# Lady Windermere’s Fan: every role by lines, words, and stage time

> Oscar Wilde. 16 speaking roles, 15,938 words, about 114 minutes of speech.

- URL: https://www.offbook.com/plays/lady-windermeres-fan
- Last updated: 2026-10-08

**Lady Windermere** has the most to say in Lady Windermere’s Fan: about 468 lines and 3,800 words, 23.8% of the play. Wilde’s play follows a young wife who suspects her husband of an affair with the mysterious Mrs. Erlynne. Lady Windermere and Mrs. Erlynne are nearly equal, with about 24% and 22% of the words. Mrs. Erlynne does not speak until Act 2, so her part is concentrated in the last three acts.

- Speaking roles: 16
- Scenes: 4
- Words: 15,938
- Speech time: 114 min

## Every role, largest first

| Role | Lines | Words | Share | Minutes | Scenes |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Lady Windermere | 468 | 3,800 | 23.8% | 27.1 | 4 |
| Mrs. Erlynne | 401 | 3,552 | 22.3% | 25.4 | 3 |
| Lord Windermere | 266 | 2,057 | 12.9% | 14.7 | 4 |
| The Duchess of Berwick | 217 | 1,961 | 12.3% | 14.0 | 2 |
| Lord Darlington | 205 | 1,653 | 10.4% | 11.8 | 3 |
| Cecil Graham | 112 | 884 | 5.5% | 6.3 | 2 |
| Lord Augustus | 92 | 734 | 4.6% | 5.2 | 3 |
| Dumby | 71 | 546 | 3.4% | 3.9 | 2 |
| Lady Plymdale | 34 | 303 | 1.9% | 2.2 | 1 |
| Parker | 28 | 162 | 1% | 1.2 | 3 |
| Hopper | 17 | 109 | 0.7% | 0.8 | 1 |
| Rosalie | 9 | 79 | 0.5% | 0.6 | 1 |
| Lady Jedburgh | 6 | 45 | 0.3% | 0.3 | 1 |
| Lady Agatha | 13 | 26 | 0.2% | 0.2 | 2 |
| Mr. Cowper-Cowper | 2 | 15 | 0.1% | 0.1 | 1 |
| Lady Stutfield | 2 | 12 | 0.1% | 0.1 | 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; Act 4 = Act 4.

- **Lady Windermere**: Act 1 (1,495), Act 2 (387), Act 3 (846), Act 4 (1,072)
- **Mrs. Erlynne**: Act 2 (1,150), Act 3 (1,042), Act 4 (1,360)
- **Lord Windermere**: Act 1 (625), Act 2 (226), Act 3 (209), Act 4 (997)
- **The Duchess of Berwick**: Act 1 (1,366), Act 2 (595)
- **Lord Darlington**: Act 1 (747), Act 2 (675), Act 3 (231)
- **Cecil Graham**: Act 2 (202), Act 3 (682)
- **Lord Augustus**: Act 2 (360), Act 3 (211), Act 4 (163)
- **Dumby**: Act 2 (177), Act 3 (369)

## The longest speeches

| Speech | Scene | Words | Lines |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Mrs. Erlynne: “Believe what you choose about me. I am not worth a moment’s sorrow. But don’t spoil your beautiful young life on my account! You don’t know what may be in store for you, unless you leave this house at once. You don’t know what it is to fall into the pit, to be despised, mocked, abandoned, sneered at—to be an outcast! to find the door shut against one, to have to creep in by hideous byways, afraid every moment lest the mask should be stripped from one’s face, and all the while to hear the laughter, the horrible laughter of the world, a thing more tragic than all the tears the world has ever shed. You don’t know what it is. One pays for one’s sin, and then one pays again, and all one’s life one pays. You must never know that.—As for me, if suffering be an expiation, then at this moment I have expiated all my faults, whatever they have been; for tonight you have made a heart in one who had it not, made it and broken it.—But let that pass. I may have wrecked my own life, but I will not let you wreck yours. You—why, you are a mere girl, you would be lost. You haven’t got the kind of brains that enables a woman to get back. You have neither the wit nor the courage. You couldn’t stand dishonour! No! Go back, Lady Windermere, to the husband who loves you, whom you love. You have a child, Lady Windermere. Go back to that child who even now, in pain or in joy, may be calling to you. God gave you that child. He will require from you that you make his life fine, that you watch over him. What answer will you make to God if his life is ruined through you? Back to your house, Lady Windermere—your husband loves you! He has never swerved for a moment from the love he bears you. But even if he had a thousand loves, you must stay with your child. If he was harsh to you, you must stay with your child. If he ill-treated you, you must stay with your child. If he abandoned you, your place is with your child.” | Act 3 | 383 | 39 |
| Lady Windermere: “Why doesn’t he come? This waiting is horrible. He should be here. Why is he not here, to wake by passionate words some fire within me? I am cold—cold as a loveless thing. Arthur must have read my letter by this time. If he cared for me, he would have come after me, would have taken me back by force. But he doesn’t care. He’s entrammelled by this woman—fascinated by her—dominated by her. If a woman wants to hold a man, she has merely to appeal to what is worst in him. We make gods of men and they leave us. Others make brutes of them and they fawn and are faithful. How hideous life is! … Oh! it was mad of me to come here, horribly mad. And yet, which is the worst, I wonder, to be at the mercy of a man who loves one, or the wife of a man who in one’s own house dishonours one? What woman knows? What woman in the whole world? But will he love me always, this man to whom I am giving my life? What do I bring him? Lips that have lost the note of joy, eyes that are blinded by tears, chill hands and icy heart. I bring him nothing. I must go back—no; I can’t go back, my letter has put me in their power—Arthur would not take me back! That fatal letter! No! Lord Darlington leaves England tomorrow. I will go with him—I have no choice. No, no! I will go back, let Arthur do with me what he pleases. I can’t wait here. It has been madness my coming. I must go at once. As for Lord Darlington—Oh! here he is! What shall I do? What can I say to him? Will he let me go away at all? I have heard that men are brutal, horrible … Oh!” | Act 3 | 319 | 32 |
| The Duchess of Berwick: “Ah, what indeed, dear? That is the point. He goes to see her continually, and stops for hours at a time, and while he is there she is not at home to anyone. Not that many ladies call on her, dear, but she has a great many disreputable men friends—my own brother particularly, as I told you—and that is what makes it so dreadful about Windermere. We looked upon him as being such a model husband, but I am afraid there is no doubt about it. My dear nieces—you know the Saville girls, don’t you?—such nice domestic creatures—plain, dreadfully plain, but so good—well, they’re always at the window doing fancy work, and making ugly things for the poor, which I think so useful of them in these dreadful socialistic days, and this terrible woman has taken a house in Curzon Street, right opposite them—such a respectable street, too! I don’t know what we’re coming to! And they tell me that Windermere goes there four and five times a week—they see him. They can’t help it—and although they never talk scandal, they—well, of course—they remark on it to everyone. And the worst of it all is that I have been told that this woman has got a great deal of money out of somebody, for it seems that she came to London six months ago without anything at all to speak of, and now she has this charming house in Mayfair, drives her ponies in the Park every afternoon and all—well, all—since she has known poor dear Windermere.” | Act 1 | 270 | 27 |
| Mrs. Erlynne: “To bid goodbye to my dear daughter, of course. Oh, don’t imagine I am going to have a pathetic scene with her, weep on her neck and tell her who I am, and all that kind of thing. I have no ambition to play the part of a mother. Only once in my life have I known a mother’s feelings. That was last night. They were terrible—they made me suffer—they made me suffer too much. For twenty years, as you say, I have lived childless—I want to live childless still. Besides, my dear Windermere, how on earth could I pose as a mother with a grown-up daughter? Margaret is twenty-one, and I have never admitted that I am more than twenty-nine, or thirty at the most. Twenty-nine when there are pink shades, thirty when there are not. So you see what difficulties it would involve. No, as far as I am concerned, let your wife cherish the memory of this dead, stainless mother. Why should I interfere with her illusions? I find it hard enough to keep my own. I lost one illusion last night. I thought I had no heart. I find I have, and a heart doesn’t suit me, Windermere. Somehow it doesn’t go with modern dress. It makes one look old. And it spoils one’s career at critical moments.” | Act 4 | 225 | 23 |
| Lord Windermere: “I sometimes wish you had. I should have been spared then the misery, the anxiety, the annoyance of the last six months. But rather than my wife should know—that the mother whom she was taught to consider as dead, the mother whom she has mourned as dead, is living—a divorced woman, going about under an assumed name, a bad woman preying upon life, as I know you now to be—rather than that, I was ready to supply you with money to pay bill after bill, extravagance after extravagance, to risk what occurred yesterday, the first quarrel I have ever had with my wife. You don’t understand what that means to me. How could you? But I tell you that the only bitter words that ever came from those sweet lips of hers were on your account, and I hate to see you next her. You sully the innocence that is in her. And then I used to think that with all your faults you were frank and honest. You are not.” | Act 4 | 174 | 18 |
| Lady Windermere: “She is sure to tell him. I can fancy a person doing a wonderful act of self-sacrifice, doing it spontaneously, recklessly, nobly—and afterwards finding out that it costs too much. Why should she hesitate between her ruin and mine? … How strange! I would have publicly disgraced her in my own house. She accepts public disgrace in the house of another to save me. … There is a bitter irony in things, a bitter irony in the way we talk of good and bad women. … Oh, what a lesson! and what a pity that in life we only get our lessons when they are of no use to us! For even if she doesn’t tell, I must. Oh! the shame of it, the shame of it. To tell it is to live through it all again. Actions are the first tragedy in life, words are the second. Words are perhaps the worst. Words are merciless. … Oh!” | Act 4 | 155 | 16 |
| Lord Darlington: “Yes; you have the courage. There may be six months of pain, of disgrace even, but when you no longer bear his name, when you bear mine, all will be well. Margaret, my love, my wife that shall be some day—yes, my wife! You know it! What are you now? This woman has the place that belongs by right to you. Oh! go—go out of this house, with head erect, with a smile upon your lips, with courage in your eyes. All London will know why you did it; and who will blame you? No one. If they do, what matter? Wrong? What is wrong? It’s wrong for a man to abandon his wife for a shameless woman. It is wrong for a wife to remain with a man who so dishonours her. You said once you would make no compromise with things. Make none now. Be brave! Be yourself!” | Act 2 | 152 | 16 |
| Mrs. Erlynne: “No; you see, tomorrow I am going to accept him. And I think it would be a good thing if I was able to tell him that I had—well, what shall I say?—£2,000 a year left to me by a third cousin—or a second husband—or some distant relative of that kind. It would be an additional attraction, wouldn’t it? You have a delightful opportunity now of paying me a compliment, Windermere. But you are not very clever at paying compliments. I am afraid Margaret doesn’t encourage you in that excellent habit. It’s a great mistake on her part. When men give up saying what is charming, they give up thinking what is charming. But seriously, what do you say to £2,000? £2,500, I think. In modern life margin is everything. Windermere, don’t you think the world an intensely amusing place? I do!” | Act 2 | 149 | 15 |
| The Duchess of Berwick: “Come and bid goodbye to Lady Windermere, and thank her for your charming visit. And by the way, I must thank you for sending a card to Mr. Hopper—he’s that rich young Australian people are taking such notice of just at present. His father made a great fortune by selling some kind of food in circular tins—most palatable, I believe—I fancy it is the thing the servants always refuse to eat. But the son is quite interesting. I think he’s attracted by dear Agatha’s clever talk. Of course, we should be very sorry to lose her, but I think that a mother who doesn’t part with a daughter every season has no real affection. We’re coming tonight, dear. And remember my advice, take the poor fellow out of town at once, it is the only thing to do. Goodbye, once more; come, Agatha.” | Act 1 | 146 | 15 |
| The Duchess of Berwick: “Yes, we begin like that. It was only Berwick’s brutal and incessant threats of suicide that made me accept him at all, and before the year was out, he was running after all kinds of petticoats, every colour, every shape, every material. In fact, before the honeymoon was over, I caught him winking at my maid, a most pretty, respectable girl. I dismissed her at once without a character.—No, I remember I passed her on to my sister; poor dear Sir George is so shortsighted, I thought it wouldn’t matter. But it did, though—it was most unfortunate. And now, my dear child, I must go, as we are dining out. And mind you don’t take this little aberration of Windermere’s too much to heart. Just take him abroad, and he’ll come back to you all right.” | Act 1 | 138 | 14 |

## 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.

- Dumby and Rosalie
- Lady Plymdale and Rosalie
- Hopper and Rosalie
- Rosalie and Lady Jedburgh
- Rosalie and Lady Agatha
- Rosalie and Mr. Cowper-Cowper
- Rosalie and Lady Stutfield

## Questions actors ask

### Who has the most lines in Lady Windermere’s Fan?

Lady Windermere, with about 468 lines and 3,800 words, 23.8% of everything spoken in the play. Mrs. Erlynne is next, with about 401 lines (22.3%).

### How long is Lady Windermere’s Fan?

The full text has 15,938 spoken words, about 114 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 Lady Windermere’s Fan?

16 named roles speak in this edition, across 4 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/oscar-wilde/lady-windermeres-fan) (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).