# The Man of Destiny: every role by lines, words, and stage time

> George Bernard Shaw. 10 speaking roles, 9,117 words, about 65 minutes of speech.

- URL: https://www.offbook.com/plays/the-man-of-destiny
- Last updated: 2026-10-08

**Napoleon** has the most to say in The Man of Destiny: about 478 lines and 3,823 words, 41.9% of the play. The Man of Destiny is Shaw’s one-act comedy about a young Napoleon matching wits with a mysterious lady at an inn in Italy. It is almost a two-hander: Napoleon holds over two-fifths of the words and the Lady over a quarter. The Lieutenant adds about a fifth, and Giuseppe, the innkeeper, about a tenth.

- Speaking roles: 10
- Scenes: Continuous
- Words: 9,117
- Speech time: 65 min

## Every role, largest first

| Role | Lines | Words | Share | Minutes | Scenes |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Napoleon | 478 | 3,823 | 41.9% | 27.3 | 1 |
| Lady | 318 | 2,556 | 28% | 18.3 | 1 |
| Lieutenant | 210 | 1,777 | 19.5% | 12.7 | 1 |
| Giuseppe | 124 | 934 | 10.2% | 6.7 | 1 |
| A Man’s Voice | 1 | 7 | 0.1% | 0.1 | 1 |
| Voice | 2 | 6 | 0.1% | 0.0 | 1 |
| The Man’s Voice | 1 | 5 | 0.1% | 0.0 | 1 |
| The Officer | 1 | 5 | 0.1% | 0.0 | 1 |
| A Lady’s Voice | 1 | 2 | 0% | 0.0 | 1 |
| The Lady’s Voice | 2 | 2 | 0% | 0.0 | 1 |

## The longest speeches

| Speech | Words | Lines |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Napoleon: “No, because the English are a race apart. No Englishman is too low to have scruples: no Englishman is high enough to be free from their tyranny. But every Englishman is born with a certain miraculous power that makes him master of the world. When he wants a thing, he never tells himself that he wants it. He waits patiently until there comes into his mind, no one knows how, a burning conviction that it is his moral and religious duty to conquer those who have got the thing he wants. Then he becomes irresistible. Like the aristocrat, he does what pleases him and grabs what he wants: like the shopkeeper, he pursues his purpose with the industry and steadfastness that come from strong religious conviction and deep sense of moral responsibility. He is never at a loss for an effective moral attitude. As the great champion of freedom and national independence, he conquers and annexes half the world, and calls it Colonization. When he wants a new market for his adulterated Manchester goods, he sends a missionary to teach the natives the gospel of peace. The natives kill the missionary: he flies to arms in defence of Christianity; fights for it; conquers for it; and takes the market as a reward from heaven. In defence of his island shores, he puts a chaplain on board his ship; nails a flag with a cross on it to his topgallant mast; and sails to the ends of the earth, sinking, burning and destroying all who dispute the empire of the seas with him. He boasts that a slave is free the moment his foot touches British soil; and he sells the children of his poor at six years of age to work under the lash in his factories for sixteen hours a day. He makes two revolutions, and then declares war on our one in the name of law and order. There is nothing so bad or so good that you will not find Englishmen doing it; but you will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle. He fights you on patriotic principles; he robs you on business principles; he enslaves you on imperial principles; he bullies you on manly principles; he supports his king on loyal principles, and cuts off his king’s head on republican principles. His watchword is always duty; and he never forgets that the nation which lets its duty get on the opposite side to its interest is lost. He—” | 418 | 42 |
| Napoleon: “Because you would have wanted my letter enough to bear your fear. There is only one universal passion: fear. Of all the thousand qualities a man may have, the only one you will find as certainly in the youngest drummer boy in my army as in me, is fear. It is fear that makes men fight: it is indifference that makes them run away: fear is the mainspring of war. Fear! I know fear well, better than you, better than any woman. I once saw a regiment of good Swiss soldiers massacred by a mob in Paris because I was afraid to interfere: I felt myself a coward to the tips of my toes as I looked on at it. Seven months ago I revenged my shame by pounding that mob to death with cannon balls. Well, what of that? Has fear ever held a man back from anything he really wanted—or a woman either? Never. Come with me; and I will show you twenty thousand cowards who will risk death every day for the price of a glass of brandy. And do you think there are no women in the army, braver than the men, because their lives are worth less? Psha! I think nothing of your fear or your bravery. If you had had to come across to me at Lodi, you would not have been afraid: once on the bridge, every other feeling would have gone down before the necessity—the necessity—for making your way to my side and getting what you wanted.” | 327 | 33 |
| Napoleon: “I shall have it presently. Now attend to me. Suppose I were to allow myself to be abashed by the respect due to your sex, your beauty, your heroism and all the rest of it? Suppose I, with nothing but such sentimental stuff to stand between these muscles of mine and those papers which you have about you, and which I want and mean to have: suppose I, with the prize within my grasp, were to falter and sneak away with my hands empty; or, what would be worse, cover up my weakness by playing the magnanimous hero, and sparing you the violence I dared not use, would you not despise me from the depths of your woman’s soul? Would any woman be such a fool? Well, Bonaparte can rise to the situation and act like a woman when it is necessary. Do you understand?” | 145 | 15 |
| Napoleon: “There are three sorts of people in the world, the low people, the middle people, and the high people. The low people and the high people are alike in one thing: they have no scruples, no morality. The low are beneath morality, the high above it. I am not afraid of either of them: for the low are unscrupulous without knowledge, so that they make an idol of me; whilst the high are unscrupulous without purpose, so that they go down before my will. Look you: I shall go over all the mobs and all the courts of Europe as a plough goes over a field. It is the middle people who are dangerous: they have both knowledge and purpose. But they, too, have their weak point. They are full of scruples—chained hand and foot by their morality and respectability.” | 141 | 15 |
| Giuseppe: “No, thank you, General. All my life long people have wanted to make a man of me. When I was a boy, our good priest wanted to make a man of me by teaching me to read and write. Then the organist at Melegnano wanted to make a man of me by teaching me to read music. The recruiting sergeant would have made a man of me if I had been a few inches taller. But it always meant making me work; and I am too lazy for that, thank Heaven! So I taught myself to cook and became an innkeeper; and now I keep servants to do the work, and have nothing to do myself except talk, which suits me perfectly.” | 122 | 13 |
| Lieutenant: “Not at all: I don’t fly so high. Besides: I’m better as I am: men like me are wanted in the army just now. The fact is, the Revolution was all very well for civilians; but it won’t work in the army. You know what soldiers are, General: they will have men of family for their officers. A subaltern must be a gentleman, because he’s so much in contact with the men. But a general, or even a colonel, may be any sort of riffraff if he understands the shop well enough. A lieutenant is a gentleman: all the rest is chance. Why, who do you suppose won the battle of Lodi? I’ll tell you. My horse did.” | 118 | 12 |
| Napoleon: “What? What do you mean? Eh? Are you at your tricks again? Do you think I don’t know what these papers contain? I’ll tell you. First, my information as to Beaulieu’s retreat. There are only two things he can do—leatherbrained idiot that he is!—shut himself up in Mantua or violate the neutrality of Venice by taking Peschiera. You are one of old Leatherbrain’s spies: he has discovered that he has been betrayed, and has sent you to intercept the information at all hazards—as if that could save him from me, the old fool! The other papers are only my usual correspondence from Paris, of which you know nothing.” | 111 | 12 |
| Lieutenant: “That was a mistake: an officer should never let himself down to the level of his men. But you might have been firing away at the Austrians still, if we cavalry fellows hadn’t found the ford and got across and turned old Beaulieu’s flank for you. You know you daren’t have given the order to charge the bridge if you hadn’t seen us on the other side. Consequently, I say that whoever found that ford won the battle of Lodi. Well, who found it? I was the first man to cross: and I know. It was my horse that found it. That horse is the true conqueror of the Austrians.” | 110 | 11 |
| Napoleon: “And you have no devouring devil inside you who must be fed with action and victory—gorged with them night and day—who makes you pay, with the sweat of your brain and body, weeks of Herculean toil for ten minutes of enjoyment—who is at once your slave and your tyrant, your genius and your doom—who brings you a crown in one hand and the oar of a galley slave in the other—who shows you all the kingdoms of the earth and offers to make you their master on condition that you become their servant!—have you nothing of that in you?” | 105 | 11 |
| Napoleon: “Capital! Capital! Come: I am a true Corsican in my love for stories. But I could tell them better than you if I set my mind to it. Next time you are asked why a letter compromising a wife should not be sent to her husband, answer simply that the husband would not read it. Do you suppose, little innocent, that a man wants to be compelled by public opinion to make a scene, to fight a duel, to break up his household, to injure his career by a scandal, when he can avoid it all by taking care not to know?” | 102 | 11 |

## Questions actors ask

### Who has the most lines in The Man of Destiny?

Napoleon, with about 478 lines and 3,823 words, 41.9% of everything spoken in the play. Lady is next, with about 318 lines (28%).

### How long is The Man of Destiny?

The full text has 9,117 spoken words, about 65 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 Man of Destiny?

10 named roles speak in this edition, in one continuous text with no scene breaks. 6 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-man-of-destiny) (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).