George Bernard Shaw | Getting Married By

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.

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. Getting Married by George Bernard Shaw

As they stepped back out onto the street, the London fog swirling around them, Charlotte took his arm. The ceremony was brisk

"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. For a fleeting second, the satirist vanished

"Well, Mr. Shaw? Do you feel like a changed man? A pillar of the establishment?"

They entered the small, drab room where the Registrar waited. The official looked up, unimpressed by the tall, gangly Irishman. To the Registrar, Shaw was not the greatest playwright of the age; he was simply a man who hadn't brushed his coat.

Shaw regained his posture, his eyes sparking with their usual mischievous fire. "I feel," he declared, "that I have just committed a very popular mistake. However, as mistakes go, I find the company to be of a much higher caliber than I deserve. Now, shall we go home? I have a preface to write, and I suspect marriage will provide me with at least five thousand words on why it is a disaster for everyone else."