hardship, danger, horror, and death, that I might feel the life in me more intensely. I did not let the fear of death govern my life; and my reward was, I had my life. You are going to let the fear of poverty govern your life; and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.” | Act 2 | 252 | 26 | | Captain Shotover: “No: I dread being drunk more than anything in the world. To be drunk means to have dreams; to go soft; to be easily pleased and deceived; to fall into the clutches of women. Drink does that for you when you are young. But when you are old: very very old, like me, the dreams come by themselves. You don’t know how terrible that is: you are young: you sleep at night only, and sleep soundly. But later on you will sleep in the afternoon. Later still you will sleep even in the morning; and you will awake tired, tired of life. You will never be free from dozing and dreams; the dreams will steal upon your work every ten minutes unless you can awaken yourself with rum. I drink now to keep sober; but the dreams are conquering: rum is not what it was: I have had ten glasses since you came; and it might be so much water. Go get me another: Guinness knows where it is. You had better see for yourself the horror of an old man drinking.” | Act 2 | 182 | 19 | | Mangan: “Wake up! So you think I’ve been asleep, do you? You throw me into a trance so that I can’t move hand or foot—I might have been buried alive! it’s a mercy I wasn’t—and then you think I was only asleep. If you’d let me drop the two times you rolled me about, my nose would have been flattened for life against the floor. But I’ve found you all out, anyhow. I know the sort of people I’m among now. I’ve heard every word you’ve said, you and your precious father, and you too. So I’m an object, am I? I’m a thing, am I? I’m a fool that hasn’t sense enough to feed myself properly, am I? I’m afraid of the men that would starve if it weren’t for the wages I give them, am I? I’m nothing but a disgusting old skinflint to be made a convenience of by designing women and fool managers of my works, am I? I’m—” | Act 2 | 164 | 17 | | Mazzini: “No: I’m no good at making money. I don’t care enough for it, somehow. I’m not ambitious! that must be it. Mangan is wonderful about money: he thinks of nothing else. He is so dreadfully afraid of being poor. I am always thinking of other things: even at the works I think of the things we are doing and not of what they cost. And the worst of it is, poor Mangan doesn’t know what to do with his money when he gets it. He is such a baby that he doesn’t know even what to eat and drink: he has ruined his liver eating and drinking the wrong things; and now he can hardly eat at all. Ellie will diet him splendidly. You will be surprised when you come to know him better: he is really the most helpless of mortals. You get quite a protective feeling towards him.” | Act 2 | 150 | 15 | | Lady Utterword: “Yes: horses. Why have we never been able to let this house? Because there are no proper stables. Go anywhere in England where there are natural, wholesome, contented, and really nice English people; and what do you always find? That the stables are the real centre of the household; and that if any visitor wants to play the piano the whole room has to be upset before it can be opened, there are so many things piled on it. I never lived until I learned to ride; and I shall never ride really well because I didn’t begin as a child. There are only two classes in good society in England: the equestrian classes and the neurotic classes. It isn’t mere convention: everybody can see that the people who hunt are the right people and the people who don’t are the wrong ones.” | Act 3 | 143 | 15 | | Lady Utterword: “Why is Randall such an obvious rotter? He is well bred; he has been at a public school and a university; he has been in the Foreign Office; he knows the best people and has lived all his life among them. Why is he so unsatisfactory, so contemptible? Why can’t he get a valet to stay with him longer than a few months? Just because he is too lazy and pleasure-loving to hunt and shoot. He strums the piano, and sketches, and runs after married women, and reads literary books and poems. He actually plays the flute; but I never let him bring it into my house. If he would only— Randall: you have not gone to bed. Have you been listening?” | Act 3 | 140 | 14 | | Ellie: “I suppose you think you’re being sympathetic. You are just foolish and stupid and selfish. You see me getting a smasher right in the face that kills a whole part of my life: the best part that can never come again; and you think you can help me over it by a little coaxing and kissing. When I want all the strength I can get to lean on: something iron, something stony, I don’t care how cruel it is, you go all mushy and want to slobber over me. I’m not angry; I’m not unfriendly; but for God’s sake do pull yourself together; and don’t think that because you’re on velvet and always have been, women who are in hell can take it as easily as you.” | Act 2 | 127 | 13 | | Ellie: “Oh, that was years after, quite lately. He took the chair one night at a sort of people’s concert. I was singing there. As an amateur, you know: half a guinea for expenses and three songs with three encores. He was so pleased with my singing that he asked might he walk home with me. I never saw anyone so taken aback as he was when I took him home and introduced him to my father, his own manager. It was then that my father told me how nobly he had behaved. Of course it was considered a great chance for me, as he is so rich. And—and—we drifted into a sort of understanding—I suppose I should call it an engagement—” | Act 1 | 124 | 13 | ## 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. - The Burglar and The Captain - The Burglar and The Gentleman - The Burglar and The Young Lady - The Burglar and The Man - The Burglar and The Womanservant - The Burglar and Nurse - The Burglar and Dunn - The Burglar and Mrs. Hubhabye - The Burglar and A Woman’s Voice - The Burglar and Ladt Utterword - The Burglar and Mrs. Hushaye - The Burglar and Lady Utterorrd ## Questions actors ask ### Who has the most lines in Heartbreak House? Ellie, with about 610 lines and 4,943 words, 18.8% of everything spoken in the play. Mrs. Hushabye is next, with about 554 lines (16.8%). ### How long is Heartbreak House? The full text has 26,316 spoken words, about 188 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 Heartbreak House? 27 named roles speak in this edition, across 3 scenes. 17 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/heartbreak-house) (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).