Characters

Dr. Phil Cooper

Dr. Cooper is a dentist who rents an office in Ben Stark's building. Dr. Cooper is the most pathetic character in the play and seems to be the man most affected by the socio-economic climate of the mid-1930s. He is a veteran of World War I, but he has been severely affected by the depression. Dr. Cooper feels that he has been abandoned and forgotten by his country, even though he served in the military during the war. He is financially unsuccessful and cannot afford to pay his rent or support his family. His young son recently broke his arm, and Cooper cannot afford to pay the doctor's bills. His financial straits are so bad he is forced to sell his blood in order to pay the rent on his office. Dr. Cooper serves, in many ways, as a cautionary character for Ben Stark.

Frenchy Jensen

Frenchy is a chiropodist who rents office space from Ben Stark. Unlike the play's other principle characters, he is happy with his lot as a single man and sees no need to embark on a romantic relationship. Frenchy believes that relationships impede a man's progress. He is also sympathetic to the effects of modern life on women, arguing that a wife is shortchanged in marriage. Of all the characters in the play, Frenchy seems to be the most secure. He is often humorous and has an ironic outlook. However, Frenchy is the character that holds Cleo in the lowest regard. He is frequently rude to her and picks on her incessantly. Frenchy is also capable of being serious and forthright. When Ben Stark is at his lowest point, it is Frenchy who attempts to help him work through his problems.

Mr. Prince

Mr. Prince is Belle Stark's father, a retired but successful businessman. Mr. Prince continually encourages Ben Stark to go further in his life. He offers to provide Ben with the money he will need to expand his dental practice and encourages him to have an affair. Mr. Prince seems to have more energy and vitality than any of the other male characters in the play. He is learned, well read, and has a sense of humor. Like Ben Stark, Mr. Prince makes repeated references to Shakespeare. For example, he calls himself an American King Lear. Despite his outward appearance of happiness and wit, Prince is in many ways a bitter man. He believes that his wife held him back in life and that he could have been a great actor if he had not been married and had the responsibilities of a family. A widower, Mr. Prince is in love with Cleo and wants her to marry him. Despite Prince's relative wealth and vitality, however, Cleo sees that he is only interested in her as a trophy and refuses his offer. Prince is able to quickly shrug off Cleo's rejection of him and immediately returns to his old ways, forgiving Ben and establishing that, for him, nothing will have changed.

Cleo Singer

Cleo Singer is Ben's young secretary and is the most important and complex female character in the play. Cleo is youthful and vital and stands in contrast to the middle-aged characters. Cleo is in love with Ben and wants him to commit to their relationship by leaving Belle and marrying her. As the object of affection for almost all the men in the play, Cleo must contend with Belle's jealousy, as well as numerous advances from Wax and Mr. Prince, both of whom Cleo rejects as unworthy of her affections. The men in the play repeatedly objectify Cleo. She is seen as something that can be used up and discarded and almost all of the men seem both beguiled by, and frightened of, her youth and beauty. Cleo begins the play as an insecure and flighty woman who lies about her life and seems unable to carry out the basics of her job successfully. As the play progresses, however, Cleo appears to be the only character who really develops and grows. This is why, at the end of the play, she is the only one who can actually leave. All in all, however, Cleo is a relatively ambiguous character. Like Ben Stark, she lacks enough substance to be a compelling central focus of the play. Her ability to leave the confines of her affair with Stark, and the confines of her job at his dental practice, seemingly comes from nowhere. Despite this ambiguity, Cleo is an important and interesting character.

Belle Stark

Belle is Ben Stark's wife. She bears the brunt of his disillusionment with his life. Belle hates her father and persuades Ben to refuse his offer of financial help. Belle believes that her father effectively killed her mother by treating her badly. Indeed, many of Belle's actions seem to stem from her desire not to endure the same fate as her own mother. Despite Ben's desire to expand his practice, Belle wants him to curb his ambitions and be content with what he has. She is, however, frustrated with her marriage to Ben, alternately blaming herself and Ben for the failure of their relationship. Her jealousy of Cleo leads her to demand (unsuccessfully) that Ben fire his secretary and employ her instead. Because Belle is unable to bear children after the death of their son during childbirth, Belle represents for Ben everything he has failed to achieve and Ben's inability to find happiness. While Belle is a largely unsympathetic character, there are indications that she should not be seen solely in this way. If one views Belle's actions from the perspective of Frenchy, for example, she appears to be as trapped by circumstances as her husband.

Dr. Ben Stark

Ben Stark is a moderately successful dentist who owns the building in which all of the action of the play takes place. Unhappy with his life, Ben wishes to develop his dental practice by specializing as an orthodontist, but his wife dissuades him from doing so. Ben is bored and frustrated with both his home and professional life. Ben is in love with his secretary, Cleo, and embarks on a tentative affair with her as a way of escaping the ennui of his day-to-day life. However, Ben is ultimately unwilling to commit to a relationship with Cleo because he cannot choose between the possibilities she offers him and the security of his marriage. Unable to leave his wife or take the steps necessary to develop his dental practice, Ben Stark seems trapped between his ambitions and the comforts and securities of his current life. Caught between these competing imperatives, Ben represents the perils of middle-class life in which desire and expectations often overwhelm happiness and contentment. At the end of the play, Ben claims to have gained a degree of insight as a result of his affair with Cleo and the decisions he has been forced to make. What Ben decides to settle for, however, is the security of his current position. Because of this, Ben Stark is an ambivalent hero. While he is the central character, he is largely an ineffectual one. He seems unable to make decisions for himself and cannot even keep a pot of flowers alive. Ben is unable to expand the horizons of his life beyond a nostalgic longing for his youth — when everything was still ahead of him and no decisions about his life had yet been made. He reads and quotes from Shakespeare on a number of occasions and seems to want to retreat into the prior life the English playwright signifies for him.

Willy Wax

Willy Wax is a choreographer and one of Ben Stark's patients. Wax is enamored of Cleo and repeatedly tries to get her to join him for lunch. Wax is the least sympathetic character in the entire play. Indeed, he appears to be the type of man who often lures young, impressionable women into his office. He is portrayed as a shallow, egotistical man who is only interested in himself and who attempts to parlay his modicum of fame into an affair with Cleo. When Cleo refuses his sexual advances, he accuses her of being old-fashioned and refuses to have anything more to do with her.