# The Second Mrs. Tanqueray: every role by lines, words, and stage time > Arthur Wing Pinero. 12 speaking roles, 18,214 words, about 130 minutes of speech. - URL: https://www.offbook.com/plays/the-second-mrs-tanqueray - Last updated: 2026-10-08 **Paula** has the most to say in The Second Mrs. Tanqueray: about 733 lines and 5,544 words, 30.4% of the play. The Second Mrs. Tanqueray follows a widower who marries Paula, a woman with a past, and the strain that follows. Paula is the largest role at about 30% of the words, with Aubrey close behind at about a quarter. Both speak in all four acts, while Ellean, his daughter, does not speak until Act 2. - Speaking roles: 12 - Scenes: 4 - Words: 18,214 - Speech time: 130 min ## Every role, largest first | Role | Lines | Words | Share | Minutes | Scenes | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Paula | 733 | 5,544 | 30.4% | 39.6 | 4 | | Aubrey | 674 | 4,655 | 25.6% | 33.3 | 4 | | Drummle | 370 | 2,870 | 15.8% | 20.5 | 4 | | Ellean | 200 | 1,438 | 7.9% | 10.3 | 3 | | Mrs. Cortelyon | 152 | 1,226 | 6.7% | 8.8 | 2 | | Lady Orreyed | 106 | 827 | 4.5% | 5.9 | 2 | | Hugh | 83 | 597 | 3.3% | 4.3 | 1 | | Misquith | 65 | 366 | 2% | 2.6 | 1 | | Jayne | 59 | 329 | 1.8% | 2.4 | 1 | | Sir George | 39 | 252 | 1.4% | 1.8 | 2 | | Morse | 10 | 64 | 0.4% | 0.5 | 1 | | Servant | 6 | 34 | 0.2% | 0.2 | 3 | ## 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. - **Paula**: Act 1 (775), Act 2 (1,972), Act 3 (1,631), Act 4 (1,166) - **Aubrey**: Act 1 (1,653), Act 2 (1,168), Act 3 (820), Act 4 (1,014) - **Drummle**: Act 1 (1,668), Act 2 (570), Act 3 (403), Act 4 (229) - **Ellean**: Act 2 (257), Act 3 (397), Act 4 (784) - **Mrs. Cortelyon**: Act 2 (628), Act 3 (598) - **Lady Orreyed**: Act 3 (548), Act 4 (279) - **Hugh**: Act 3 (597) - **Misquith**: Act 1 (366) ## The longest speeches | Speech | Scene | Words | Lines | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Aubrey: “That shocks you! So it does me. I assure you I long to urge my girl to break down the reserve which keeps her apart from Paula, but somehow I can’t do it—well, I don’t do it. How can I make you understand? But when you come to us you’ll understand quickly enough. Cayley, there’s hardly a subject you can broach on which poor Paula hasn’t some strange, out-of-the-way thought to give utterance to; some curious, warped notion. They are not mere worldly thoughts—unless, good God! they belong to the little hellish world which our blackguardism has created: no, her ideas have too little calculation in them to be called worldly. But it makes it the more dreadful that such thoughts should be ready, spontaneous; that expressing them has become a perfectly natural process; that her words, acts even, have almost lost their proper significance for her, and seem beyond her control. Ah, and the pain of listening to it all from the woman one loves, the woman one hoped to make happy and contented, who is really and truly a good woman, as it were, maimed! Well, this is my burden, and I shouldn’t speak to you of it but for my anxiety about Ellean. Ellean! What is to be her future? It is in my hands; what am I to do? Cayley, when I remember how Ellean comes to me, from another world I always think, when I realise the charge that’s laid on me, I find myself wishing, in a sort of terror, that my child were safe under the ground!” | Act 2 | 266 | 27 | | Paula: “Hah! That’s where we’ve made the mistake, my friend Aubrey! Do you believe these people will ever come round us? Your former crony, Mrs. Cortelyon? Or the grim old vicar, or that wife of his whose huge nose is positively indecent? Or the Ullathornes, or the Gollans, or Lady William Petres? I know better! And when the young ones gradually take the place of the old, there will still remain the sacred tradition that the dreadful person who lives at the top of the hill is never, under any circumstances, to be called upon! And so we shall go on here, year in and year out, until the sap is run out of our lives, and we’re stale and dry and withered from sheer, solitary respectability. Upon my word, I wonder we didn’t see that we should have been far happier if we’d gone in for the devil-may-care, café-living sort of life in town! After all, I have a set and you might have joined it. It’s true I did want, dearly, dearly, to be a married woman, but where’s the pride in being a married woman among married women who are—married! If— Aubrey! My dear boy! You’re not—crying?” | Act 2 | 202 | 21 | | Paula: “I’m not sneering; I’m speaking the truth. I say that if you cared for me in the daytime I should soon make friends with those nightmares of yours. Ellean, why don’t you try to look on me as your second mother? Of course there are not many years between us, but I’m ever so much older than you—in experience. I shall have no children of my own, I know that; it would be a real comfort to me if you would make me feel we belonged to each other. Won’t you? Perhaps you think I’m odd—not nice. Well, the fact is I’ve two sides to my nature, and I’ve let the one almost smother the other. A few years ago I went through some trouble, and since then I haven’t shed a tear. I believe if you put your arms round me just once I should run upstairs and have a good cry. There, I’ve talked to you as I’ve never talked to a woman in my life. Ellean, you seem to fear me. Don’t! Kiss me!” | Act 2 | 179 | 18 | | Drummle: “You don’t—? Oh, of course not. Miss Hervey—Lady Orreyed, as she now is—was a lady who would have been, perhaps has been, described in the reports of the Police or the Divorce Court as an actress. Had she belonged to a lower stratum of our advanced civilisation she would, in the event of judicial inquiry, have defined her calling with equal justification as that of a dressmaker. To do her justice, she is a type of a class which is immortal. Physically, by the strange caprice of creation, curiously beautiful; mentally, she lacks even the strength of deliberate viciousness. Paint her portrait, it would symbolise a creature perfectly patrician; lance a vein of her superbly-modelled arm, you would get the poorest vin ordinaire! Her affections, emotions, impulses, her very existence—a burlesque! Flaxen, five-and-twenty, and feebly frolicsome; anybody’s, in less gentle society I should say everybody’s, property! That, doctor, was Miss Hervey who is the new Lady Orreyed. Dost thou like the picture?” | Act 1 | 165 | 17 | | Aubrey: “Look here; I daresay you two old friends think this treatment very strange, very unkind. So I want you to understand me. You know a marriage often cools friendships. What’s the usual course of things? A man’s engagement is given out, he is congratulated, complimented upon his choice; the church is filled with troops of friends, and he goes away happily to a chorus of good wishes. He comes back, sets up house in town or country, and thinks to resume the old associations, the old companionships. My dear Frank, my dear good doctor, it’s very seldom that it can be done. Generally, a worm has begun to eat its way into those hearty, unreserved, prenuptial friendships; a damnable constraint sets in and acts like a wasting disease; and so, believe me, in nine cases out of ten a man’s marriage severs for him more close ties than it forms.” | Act 1 | 150 | 15 | | Aubrey: “You say that; very likely you believe it. But you’re blind, Paula; you’re blind. You! Every belief that a young, pure-minded girl holds sacred—that you once held sacred—you now make a target for a jest, a sneer, a paltry cynicism. I tell you, you’re not mistress any longer of your thoughts or your tongue. Why, how often, sitting between you and Ellean, have I seen her cheeks turn scarlet as you’ve rattled off some tale that belongs by right to the club or the smoking-room! Have you noticed the blush? If you have, has the cause of it ever struck you? And this is the girl you say you love, I admit that you do love, whose love you expect in return! Oh, Paula, I make the best, the only, excuse for you when I tell you you’re blind!” | Act 3 | 141 | 15 | | Aubrey: “My dear Paula, I have no curiosity—I know what you were at Ellean’s age. I’ll tell you. You hadn’t a thought that wasn’t a wholesome one, you hadn’t an impulse that didn’t tend towards good, you never harboured a notion you couldn’t have gossiped about to a parcel of children. And this was a very few years back—there are days now when you look like a schoolgirl—but think of the difference between the two Paulas. You’ll have to think hard, because after a cruel life one’s perceptions grow a thick skin. But, for God’s sake, do think till you get these two images clearly in your mind, and then ask yourself what sort of a friend such a woman as you are today would have been for the girl of seven or eight years ago.” | Act 3 | 138 | 14 | | Paula: “Of course I’m pretty now—I’m pretty still—and a pretty woman, whatever else she may be, is always—well, endurable. But even now I notice that the lines of my face are getting deeper; so are the hollows about my eyes. Yes, my face is covered with little shadows that usen’t to be there. Oh, I know I’m “going off.” I hate paint and dye and those messes, but, by-and-by, I shall drift the way of the others; I shan’t be able to help myself. And then, some day—perhaps very suddenly, under a queer, fantastic light at night or in the glare of the morning—that horrid, irresistible truth that physical repulsion forces on men and women will come to you, and you’ll sicken at me.” | Act 4 | 128 | 13 | | Paula: “You’ll see me then, at last, with other people’s eyes; you’ll see me just as your daughter does now, as all wholesome folks see women like me. And I shall have no weapon to fight with—not one serviceable little bit of prettiness left me to defend myself with! A worn-out creature—broken up, very likely, sometime before I ought to be—my hair bright, my eyes dull, my body too thin or too stout, my cheeks raddled and ruddled—a ghost, a wreck, a caricature, a candle that gutters, call such an end what you like! Oh, Aubrey, what shall I be able to say to you then? And this is the future you talk about! I know it—I know it! Oh, Aubrey! Oh! Oh!” | Act 4 | 127 | 13 | | Drummle: “A mistake, not in regarding your Ellean as an angel, but in believing that, under any circumstances, it would be possible for her to go through life without getting her white robe—shall we say, a little dusty at the hem? Don’t take me for a cynic. I am sure there are many women upon earth who are almost divinely innocent; but being on earth, they must send their robes to the laundry occasionally. Ah, and it’s right that they should have to do so, for what can they learn from the checking of their little washing-bills but lessons of charity? Now I see but two courses open to you for the disposal of your angel.” | Act 2 | 116 | 12 | ## 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. - Lady Orreyed and Misquith - Lady Orreyed and Jayne - Lady Orreyed and Morse - Hugh and Misquith - Hugh and Jayne - Hugh and Morse - Misquith and Sir George - Misquith and Servant - Jayne and Sir George - Jayne and Servant - Sir George and Morse - Morse and Servant ## Questions actors ask ### Who has the most lines in The Second Mrs. Tanqueray? Paula, with about 733 lines and 5,544 words, 30.4% of everything spoken in the play. Aubrey is next, with about 674 lines (25.6%). ### How long is The Second Mrs. Tanqueray? The full text has 18,214 spoken words, about 130 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 Second Mrs. Tanqueray? 12 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/arthur-w-pinero/the-second-mrs-tanqueray) (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).