"I am merely contemplating the absurdity of the contract," Shaw retorted, his red beard bristling. "To promise to love, honor, and obey is a biological impossibility and a legal farce. One might as well promise to keep one’s hair the same color for fifty years." "And yet, here you are," she said.
"You look remarkably like a prisoner waiting for the gaoler, George," Charlotte remarked, her eyes twinkling behind her spectacles.
The morning of his wedding, George Bernard Shaw did not look like a man about to enter the "monstrous engine" of matrimony. Instead, he looked like a man who had misplaced a very important pamphlet on Fabianism. Getting Married by George Bernard Shaw
But as he slid the band onto Charlotte’s finger, his voice lost its theatrical edge. For a fleeting second, the satirist vanished. He looked at this "Green-Eyed Millionairess" who had nursed him back to health and challenged his every dogma, and he felt something dangerously close to the very sentiment he spent his career mocking.
"Well, Mr. Shaw? Do you feel like a changed man? A pillar of the establishment?" "I am merely contemplating the absurdity of the
When it came time for the rings, Shaw fumbled. "A gold hoop," he muttered. "The smallest handcuff ever forged by man."
The ceremony was brisk. Shaw, true to form, attempted to interrupt the proceedings twice—once to question the phrasing of "lawful impediment" and again to suggest that the room’s ventilation was a crime against public health. "You look remarkably like a prisoner waiting for
Charlotte laughed, pulling him toward the carriage. "Only five thousand, George? You’re getting soft in your old age."