# Getting Married: every role by lines, words, and stage time

> George Bernard Shaw. 16 speaking roles, 26,071 words, about 186 minutes of speech.

- URL: https://www.offbook.com/plays/getting-married
- Last updated: 2026-10-08

**Hotchkiss** has the most to say in Getting Married: about 511 lines and 4,349 words, 16.7% of the play. Getting Married is Shaw’s one-act debate comedy about marriage, set on a wedding day when the couple begins to doubt the whole idea. It runs as one continuous scene, so the cast stays on stage together for long stretches. Hotchkiss has the most words, about a sixth, and the load is shared widely among The Bishop, Mrs. George, Collins, and The General.

- Speaking roles: 16
- Scenes: Continuous
- Words: 26,071
- Speech time: 186 min

## Every role, largest first

| Role | Lines | Words | Share | Minutes | Scenes |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Hotchkiss | 511 | 4,349 | 16.7% | 31.1 | 1 |
| The Bishop | 404 | 3,331 | 12.8% | 23.8 | 1 |
| Mrs. George | 374 | 3,048 | 11.7% | 21.8 | 1 |
| Collins | 331 | 2,971 | 11.4% | 21.2 | 1 |
| The General | 332 | 2,701 | 10.4% | 19.3 | 1 |
| Reginald | 241 | 1,968 | 7.5% | 14.1 | 1 |
| Lesbia | 241 | 1,926 | 7.4% | 13.8 | 1 |
| Edith | 156 | 1,321 | 5.1% | 9.4 | 1 |
| Leo | 163 | 1,318 | 5.1% | 9.4 | 1 |
| Soames | 141 | 1,086 | 4.2% | 7.8 | 1 |
| Mrs. Bridgenorth | 143 | 1,006 | 3.9% | 7.2 | 1 |
| Sykes | 114 | 982 | 3.8% | 7.0 | 1 |
| The Voice Of The Beadle | 3 | 30 | 0.1% | 0.2 | 1 |
| The Beadle | 3 | 28 | 0.1% | 0.2 | 1 |
| Tie General | 1 | 5 | 0% | 0.0 | 1 |
| All The Rest | 1 | 1 | 0% | 0.0 | 1 |

## The longest speeches

| Speech | Words | Lines |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Hotchkiss: “My dear Anthony: I find you merely ridiculous as a preacher, because you keep referring me to places and documents and alleged occurrences in which, as a matter of fact, I don’t believe. I don’t believe in anything but my own will and my own pride and honor. Your fishes and your catechisms and all the rest of it make a charming poem which you call your faith. It fits you to perfection; but it doesn’t fit me. I happen, like Napoleon, to prefer Mohammedanism. I believe the whole British Empire will adopt a reformed Mohammedanism before the end of the century. The character of Muhammad is congenial to me. I admire him, and share his views of life to a considerable extent. That beats you, you see, Soames. Religion is a great force—the only real motive force in the world; but what you fellows don’t understand is that you must get at a man through his own religion and not through yours. Instead of facing that fact, you persist in trying to convert all men to your own little sect, so that you can use it against them afterwards. You are all missionaries and proselytizers trying to uproot the native religion from your neighbor’s flowerbeds and plant your own in its place. You would rather let a child perish in ignorance than have it taught by a rival sectary. You can talk to me of the quintessential equality of coal merchants and British officers; and yet you can’t see the quintessential equality of all the religions. Who are you, anyhow, that you should know better than Muhammad or Confucius or any of the other Johnnies who have been on this job since the world existed?” | 287 | 29 |
| Hotchkiss: “At that, yes. But there was something worse. Judge of my horror when, calling on the coal merchant to make a trifling complaint at finding my grate acting as a battery of quick-firing guns, and being confronted by his vulgar wife, I felt in her presence an extraordinary sensation of unrest, of emotion, of unsatisfied need. I’ll not disgust you with details of the madness and folly that followed that meeting. But it went as far as this: that I actually found myself prowling past the shop at night under a sort of desperate necessity to be near some place where she had been. A hideous temptation to kiss the doorstep because her foot had pressed it made me realize how mad I was. I tore myself away from London by a supreme effort; but I was on the point of returning like a needle to the lodestone when the outbreak of the war saved me. On the field of battle the infatuation wore off. The Billiter affair made a new man of me: I felt that I had left the follies and puerilities of the old days behind me forever. But half-an-hour ago—when the Bishop sent off that ring—a sudden grip at the base of my heart filled me with a nameless terror—me, the fearless! I recognized its cause when she walked into the room. Cecil: this woman is a harpy, a siren, a mermaid, a vampire. There is only one chance for me: flight, instant precipitate flight. Make my excuses. Forget me. Farewell. Too late: I’m lost.” | 262 | 27 |
| Mrs. George: “When you loved me I gave you the whole sun and stars to play with. I gave you eternity in a single moment, strength of the mountains in one clasp of your arms, and the volume of all the seas in one impulse of your souls. A moment only; but was it not enough? Were you not paid then for all the rest of your struggle on earth? Must I mend your clothes and sweep your floors as well? Was it not enough? I paid the price without bargaining: I bore the children without flinching: was that a reason for heaping fresh burdens on me? I carried the child in my arms: must I carry the father too? When I opened the gates of paradise, were you blind? was it nothing to you? When all the stars sang in your ears and all the winds swept you into the heart of heaven, were you deaf? were you dull? was I no more to you than a bone to a dog? Was it not enough? We spent eternity together; and you ask me for a little lifetime more. We possessed all the universe together; and you ask me to give you my scanty wages as well. I have given you the greatest of all things; and you ask me to give you little things. I gave you your own soul: you ask me for my body as a plaything. Was it not enough? Was it not enough?” | 246 | 25 |
| Hotchkiss: “How kind of you to say so, General! You’re quite right: I am a snob. Why not? The whole strength of England lies in the fact that the enormous majority of the English people are snobs. They insult poverty. They despise vulgarity. They love nobility. They admire exclusiveness. They will not obey a man risen from the ranks. They never trust one of their own class. I agree with them. I share their instincts. In my undergraduate days I was a Republican-a Socialist. I tried hard to feel toward a common man as I do towards a duke. I couldn’t. Neither can you. Well, why should we be ashamed of this aspiration towards what is above us? Why don’t I say that an honest man’s the noblest work of God? Because I don’t think so. If he’s not a gentleman, I don’t care whether he’s honest or not: I shouldn’t let his son marry my daughter. And that’s the test, mind. That’s the test. You feel as I do. You are a snob in fact: I am a snob, not only in fact, but on principle. I shall go down in history, not as the first snob, but as the first avowed champion of English snobbery, and its first martyr in the army. The navy boasts two such martyrs in Captains Kirby and Wade, who were shot for refusing to fight under Admiral Benbow, a promoted cabin boy. I have always envied them their glory.” | 245 | 25 |
| Sykes: “Yes; but I didn’t know that when we were married I should be legally responsible if she libelled anybody, though all her property is protected against me as if I were the lowest thief and cadger. This morning somebody sent me Belfort Bax’s essays on Men’s Wrongs; and they have been a perfect eye-opener to me. Bishop: I’m not thinking of myself: I would face anything for Edith. But my mother and sisters are wholly dependent on my property. I’d rather have to cut off an inch from my right arm than a hundred a year from my mother’s income. I owe everything to her care of me. Edith, in dressing-jacket and petticoat, comes in through the tower, swiftly and determinedly, pamphlet in hand, principles up in arms, more of a bishop than her father, yet as much a gentlewoman as her mother. She is the typical spoilt child of a clerical household: almost as terrible a product as the typical spoilt child of a Bohemian household: that is, all her childish affectations of conscientious scruple and religious impulse have been applauded and deferred to until she has become an ethical snob of the first water. Her father’s sense of humor and her mother’s placid balance have done something to save her humanity; but her impetuous temper and energetic will, unrestrained by any touch of humor or scepticism, carry everything before them. Imperious and dogmatic, she takes command of the party at once.” | 243 | 25 |
| The Bishop: “I am speaking technically, not in Boxer’s manner. Indeed the Bishops themselves went so far in that direction that they gained a reputation for being spiritually the stupidest men in the country and commercially the sharpest. I found a way out of this difficulty. Soames was my solicitor. I found that Soames, though a very capable man of business, had a romantic secret history. His father was an eminent Nonconformist divine who habitually spoke of the Church of England as The Scarlet Woman. Soames became secretly converted to Anglicanism at the age of fifteen. He longed to take holy orders, but didn’t dare to, because his father had a weak heart and habitually threatened to drop dead if anybody hurt his feelings. You may have noticed that people with weak hearts are the tyrants of English family life. So poor Soames had to become a solicitor. When his father died—by a curious stroke of poetic justice he died of scarlet fever, and was found to have had a perfectly sound heart—I ordained Soames and made him my chaplain. He is now quite happy. He is a celibate; fasts strictly on Fridays and throughout Lent; wears a cassock and biretta; and has more legal business to do than ever he had in his old office in Ely Place. And he sets me free for the spiritual and scholarly pursuits proper to a Bishop.” | 234 | 24 |
| Collins: “Oh yes, ma’am, yes: very often. But when it came to the point I couldn’t bear to hurt her feelings. She’s a sensitive, affectionate, anxious soul; and she was never brought up to know what freedom is to some people. You see, family life is all the life she knows: she’s like a bird born in a cage, that would die if you let it loose in the woods. When I thought how little it was to a man of my easy temper to put up with her, and how deep it would hurt her to think it was because I didn’t care for her, I always put off running away till next time; and so in the end I never ran away at all. I daresay it was good for me to be took such care of; but it cut me off from all my old friends something dreadful, ma’am: especially the women, ma’am. She never gave them a chance: she didn’t indeed. She never understood that married people should take holidays from one another if they are to keep at all fresh. Not that I ever got tired of her, ma’am; but my! how I used to get tired of home life sometimes. I used to catch myself envying my brother George: I positively did, ma’am.” | 218 | 22 |
| Reginald: “A nice way of showing your fondness! I had to go out and dig that flower bed all over with my own hands to soften it. I had to pick all the stones out of it. And then she complained that I hadn’t done it properly, because she got a worm down her neck. I had to go to Brighton with a poor creature who took a fancy to me on the way down, and got conscientious scruples about committing perjury after dinner. I had to put her down in the hotel book as Mrs. Reginald Bridgenorth: Leo’s name! Do you know what that feels like to a decent man? Do you know what a decent man feels about his wife’s name? How would you like to go into a hotel before all the waiters and people with—with that on your arm? Not that it was the poor girl’s fault, of course; only she started crying because I couldn’t stand her touching me; and now she keeps writing to me. And then I’m held up in the public court for cruelty and adultery, and turned away from Edith’s wedding by Alice, and lectured by you! a bachelor, and a precious green one at that. What do you know about it?” | 211 | 22 |
| Reginald: “It’s no use: they won’t listen to our sort. Of course they have to make you a Bishop and Boxer a General, because, after all, their blessed rabble of snobs and cads and half-starved shopkeepers can’t do government work; and the bounders and weekenders are too lazy and vulgar. They’d simply rot without us; but what do they ever do for us? what attention do they ever pay to what we say and what we want? I take it that we Bridgenorths are a pretty typical English family of the sort that has always set things straight and stuck up for the right to think and believe according to our conscience. But nowadays we are expected to dress and eat as the weekend bounders do, and to think and believe as the converted cannibals of Central Africa do, and to lie down and let every snob and every cad and every halfpenny journalist walk over us. Why, there’s not a newspaper in England today that represents what I call solid Bridgenorth opinion and tradition. Half of them read as if they were published at the nearest mother’s meeting, and the other half at the nearest motor garage. Do you call these chaps gentlemen? Do you call them Englishmen? I don’t.” | 210 | 21 |
| Collins: “Well, many ladies with a domestic turn thought so and said so, ma’am. But I will say for Mrs. George that the variety of experience made her wonderful interesting. That’s where the flighty ones score off the steady ones, ma’am. Look at my old woman! She’s never known any man but me; and she can’t properly know me, because she don’t know other men to compare me with. Of course she knows her parents in—well, in the way one does know one’s parents not knowing half their lives as you might say, or ever thinking that they was ever young; and she knew her children as children, and never thought of them as independent human beings till they ran away and nigh broke her heart for a week or two. But Mrs. George she came to know a lot about men of all sorts and ages; for the older she got the younger she liked ’em; and it certainly made her interesting, and gave her a lot of sense. I have often taken her advice on things when my own poor old woman wouldn’t have been a bit of use to me.” | 193 | 20 |

## Questions actors ask

### Who has the most lines in Getting Married?

Hotchkiss, with about 511 lines and 4,349 words, 16.7% of everything spoken in the play. The Bishop is next, with about 404 lines (12.8%).

### How long is Getting Married?

The full text has 26,071 spoken words, about 186 minutes at 140 words a minute before pauses, scene changes, and cuts. Most productions cut the text, so running times vary.

### How many speaking roles are in Getting Married?

16 named roles speak in this edition, in one continuous text with no scene breaks. 4 of them have less than 2% of the words, which is why small parts are often doubled.

## How we count

Counts are computed from the full text of the [Standard Ebooks edition](https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/george-bernard-shaw/getting-married) (public domain; retrieved 2026-10-08). Words are every spoken word, with stage directions removed. Lines are verse lines as printed, plus prose at 10 words a line, because prose has no fixed line breaks; editions differ, so other sources give slightly different line counts. Time is words at 140 words a minute, before pauses and stage business. A role is counted in a scene when it speaks there. To count a script that is not in the library, paste it into the [script line counter](https://www.offbook.com/tools/script-line-counter).