# Mrs. Warren’s Profession: every role by lines, words, and stage time

> George Bernard Shaw. 10 speaking roles, 17,851 words, about 128 minutes of speech.

- URL: https://www.offbook.com/plays/mrs-warrens-profession
- Last updated: 2026-10-08

**Vivie** has the most to say in Mrs. Warren’s Profession: about 586 lines and 4,803 words, 26.9% of the play. Mrs. Warren’s Profession sets a clever, independent young woman against the mother whose fortune comes from a shocking trade. Vivie and Mrs. Warren share the lead almost equally, each with over a quarter of the words, and both speak in every act. Frank adds about a fifth, while Crofts is absent from Act 4.

- Speaking roles: 10
- Scenes: 4
- Words: 17,851
- Speech time: 128 min

## Every role, largest first

| Role | Lines | Words | Share | Minutes | Scenes |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Vivie | 586 | 4,803 | 26.9% | 34.3 | 4 |
| Mrs. Warren | 524 | 4,699 | 26.3% | 33.6 | 4 |
| Frank | 460 | 3,798 | 21.3% | 27.1 | 4 |
| Crofts | 234 | 2,003 | 11.2% | 14.3 | 3 |
| Praed | 227 | 1,784 | 10% | 12.7 | 4 |
| Rev. S. | 94 | 717 | 4% | 5.1 | 3 |
| The Gentleman | 5 | 39 | 0.2% | 0.3 | 1 |
| The Young Lady | 2 | 5 | 0% | 0.0 | 1 |
| The Young Gentleman | 1 | 2 | 0% | 0.0 | 1 |
| The Clergyman | 1 | 1 | 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; Act 4 = Act 4.

- **Vivie**: Act 1 (1,205), Act 2 (1,200), Act 3 (723), Act 4 (1,675)
- **Mrs. Warren**: Act 1 (359), Act 2 (2,948), Act 3 (37), Act 4 (1,355)
- **Frank**: Act 1 (549), Act 2 (686), Act 3 (1,301), Act 4 (1,262)
- **Crofts**: Act 1 (301), Act 2 (313), Act 3 (1,389)
- **Praed**: Act 1 (1,189), Act 2 (41), Act 3 (89), Act 4 (465)
- **Rev. S.**: Act 1 (267), Act 2 (189), Act 3 (261)

## The longest speeches

| Speech | Scene | Words | Lines |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Mrs. Warren: “I mean that you’re throwing away all your chances for nothing. You think that people are what they pretend to be—that the way you were taught at school and college to think right and proper is the way things really are. But it’s not: it’s all only a pretence, to keep the cowardly, slavish, common run of people quiet. Do you want to find that out, like other women, at forty, when you’ve thrown yourself away and lost your chances; or won’t you take it in good time now from your own mother, that loves you and swears to you that it’s truth—gospel truth? Vivie: the big people, the clever people, the managing people, all know it. They do as I do, and think what I think. I know plenty of them. I know them to speak to, to introduce you to, to make friends of for you. I don’t mean anything wrong: that’s what you don’t understand: your head is full of ignorant ideas about me. What do the people that taught you know about life or about people like me? When did they ever meet me, or speak to me, or let anyone tell them about me?—the fools! Would they ever have done anything for you if I hadn’t paid them? Haven’t I told you that I want you to be respectable? Haven’t I brought you up to be respectable? And how can you keep it up without my money and my influence and Lizzie’s friends? Can’t you see that you’re cutting your own throat as well as breaking my heart in turning your back on me?” | Act 4 | 272 | 28 |
| Mrs. Warren: “Well, of course, dearie, it’s only good manners to be ashamed of it; it’s expected from a woman. Women have to pretend to feel a great deal that they don’t feel. Liz used to be angry with me for plumping out the truth about it. She used to say that when every woman could learn enough from what was going on in the world before her eyes, there was no need to talk about it to her. But then Liz was such a perfect lady! She had the true instinct of it; while I was always a bit of a vulgarian. I used to be so pleased when you sent me your photos to see that you were growing up like Liz: you’ve just her ladylike, determined way. But I can’t stand saying one thing when everyone knows I mean another. What’s the use in such hypocrisy? If people arrange the world that way for women, there’s no good pretending that it’s arranged the other way. I never was a bit ashamed really. I consider I had a right to be proud of how we managed everything so respectably, and never had a word against us, and that the girls were so well taken care of. Some of them did very well: one of them married an ambassador. But of course now I daren’t talk about such things: whatever would they think of us! Oh dear! I do believe I’m getting sleepy after all.” | Act 2 | 244 | 25 |
| Mrs. Warren: “Yes: and a very good aunt to have, too. She’s living down at Winchester now, close to the cathedral, one of the most respectable ladies there—chaperones girls at the county ball, if you please. No river for Liz, thank you! You remind me of Liz a little: she was a first-rate business woman—saved money from the beginning—never let herself look too like what she was—never lost her head or threw away a chance. When she saw I’d grown up good-looking she said to me across the bar: “What are you doing there, you little fool? wearing out your health and your appearance for other people’s profit!” Liz was saving money then to take a house for herself in Brussels: and she thought we two could save faster than one. So she lent me some money and gave me a start; and I saved steadily and first paid her back, and then went into business with her as her partner. Why shouldn’t I have done it? The house in Brussels was real high class—a much better place for a woman to be in than the factory where Anne Jane got poisoned. None of our girls were ever treated as I was treated in the scullery of that temperance place, or at the Waterloo bar, or at home. Would you have had me stay in them and become a worn out old drudge before I was forty?” | Act 2 | 240 | 24 |
| Mrs. Warren: “Of course not. What sort of mother do you take me for! How could you keep your self-respect in such starvation and slavery? And what’s a woman worth? what’s life worth? without self-respect! Why am I independent and able to give my daughter a first-rate education, when other women that had just as good opportunities are in the gutter? Because I always knew how to respect myself and control myself. Why is Liz looked up to in a cathedral town? The same reason. Where would we be now if we’d minded the clergyman’s foolishness? Scrubbing floors for one and sixpence a day and nothing to look forward to but the workhouse infirmary. 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. That’s all the difference.” | Act 2 | 218 | 22 |
| Mrs. Warren: “Liz didn’t, I can tell you: she had more spirit. We both went to a church school—that was part of the ladylike airs we gave ourselves to be superior to the children that knew nothing and went nowhere—and we stayed there until Liz went out one night and never came back. I know the schoolmistress thought I’d soon follow her example; for the clergyman was always warning me that Lizzie’d end by jumping off Waterloo Bridge. Poor fool: that was all he knew about it! But I was more afraid of the white lead factory than I was of the river; and so would you have been in my place. That clergyman got me a situation as scullery maid in a temperance restaurant where they sent out for anything you liked. Then I was waitress; and then I went to the bar at Waterloo station—fourteen hours a day serving drinks and washing glasses for four shillings a week and my board. That was considered a great promotion for me. Well, one cold, wretched night, when I was so tired I could hardly keep myself awake, who should come up for a half of Scotch but Lizzie, in a long fur cloak, elegant and comfortable, with a lot of sovereigns in her purse.” | Act 2 | 215 | 22 |
| Vivie: “It would not matter if you did: you would not succeed. Mother: you don’t at all know the sort of person I am. I don’t object to Crofts more than to any other coarsely built man of his class. To tell you the truth, I rather admire him for being strong-minded enough to enjoy himself in his own way and make plenty of money instead of living the usual shooting, hunting, dining-out, tailoring, loafing life of his set merely because all the rest do it. And I’m perfectly aware that if I’d been in the same circumstances as my aunt Liz, I’d have done exactly what she did. I don’t think I’m more prejudiced or straitlaced than you: I think I’m less. I’m certain I’m less sentimental. I know very well that fashionable morality is all a pretence: and that if I took your money and devoted the rest of my life to spending it fashionably, I might be as worthless and vicious as the silliest woman could possibly be without having a word said to me about it. But I don’t want to be worthless. I shouldn’t enjoy trotting about the park to advertise my dressmaker and carriage builder, or being bored at the opera to show off a shopwindowful of diamonds.” | Act 4 | 213 | 22 |
| Crofts: “Ha, ha, ha, ha! Go it, little missie, go it: it doesn’t hurt me and it amuses you. Why the devil shouldn’t I invest my money that way? I take the interest on my capital like other people: I hope you don’t think I dirty my own hands with the work. Come: you wouldn’t refuse the acquaintance of my mother’s cousin the Duke of Belgravia, because some of the rents he gets are earned in queer ways. You wouldn’t cut the Archbishop of Canterbury, I suppose, because the Ecclesiastical Commissioners have a few publicans and sinners among their tenants? Do you remember your Crofts scholarship at Newnham? Well, that was founded by my brother the M.P. He gets his twenty-two percent out of a factory with six hundred girls in it, and not one of them getting wages enough to live on. How d’ye suppose they manage? Ask your mother. And do you expect me to turn my back on thirty-five percent when all the rest are pocketing what they can, like sensible men? No such fool! If you’re going to pick and choose your acquaintances on moral principles, you’d better clear out of this country, unless you want to cut yourself out of all decent society.” | Act 3 | 208 | 21 |
| Mrs. Warren: “No, you don’t. I do. She called herself a widow and had a fried-fish shop down by the Mint, and kept herself and four daughters out of it. Two of us were sisters: that was me and Liz; and we were both good-looking and well made. I suppose our father was a well-fed man: mother pretended he was a gentleman; but I don’t know. The other two were only half sisters—undersized, ugly, starved looking, hardworking, honest poor creatures: Liz and I would have half-murdered them if mother hadn’t half-murdered us to keep our hands off them. They were the respectable ones. Well, what did they get by their respectability? I’ll tell you. One of them worked in a white lead factory twelve hours a day for nine shillings a week until she died of lead poisoning. She only expected to get her hands a little paralyzed; but she died. The other was always held up to us as a model because she married a Government laborer in the Deptford victualling yard, and kept his room and the three children neat and tidy on eighteen shillings a week—until he took to drink. That was worth being respectable for, wasn’t it?” | Act 2 | 201 | 21 |
| Mrs. Warren: “Oh, it’s all very easy for Liz: she likes good society, and has the air of being a lady. Imagine me in a cathedral town! Why, the very rooks in the trees would find me out even if I could stand the dullness of it. I must have work and excitement, or I should go melancholy mad. And what else is there for me to do? The life suits me: I’m fit for it and not for anything else. If I didn’t do it somebody else would; so I don’t do any real harm by it. And then it brings in money; and I like making money. No: it’s no use: I can’t give it up—not for anybody. But what need you know about it? I’ll never mention it. I’ll keep Crofts away. I’ll not trouble you much: you see I have to be constantly running about from one place to another. You’ll be quit of me altogether when I die.” | Act 4 | 162 | 17 |
| Mrs. Warren: “But you don’t know all that that means: you’re too young. It means a new dress every day; it means theatres and balls every night; it means having the pick of all the gentlemen in Europe at your feet; it means a lovely house and plenty of servants; it means the choicest of eating and drinking; it means everything you like, everything you want, everything you can think of. And what are you here? A mere drudge, toiling and moiling early and late for your bare living and two cheap dresses a year. Think over it. You’re shocked, I know. I can enter into your feelings; and I think they do you credit; but trust me, nobody will blame you: you may take my word for that. I know what young girls are; and I know you’ll think better of it when you’ve turned it over in your mind.” | Act 4 | 149 | 15 |

## Questions actors ask

### Who has the most lines in Mrs. Warren’s Profession?

Vivie, with about 586 lines and 4,803 words, 26.9% of everything spoken in the play. Mrs. Warren is next, with about 524 lines (26.3%).

### How long is Mrs. Warren’s Profession?

The full text has 17,851 spoken words, about 128 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 Mrs. Warren’s Profession?

10 named roles speak in this edition, across 4 scenes. 4 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/mrs-warrens-profession) (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).