brings a romantic dimension to the play. As Joyce's secretary, she becomes entangled in the narrative through her affection for Tzara and the humorous mix-up of documents that intertwines the destinies of the main characters. Her emotional journey, marked by a desire for poetic love and the impactful mix-up of briefcases, interlaces her fate with Tzara’s. Her character adds depth to the play's exploration of art, love, and identity, while also serving as a counterpart to her brother's more brooding presence.

Bennett

Bennett, Carr’s articulate and opinionated manservant, carries a "weighty presence." He frequently informs Carr about world affairs with a distinct perspective, often revealing "radical sympathies." His ironic commentary underscores the political and artistic revolutions of the era. Susan Rusinko's analysis in Twayne's English Authors Series Online emphasizes Bennett's role in highlighting Carr's apathy towards surrounding events. Bennett's observations span significant political changes in Russia to the transformations in the art world, marking him as a conduit for the play’s broader themes.

Nadya (Nadezhda Krupskaya)

Nadya, Lenin's solemn and supportive wife, accompanies him in Zurich during their exile. Her anxieties regarding the unfolding revolution in Russia provide a personal dimension to Lenin’s revolutionary pursuits. Although a minor character, Nadya’s conversations with Lenin about their return to Russia underscore the personal stakes involved in their political endeavors.

The play's protagonist, Carr, is a low-level British government official stationed in Zurich during World War I. The play's events unfold through Carr's often unreliable recollections. By the play's conclusion, his wife Cecily questions whether Carr ever truly met Tzara or Lenin. However, Carr did encounter Joyce when he portrayed Algernon Moncrieff in a staging of The Importance of Being Earnest. In his memories, Carr engages in conversations that sometimes devolve into arguments with Lenin, Joyce, and Tzara about war, politics, and art. Carr's recollections blur the lines between his life and The Importance of Being Earnest. Some of the dialogue he recalls are lines from the play, and two characters share the same names.

In "Stoppard's Theatre of Unknowing," Mary A. Doll observes that Carr "is the improbable fringe catalyst of chaos who remembers his time in war chiefly through recollecting what he wore (war/ wore) twill jodhpurs, silk cravats [presenting] war [as] a metaphor for fashion." C. W. E. Bigsby, in his article on Tom Stoppard for British Writers, comments on Carr's role as the narrator, asserting that "this clash of ideas loses much of its urgency seen from the perspective of a deluded, prejudiced, and erratic minor functionary." Bigsby notes that Carr "wants to believe in a world in which he can play a central role." Consequently, Carr "resists reality with as much dedication as either Joyce or Tzara. He is, of course, in a real sense a playwright. He 'creates' the drama in which he casts himself as the central character."

Carr's highly subjective view of Joyce is often contradictory but typically reflects Carr's frustration over their legal disputes regarding the financial aspects of producing Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, a play in which they were both involved. Carr portrays Joyce as a paradoxical figure with both admirable and flawed traits. He describes Joyce as "a complex personality, an enigma, a contradictory spokesman for the truth, an obsessive litigant and yet an essentially private man who wished his total indifference to public notice to be universally recognized."

At one point, Carr concludes that Joyce is "a prudish, prudent man ... in no way profligate or vulgar, and yet convivial, without being spendthrift." On one hand, Joyce exhibits "a monkish unconcern for worldly and bodily comforts" and "shuts himself off from the richness of human society, whose temptations he meets with an ascetic disregard tempered only by sudden and catastrophic aberrations." However, Carr later describes Joyce as an "Irish lout" and "a liar and a hypocrite, a tight-fisted, sponging, fornicating drunk not worth the paper."

Carr recounts that he met Joyce when "his genius [was] in full flood in the making of Ulysses, before publication and fame turned him into a public monument for pilgrim cameras." During that period, "to be in his presence was to be aware of an amazing intellect bent on shaping itself into the permanent form of its own monument—the book the world now knows as Ulysses." Joyce distances himself from the political tensions of the time, stating, "as an artist ... I attach no importance to the swings and roundabout of political history."

Tzara, a poet who founded Dada—a nihilistic art and literary movement in the early 20th century—claims he is "the natural enemy of bourgeois art and the natural ally of the political left." Frequently, during his debates on art and politics, he becomes very emotional and lashes out at others. Joyce describes him as "an overexcited little man, with a need for self-expression far beyond the scope of [his] natural gifts."

Doll argues that Tzara "becomes perhaps the first Stoppard mouthpiece to articulate a clear position on the seriousness of play." She adds that through his conversations with other characters, Tzara's views on the essence of art and the role of the artist are revealed: "Not only does he insist on the right of the artist to delude audience expectation but he insists on the ethical function of such denunciation." Tzara explains that wars are fought over economic realities rather than ideologies, battled for resources like oil and coal rather than for freedom and patriotism.

Bigsby comments on Tzara's occasionally contradictory position. The critic asserts that Tzara is "drawn simultaneously in both directions" between the philosophies of Joyce and Lenin. He concludes that Tzara sometimes creates "neologisms and cascades of words like Joyce, convinced that the artist constitutes the difference between brute existence and any sense of transcendence," while at other times, he views the writer "as the conscience of the revolution and justifying the brutality of its servants."