# The Doctor’s Dilemma: every role by lines, words, and stage time

> George Bernard Shaw. 17 speaking roles, 24,918 words, about 178 minutes of speech.

- URL: https://www.offbook.com/plays/the-doctors-dilemma
- Last updated: 2026-10-08

**Ridgeon** has the most to say in The Doctor’s Dilemma: about 623 lines and 4,697 words, 18.8% of the play. The Doctor’s Dilemma follows a doctor who must choose whether to save a gifted but dishonest artist or a decent, ordinary colleague. Ridgeon has the largest part, close to a fifth of the words, and speaks in every act. B.B. and Mrs. Dubedat, called Jennifer in Act 5, come next, while Louis speaks only in Acts 2 to 4.

- Speaking roles: 17
- Scenes: 5
- Words: 24,918
- Speech time: 178 min

## Every role, largest first

| Role | Lines | Words | Share | Minutes | Scenes |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Ridgeon | 623 | 4,697 | 18.8% | 33.6 | 5 |
| B.B. | 481 | 4,256 | 17.1% | 30.4 | 4 |
| Mrs. Dubedat | 461 | 3,821 | 15.3% | 27.3 | 5 |
| Louis | 434 | 3,718 | 14.9% | 26.6 | 3 |
| Sir Patrick | 360 | 2,886 | 11.6% | 20.6 | 4 |
| Walpole | 251 | 1,978 | 7.9% | 14.1 | 4 |
| Blenkinsop | 111 | 982 | 3.9% | 7.0 | 2 |
| Schutzmacher | 92 | 783 | 3.1% | 5.6 | 2 |
| Emmy | 92 | 733 | 2.9% | 5.2 | 1 |
| The Maid | 37 | 296 | 1.2% | 2.1 | 1 |
| The Newspaper Man | 28 | 220 | 0.9% | 1.6 | 1 |
| Redpenny | 33 | 209 | 0.8% | 1.5 | 1 |
| The Secretary | 20 | 156 | 0.6% | 1.1 | 1 |
| Mrs. Dubebat | 12 | 120 | 0.5% | 0.9 | 1 |
| Mrs. Dudebat | 4 | 30 | 0.1% | 0.2 | 1 |
| The Gentleman | 2 | 15 | 0.1% | 0.1 | 1 |
| Waiter | 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; Act 4 = Act 4; Act 5 = Act 5.

- **Ridgeon**: Act 1 (2,297), Act 2 (609), Act 3 (832), Act 4 (121), Act 5 (838)
- **B.B.**: Act 1 (1,897), Act 2 (485), Act 3 (1,245), Act 4 (629)
- **Mrs. Dubedat**: Act 1 (555), Act 2 (187), Act 3 (1,282), Act 4 (581), Act 5 (1,216)
- **Louis**: Act 2 (64), Act 3 (2,560), Act 4 (1,094)
- **Sir Patrick**: Act 1 (1,288), Act 2 (620), Act 3 (598), Act 4 (380)
- **Walpole**: Act 1 (744), Act 2 (308), Act 3 (488), Act 4 (438)
- **Blenkinsop**: Act 1 (475), Act 2 (507)
- **Schutzmacher**: Act 1 (259), Act 2 (524)
- **Emmy**: Act 1 (733)

## The longest speeches

| Speech | Scene | Words | Lines |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Mrs. Dubedat: “I didn’t want to waste myself. I could do nothing myself; but I had a little property and I could help with it. I had even a little beauty: don’t think me vain for knowing it. I always had a terrible struggle with poverty and neglect at first. My dream was to save one of them from that, and bring some charm and happiness into his life. I prayed Heaven to send me one. I firmly believe that Louis was guided to me in answer to my prayer. He was no more like the other men I had met than the Thames Embankment is like our Cornish coasts. He saw everything that I saw, and drew it for me. He understood everything. He came to me like a child. Only fancy, doctor: he never even wanted to marry me: he never thought of the things other men think of! I had to propose it myself. Then he said he had no money. When I told him I had some, he said “Oh, all right,” just like a boy. He is still like that, quite unspoiled, a man in his thoughts, a great poet and artist in his dreams, and a child in his ways. I gave him myself and all I had that he might grow to his full height with plenty of sunshine. If I lost faith in him, it would mean the wreck and failure of my life. I should go back to Cornwall and die. I could show you the very cliff I should jump off. You must cure him: you must make him quite well again for me. I know that you can do it and that nobody else can. I implore you not to refuse what I am going to ask you to do. Take Louis yourself; and let Sir Ralph cure Dr. Blenkinsop.” | Act 3 | 309 | 31 |
| B.B.: “Quite so. Well now, look at my practice. It is what I suppose you would call a fashionable practice, a smart practice, a practice among the best people. You ask me to go into the question of whether my patients are of any use either to themselves or anyone else. Well, if you apply any scientific test known to me, you will achieve a reductio ad absurdum. You will be driven to the conclusion that the majority of them would be, as my friend Mr. J. M. Barrie has tersely phrased it, better dead. Better dead. There are exceptions, no doubt. For instance, there is the court, an essentially social-democratic institution, supported out of public funds by the public because the public wants it and likes it. My court patients are hardworking people who give satisfaction, undoubtedly. Then I have a duke or two whose estates are probably better managed than they would be in public hands. But as to most of the rest, if I once began to argue about them, unquestionably the verdict would be, Better dead. When they actually do die, I sometimes have to offer that consolation, thinly disguised, to the family. The fact that they spend money so extravagantly on medical attendance really would not justify me in wasting my talents—such as they are—in keeping them alive. After all, if my fees are high, I have to spend heavily. My own tastes are simple: a camp bed, a couple of rooms, a crust, a bottle of wine; and I am happy and contented. My wife’s tastes are perhaps more luxurious; but even she deplores an expenditure the sole object of which is to maintain the state my patients require from their medical attendant. The—er—er—er— I have lost the thread of these remarks. What was I talking about, Ridgeon?” | Act 3 | 308 | 31 |
| B.B.: “Well, obviously, if the bacillus is the genuine Loeffler, you have diphtheria; and if it’s the pseudobacillus, you’re quite well. Nothing simpler. Science is always simple and always profound. It is only the half-truths that are dangerous. Ignorant faddists pick up some superficial information about germs; and they write to the papers and try to discredit science. They dupe and mislead many honest and worthy people. But science has a perfect answer to them on every point.” | Act 1 | 220 | 23 |
| B.B.: “Blenkinsop: there is nothing that cannot be explained by science. What did I do? Did I fold my hands helplessly and say that the case could not be explained? By no means. I sat down and used my brains. I thought the case out on scientific principles. I asked myself why didn’t the missionary die of typhoid on top of tetanus, and the beadle of tetanus on top of typhoid? There’s a problem for you, Ridgeon. Think, Sir Patrick. Reflect, Blenkinsop. Look at it without prejudice, Walpole. What is the real work of the antitoxin? Simply to stimulate the phagocytes. Very well. But so long as you stimulate the phagocytes, what does it matter which particular sort of serum you use for the purpose? Haha! Eh? Do you see? Do you grasp it? Ever since that I’ve used all sorts of antitoxins absolutely indiscriminately, with perfectly satisfactory results. I inoculated the little prince with your stuff, Ridgeon, because I wanted to give you a lift; but two years ago I tried the experiment of treating a scarlet fever case with a sample of hydrophobia serum from the Pasteur Institute, and it answered capitally. It stimulated the phagocytes; and the phagocytes did the rest. That is why Sir Patrick’s father found that inoculation cured all fevers. It stimulated the phagocytes.” | Act 1 | 219 | 22 |
| Sir Patrick: “I know your Cutler Walpoles and their like. They’ve found out that a man’s body’s full of bits and scraps of old organs he has no mortal use for. Thanks to chloroform, you can cut half a dozen of them out without leaving him any the worse, except for the illness and the guineas it costs him. I knew the Walpoles well fifteen years ago. The father used to snip off the ends of people’s uvulas for fifty guineas, and paint throats with caustic every day for a year at two guineas a time. His brother-in-law extirpated tonsils for two hundred guineas until he took up women’s cases at double the fees. Cutler himself worked hard at anatomy to find something fresh to operate on; and at last he got hold of something he calls the nuciform sac, which he’s made quite the fashion. People pay him five hundred guineas to cut it out. They might as well get their hair cut for all the difference it makes; but I suppose they feel important after it. You can’t go out to dinner now without your neighbor bragging to you of some useless operation or other.” | Act 1 | 195 | 20 |
| B.B.: “What! Ridgeon: did you hear that? Sir Patrick: I am more struck by what you have just told me than I can well express. Your father, sir, anticipated a discovery of my own. Listen, Walpole. Blenkinsop: attend one moment. You will all be intensely interested in this. I was put on the track by accident. I had a typhoid case and a tetanus case side by side in the hospital: a beadle and a city missionary. Think of what that meant for them, poor fellows! Can a beadle be dignified with typhoid? Can a missionary be eloquent with lockjaw? No. no. Well, I got some typhoid antitoxin from Ridgeon and a tube of Muldooley’s anti-tetanus serum. But the missionary jerked all my things off the table in one of his paroxysms; and in replacing them I put Ridgeon’s tube where Muldooley’s ought to have been. The consequence was that I inoculated the typhoid case for tetanus and the tetanus case for typhoid. Well, they recovered. They recovered. Except for a touch of St. Vitus’s dance the missionary’s as well today as ever; and the beadle’s ten times the man he was.” | Act 1 | 191 | 20 |
| B.B.: “Walpole has no intellect. A mere surgeon. Wonderful operator; but, after all, what is operating? Only manual labor. Brain—brain remains master of the situation. The nuciform sac is utter nonsense: there’s no such organ. It’s a mere accidental kink in the membrane, occurring in perhaps two-and-a-half percent of the population. Of course I’m glad for Walpole’s sake that the operation is fashionable; for he’s a dear good fellow; and after all, as I always tell people, the operation will do them no harm: indeed, I’ve known the nervous shakeup and the fortnight in bed do people a lot of good after a hard London season; but still it’s a shocking fraud. Well, I must be toddling. Goodbye, Paddy goodbye, goodbye. Goodbye, my dear Blenkinsop, goodbye! Goodbye, Ridgeon. Don’t fret about your health: you know what to do: if your liver is sluggish, a little mercury never does any harm. If you feel restless, try bromide, If that doesn’t answer, a stimulant, you know: a little phosphorus and strychnine. If you can’t sleep, trional, trional, trion—” | Act 1 | 176 | 18 |
| Schutzmacher: “Not at all. Personally, I like Englishmen better than Jews, and always associate with them. That’s only natural, because, as I am a Jew, there’s nothing interesting in a Jew to me, whereas there is always something interesting and foreign in an Englishman. But in money matters it’s quite different. You see, when an Englishman borrows, all he knows or cares is that he wants money; and he’ll sign anything to get it, without in the least understanding it, or intending to carry out the agreement if it turns out badly for him. In fact, he thinks you a cad if you ask him to carry it out under such circumstances. Just like the Merchant of Venice, you know. But if a Jew makes an agreement, he means to keep it and expects you to keep it. If he wants money for a time, he borrows it and knows he must pay it at the end of the time. If he knows he can’t pay, he begs it as a gift.” | Act 2 | 171 | 18 |
| B.B.: “But then, what are many of my patients? Vicious and ignorant young men without a talent for anything. If I were to stop to argue about their merits I should have to give up three-quarters of my practice. Therefore I have made it a rule not so to argue. Now, as an honorable man, having made that rule as to paying patients, can I make an exception as to a patient who, far from being a paying patient, may more fitly be described as a borrowing patient? No. I say No. Mr. Dubedat: your moral character is nothing to me. I look at you from a purely scientific point of view. To me you are simply a field of battle in which an invading army of tubercle bacilli struggles with a patriotic force of phagocytes. Having made a promise to your wife, which my principles will not allow me to break, to stimulate those phagocytes, I will stimulate them. And I take no further responsibility.” | Act 3 | 165 | 17 |
| Louis: “Then you must always wear beautiful dresses and splendid magic jewels. Think of all the wonderful pictures I shall never paint. Well, you must be transfigured with all the beauty of those pictures. Men must get such dreams from seeing you as they never could get from any daubing with paints and brushes. Painters must paint you as they never painted any mortal woman before. There must be a great tradition of beauty, a great atmosphere of wonder and romance. That is what men must always think of when they think of me. That is the sort of immortality I want. You can make that for me, Jennifer. There are lots of things you don’t understand that every woman in the street understands; but you can understand that and do it as nobody else can. Promise me that immortality. Promise me you will not make a little hell of crape and crying and undertaker’s horrors and withering flowers and all that vulgar rubbish.” | Act 4 | 163 | 17 |

## 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.

- Blenkinsop and The Newspaper Man
- Blenkinsop and The Secretary
- Blenkinsop and Mrs. Dubebat
- Blenkinsop and Mrs. Dudebat
- Schutzmacher and The Newspaper Man
- Schutzmacher and The Secretary
- Schutzmacher and Mrs. Dubebat
- Schutzmacher and Mrs. Dudebat
- Emmy and The Maid
- Emmy and The Newspaper Man
- Emmy and The Secretary
- Emmy and Mrs. Dubebat

## Questions actors ask

### Who has the most lines in The Doctor’s Dilemma?

Ridgeon, with about 623 lines and 4,697 words, 18.8% of everything spoken in the play. B.B. is next, with about 481 lines (17.1%).

### How long is The Doctor’s Dilemma?

The full text has 24,918 spoken words, about 178 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 The Doctor’s Dilemma?

17 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/the-doctors-dilemma) (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).