Willie is a man of "about sixty". In marked contrast to Winnie's , the henpecked Willie is laconic to a fault. In the whole of the second act Willie utters only one, barely audible monosyllabic word. Much of his dialogue consists of him reading notices from his paper; his responses to Winnie—when he can be bothered to respond at all—are terse and barely communicative. He functions mainly as something for her to talk at—being used as a by the old music hall pro that Winnie is—"just to know that in theory you can hear me though in fact you don't is all I need."