# Saint Joan: every role by lines, words, and stage time

> George Bernard Shaw. 33 speaking roles, 29,687 words, about 212 minutes of speech.

- URL: https://www.offbook.com/plays/saint-joan
- Last updated: 2026-10-08

**Joan** has the most to say in Saint Joan: about 761 lines and 6,487 words, 21.9% of the play. Saint Joan follows Joan of Arc from her first victories to her trial, with an epilogue years later. Joan has about a fifth of the words and speaks in every section but Scene 4. The other roles are concentrated: Cauchon and The Inquisitor carry the trial, and Robert speaks only in Scene 1.

- Speaking roles: 33
- Scenes: 7
- Words: 29,687
- Speech time: 212 min

## Every role, largest first

| Role | Lines | Words | Share | Minutes | Scenes |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Joan | 761 | 6,487 | 21.9% | 46.3 | 6 |
| Cauchon | 406 | 3,536 | 11.9% | 25.3 | 3 |
| The Inquisitor | 262 | 2,403 | 8.1% | 17.2 | 2 |
| Charles | 268 | 2,189 | 7.4% | 15.6 | 3 |
| Warwick | 249 | 2,104 | 7.1% | 15.0 | 3 |
| Dunois | 237 | 2,005 | 6.8% | 14.3 | 3 |
| Robert | 201 | 1,632 | 5.5% | 11.7 | 1 |
| The Archbishop | 178 | 1,516 | 5.1% | 10.8 | 3 |
| The Chaplain | 170 | 1,441 | 4.9% | 10.3 | 2 |
| Ladvenu | 146 | 1,263 | 4.3% | 9.0 | 2 |
| La Hire | 63 | 520 | 1.8% | 3.7 | 2 |
| The Soldier | 58 | 510 | 1.7% | 3.6 | 1 |
| D’estivet | 51 | 437 | 1.5% | 3.1 | 1 |
| Poulengey | 53 | 437 | 1.5% | 3.1 | 1 |
| The Nobleman | 49 | 434 | 1.5% | 3.1 | 1 |
| La Trémouille | 53 | 398 | 1.3% | 2.8 | 1 |
| Steward | 53 | 388 | 1.3% | 2.8 | 1 |
| The Gentleman | 40 | 341 | 1.1% | 2.4 | 1 |
| Bluebeard | 42 | 331 | 1.1% | 2.4 | 2 |
| De Stogumber | 36 | 325 | 1.1% | 2.3 | 1 |
| Courcelles | 37 | 283 | 1% | 2.0 | 1 |
| The Page | 37 | 233 | 0.8% | 1.7 | 4 |
| The Executioner | 24 | 203 | 0.7% | 1.5 | 2 |
| The Assessors | 14 | 121 | 0.4% | 0.9 | 1 |
| The Newcomer | 10 | 95 | 0.3% | 0.7 | 1 |
| Joan’s Voice | 4 | 25 | 0.1% | 0.2 | 3 |
| The Duchess | 2 | 11 | 0% | 0.1 | 1 |
| A Girl’s Voice | 1 | 4 | 0% | 0.0 | 1 |
| A Sentry’s Voice Westward | 1 | 4 | 0% | 0.0 | 1 |
| The Dauphin | 1 | 3 | 0% | 0.0 | 1 |
| The Voice | 1 | 3 | 0% | 0.0 | 1 |
| All the Knights | 1 | 2 | 0% | 0.0 | 1 |
| All the Others | 1 | 1 | 0% | 0.0 | 1 |

## Who speaks in which scene

Words each role speaks in each scene (scene: words). Scenes: 1 = Scene 1; 2 = Scene 2; 3 = Scene 3; 4 = Scene 4; 5 = Scene 5; 6 = Scene 6; Epi = Epilogue.

- **Joan**: 1 (1,002), 2 (745), 3 (576), 5 (1,790), 6 (1,569), Epi (805)
- **Cauchon**: 4 (1,971), 6 (1,238), Epi (327)
- **The Inquisitor**: 6 (2,348), Epi (55)
- **Charles**: 2 (1,156), 5 (284), Epi (749)
- **Warwick**: 4 (1,280), 6 (642), Epi (182)
- **Dunois**: 3 (656), 5 (1,152), Epi (197)
- **Robert**: 1 (1,632)
- **The Archbishop**: 2 (931), 5 (528), Epi (57)
- **The Chaplain**: 4 (820), 6 (621)
- **Ladvenu**: 6 (923), Epi (340)

## The longest speeches

| Speech | Scene | Words | Lines |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| The Inquisitor: “Brother Martin: if you had seen what I have seen of heresy, you would not think it a light thing even in its most apparently harmless and even lovable and pious origins. Heresy begins with people who are to all appearance better than their neighbors. A gentle and pious girl, or a young man who has obeyed the command of our Lord by giving all his riches to the poor, and putting on the garb of poverty, the life of austerity, and the rule of humility and charity, may be the founder of a heresy that will wreck both Church and Empire if not ruthlessly stamped out in time. The records of the holy Inquisition are full of histories we dare not give to the world, because they are beyond the belief of honest men and innocent women; yet they all began with saintly simpletons. I have seen this again and again. Mark what I say: the woman who quarrels with her clothes, and puts on the dress of a man, is like the man who throws off his fur gown and dresses like John the Baptist: they are followed, as surely as the night follows the day, by bands of wild women and men who refuse to wear any clothes at all. When maids will neither marry nor take regular vows, and men reject marriage and exalt their lusts into divine inspirations, then, as surely as the summer follows the spring, they begin with polygamy, and end by incest. Heresy at first seems innocent and even laudable; but it ends in such a monstrous horror of unnatural wickedness that the most tenderhearted among you, if you saw it at work as I have seen it, would clamor against the mercy of the Church in dealing with it. For two hundred years the Holy Office has striven with these diabolical madnesses; and it knows that they begin always by vain and ignorant persons setting up their own judgment against the Church, and taking it upon themselves to be the interpreters of God’s will. You must not fall into the common error of mistaking these simpletons for liars and hypocrites. They believe honestly and sincerely that their diabolical inspiration is divine. Therefore you must be on your guard against your natural compassion. You are all, I hope, merciful men: how else could you have devoted your lives to the service of our gentle Savior? You are going to see before you a young girl, pious and chaste; for I must tell you, gentlemen, that the things said of her by our English friends are supported by no evidence, whilst there is abundant testimony that her excesses have been excesses of religion and charity and not of worldliness and wantonness. This girl is not one of those whose hard features are the sign of hard hearts, and whose brazen looks and lewd demeanor condemn them before they are accused. The devilish pride that has led her into her present peril has left no mark on her countenance. Strange as it may seem to you, it has even left no mark on her character outside those special matters in which she is proud; so that you will see a diabolical pride and a natural humility seated side by side in the selfsame soul. Therefore be on your guard. God forbid that I should tell you to harden your hearts; for her punishment if we condemn her will be so cruel that we should forfeit our own hope of divine mercy were there one grain of malice against her in our hearts. But if you hate cruelty—and if any man here does not hate it I command him on his soul’s salvation to quit this holy court—I say, if you hate cruelty, remember that nothing is so cruel in its consequences as the toleration of heresy. Remember also that no court of law can be so cruel as the common people are to those whom they suspect of heresy. The heretic in the hands of the Holy Office is safe from violence, is assured of a fair trial, and cannot suffer death, even when guilty, if repentance follows sin. Innumerable lives of heretics have been saved because the Holy Office has taken them out of the hands of the people, and because the people have yielded them up, knowing that the Holy Office would deal with them. Before the Holy Inquisition existed, and even now when its officers are not within reach, the unfortunate wretch suspected of heresy, perhaps quite ignorantly and unjustly, is stoned, torn in pieces, drowned, burned in his house with all his innocent children, without a trial, unshriven, unburied save as a dog is buried: all of them deeds hateful to God and most cruel to man. Gentlemen: I am compassionate by nature as well as by my profession; and though the work I have to do may seem cruel to those who do not know how much more cruel it would be to leave it undone, I would go to the stake myself sooner than do it if I did not know its righteousness, its necessity, its essential mercy. I ask you to address yourself to this trial in that conviction. Anger is a bad counsellor: cast out anger. Pity is sometimes a worse: cast out pity. But do not cast out mercy. Remember only that justice comes first. Have you anything to say, my lord, before we proceed to trial?” | Scene 6 | 914 | 92 |
| Cauchon: “Who has turned it? The devil. And for a mighty purpose. He is spreading this heresy everywhere. The man Hus, burnt only thirteen years ago at Constance, infected all Bohemia with it. A man named WcLeef, himself an anointed priest, spread the pestilence in England; and to your shame you let him die in his bed. We have such people here in France too: I know the breed. It is cancerous: if it be not cut out, stamped out, burnt out, it will not stop until it has brought the whole body of human society into sin and corruption, into waste and ruin. By it an Arab camel driver drove Christ and His Church out of Jerusalem, and ravaged his way west like a wild beast until at last there stood only the Pyrenees and God’s mercy between France and damnation. Yet what did the camel driver do at the beginning more than this shepherd girl is doing? He had his voices from the angel Gabriel: she has her voices from St. Catherine and St. Margaret and the Blessed Michael. He declared himself the messenger of God, and wrote in God’s name to the kings of the earth. Her letters to them are going forth daily. It is not the Mother of God now to whom we must look for intercession, but to Joan the Maid. What will the world be like when The Church’s accumulated wisdom and knowledge and experience, its councils of learned, venerable pious men, are thrust into the kennel by every ignorant laborer or dairymaid whom the devil can puff up with the monstrous self-conceit of being directly inspired from heaven? It will be a world of blood, of fury, of devastation, of each man striving for his own hand: in the end a world wrecked back into barbarism. For now you have only Muhammad and his dupes, and the Maid and her dupes; but what will it be when every girl thinks herself a Joan and every man a Muhammad? I shudder to the very marrow of my bones when I think of it. I have fought it all my life; and I will fight it to the end. Let all this woman’s sins be forgiven her except only this sin; for it is the sin against the Holy Ghost; and if she does not recant in the dust before the world, and submit herself to the last inch of her soul to her Church, to the fire she shall go if she once falls into my hand.” | Scene 4 | 423 | 43 |
| Joan: “Ah! if, if, if, if! If ifs and ans were pots and pans there’d be no need of tinkers. I tell you, Bastard, your art of war is no use, because your knights are no good for real fighting. War is only a game to them, like tennis and all their other games: they make rules as to what is fair and what is not fair, and heap armor on themselves and on their poor horses to keep out the arrows; and when they fall they can’t get up, and have to wait for their squires to come and lift them to arrange about the ransom with the man that has poked them off their horse. Can’t you see that all the like of that is gone by and done with? What use is armor against gunpowder? And if it was, do you think men that are fighting for France and for God will stop to bargain about ransoms, as half your knights live by doing? No: they will fight to win; and they will give up their lives out of their own hand into the hand of God when they go into battle, as I do. Common folks understand this. They cannot afford armor and cannot pay ransoms; but they follow me half naked into the moat and up the ladder and over the wall. With them it is my life or thine, and God defend the right! You may shake your head, Jack; and Bluebeard may twirl his billygoat’s beard and cock his nose at me; but remember the day your knights and captains refused to follow me to attack the English at Orleans! You locked the gates to keep me in; and it was the townsfolk and the common people that followed me and forced the gate, and showed you the way to fight in earnest.” | Scene 5 | 309 | 31 |
| Joan: “Where would you all have been now if I had heeded that sort of truth? There is no help, no counsel, in any of you. Yes: I am alone on earth: I have always been alone. My father told my brothers to drown me if I would not stay to mind his sheep while France was bleeding to death: France might perish if only our lambs were safe. I thought France would have friends at the court of the king of France; and I find only wolves fighting for pieces of her poor torn body. I thought God would have friends everywhere, because He is the friend of everyone; and in my innocence I believed that you who now cast me out would be like strong towers to keep harm from me. But I am wiser now; and nobody is any the worse for being wiser. Do not think you can frighten me by telling me that I am alone. France is alone; and God is alone; and what is my loneliness before the loneliness of my country and my God? I see now that the loneliness of God is His strength: what would He be if He listened to your jealous little counsels? Well, my loneliness shall be my strength too: it is better to be alone with God: His friendship will not fail me, nor His counsel, nor His love. In His strength I will dare, and dare, and dare, until I die. I will go out now to the common people, and let the love in their eyes comfort me for the hate in yours. You will all be glad to see me burnt; but if I go through the fire I shall go through it to their hearts forever and ever. And so, God be with me!” | Scene 5 | 301 | 31 |
| Joan: “Yes: they told me you were fools , and that I was not to listen to your fine words nor trust to your charity. You promised me my life; but you lied. You think that life is nothing but not being stone dead. It is not the bread and water I fear: I can live on bread: when have I asked for more? It is no hardship to drink water if the water be clean. Bread has no sorrow for me, and water no affliction. But to shut me from the light of the sky and the sight of the fields and flowers; to chain my feet so that I can never again ride with the soldiers nor climb the hills; to make me breathe foul damp darkness, and keep from me everything that brings me back to the love of God when your wickedness and foolishness tempt me to hate Him: all this is worse than the furnace in the Bible that was heated seven times. I could do without my warhorse; I could drag about in a skirt; I could let the banners and the trumpets and the knights and soldiers pass me and leave me behind as they leave the other women, if only I could still hear the wind in the trees, the larks in the sunshine, the young lambs crying through the healthy frost, and the blessed blessed church bells that send my angel voices floating to me on the wind. But without these things I cannot live; and by your wanting to take them away from me, or from any human creature, I know that your counsel is of the devil, and that mine is of God.” | Scene 6 | 282 | 29 |
| Ladvenu: ““I, Joan, commonly called The Maid, a miserable sinner, do confess that I have most grievously sinned in the following articles. I have pretended to have revelations from God and the angels and the blessed saints, and perversely rejected the Church’s warnings that these were temptations by demons. I have blasphemed abominably by wearing an immodest dress, contrary to the Holy Scripture and the canons of the Church. Also I have clipped my hair in the style of a man, and, against all the duties which have made my sex specially acceptable in heaven, have taken up the sword, even to the shedding of human blood, inciting men to slay each other, invoking evil spirits to delude them, and stubbornly and most blasphemously imputing these sins to Almighty God. I confess to the sin of sedition, to the sin of idolatry, to the sin of disobedience, to the sin of pride, and to the sin of heresy. All of which sins I now renounce and abjure and depart from, humbly thanking you Doctors and Masters who have brought me back to the truth and into the grace of our Lord. And I will never return to my errors, but will remain in communion with our Holy Church and in obedience to our Holy Father the Pope of Rome. All this I swear by God Almighty and the Holy Gospels, in witness whereto I sign my name to this recantation.”” | Scene 6 | 239 | 24 |
| Cauchon: “You mistake me, my lord. I have no sympathy with her political presumptions. But as a priest I have gained a knowledge of the minds of the common people; and there you will find yet another most dangerous idea. I can express it only by such phrases as France for the French, England for the English, Italy for the Italians, Spain for the Spanish, and so forth. It is sometimes so narrow and bitter in country folk that it surprises me that this country girl can rise above the idea of her village for its villagers. But she can. She does. When she threatens to drive the English from the soil of France she is undoubtedly thinking of the whole extent of country in which French is spoken. To her the French-speaking people are what the Holy Scriptures describe as a nation. Call this side of her heresy Nationalism if you will: I can find you no better name for it. I can only tell you that it is essentially anti-Catholic and antichristian; for the Catholic Church knows only one realm, and that is the realm of Christ’s kingdom. Divide that kingdom into nations, and you dethrone Christ. Dethrone Christ, and who will stand between our throats and the sword? The world will perish in a welter of war.” | Scene 4 | 219 | 22 |
| Cauchon: “You have spoken for me, and spoken better than I could. I do not see how any sane man could disagree with a word that has fallen from you. But this I will add. The crude heresies of which you have told us are horrible; but their horror is like that of the black death: they rage for a while and then die out, because sound and sensible men will not under any incitement be reconciled to nakedness and incest and polygamy and the like. But we are confronted today throughout Europe with a heresy that is spreading among men not weak in mind nor diseased in brain: nay, the stronger the mind, the more obstinate the heretic. It is neither discredited by fantastic extremes nor corrupted by the common lusts of the flesh; but it, too, sets up the private judgment of the single erring mortal against the considered wisdom and experience of the Church. The mighty structure of Catholic Christendom will never be shaken by naked madmen or by the sins of Moab and Ammon. But it may be betrayed from within, and brought to barbarous ruin and desolation, by this arch heresy which the English Commander calls Protestantism.” | Scene 6 | 201 | 21 |
| Robert: “It’s about this girl you are interested in. Now, I have seen her. I have talked to her. First, she’s mad. That doesn’t matter. Second, she’s not a farm wench. She’s a bourgeoise. That matters a good deal. I know her class exactly. Her father came here last year to represent his village in a lawsuit: he is one of their notables. A farmer. Not a gentleman farmer: he makes money by it, and lives by it. Still, not a laborer. Not a mechanic. He might have a cousin a lawyer, or in the Church. These sort of people may be of no account socially; but they can give a lot of bother to the authorities. That is to say, to me. Now no doubt it seems to you a very simple thing to take this girl away, humbugging her into the belief that you are taking her to the Dauphin. But if you get her into trouble, you may get me into no end of a mess, as I am her father’s lord, and responsible for her protection. So friends or no friends, Polly, hands off her.” | Scene 1 | 188 | 19 |
| The Inquisitor: “I submit to you, with great respect, that if we persist in trying The Maid on trumpery issues on which we may have to declare her innocent, she may escape us on the great main issue of heresy, on which she seems so far to insist on her own guilt. I will ask you, therefore, to say nothing, when The Maid is brought before us, of these stealings of horses, and dancings round fairy trees with the village children, and prayings at haunted wells, and a dozen other things which you were diligently inquiring into until my arrival. There is not a village girl in France against whom you could not prove such things: they all dance round haunted trees, and pray at magic wells. Some of them would steal the Pope’s horse if they got the chance. Heresy, gentlemen, heresy is the charge we have to try. The detection and suppression of heresy is my peculiar business: I am here as an inquisitor, not as an ordinary magistrate. Stick to the heresy, gentlemen; and leave the other matters alone.” | Scene 6 | 180 | 18 |

## 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 Chaplain and La Hire
- The Chaplain and The Soldier
- The Chaplain and Poulengey
- The Chaplain and La Trémouille
- The Chaplain and Steward
- The Chaplain and The Gentleman
- The Chaplain and Bluebeard
- The Chaplain and De Stogumber
- The Chaplain and The Newcomer
- The Chaplain and Joan’s Voice
- The Chaplain and The Duchess
- The Chaplain and A Girl’s Voice

## Questions actors ask

### Who has the most lines in Saint Joan?

Joan, with about 761 lines and 6,487 words, 21.9% of everything spoken in the play. Cauchon is next, with about 406 lines (11.9%).

### How long is Saint Joan?

The full text has 29,687 spoken words, about 212 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 Saint Joan?

33 named roles speak in this edition, across 7 scenes. 23 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/saint-joan) (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).