Stephen Sondheim - You Must Meet My Wife lyrics

(Fredrik) She lightens my sadness, She livens my days, She bursts with a kind of madness My well-ordered ways. My happiest mistake, the ache of my life: You must meet my wife. She bubbles with pleasure, She glows with surprise, Disrupts my accustomed leisure And ruffles my ties. I don't know even now quite how it began. You must meet my wife, my Anne. One thousand whims to which I give in, Since her smallest tear turns me ashen. I never dreamed that I could live in So completely demented, contented a fashion. So sunlike, so winning, So unlike a wife. I do think that I'm beginning To show signs of life. Don't ask me how at my age one still can grow-- If you met my wife, you'd know. (Desiree (speaking):) Dear Fredrik, I'm just longing to meet her. Sometime. (Fredrik) She sparkles... (Desiree) How pleasant. (Fredrik) She twinkles... (Desiree) How nice. (Fredrik) Her youth is a sort of present-- (Desiree) Whatever the price. (Fredrik) The incandescent--what?--the-- (Desiree (offering a cigarette):) Light? (Fredrik) --of my life. You must meet my wife. (Desiree) Yes, I must. I really must. Now-- (Fredrik) She flutters. (Desiree) How charming. (Fredrik) She twitters. (Desiree) My word! (Fredrik) She floats. (Desiree) Isn't that alarming? What is she, a bird? (Fredrik) She makes me feel I'm--what?-- (Desiree) A very old man. (Fredrik) Yes--no! (Desiree) No? (Fredrik) But-- (Desiree) I must meet your Gertrude. (Fredrik) My Anne. (Desiree) Sorry--Anne. (Fredrik) She loves my voice, my walk, my mustache, The cigar, in fact, that I'm smoking. She'll watch me puff until it's just ash, Then she'll save the cigar bu*t. (Desiree) Bizarre, but You're joking. (Fredrik) She dotes on-- (Desiree) Your dimple. (Fredrik) My snoring. (Desiree) How dear. (Fredrik) The point is, she's really simple. (Desiree) Yes, that much seems clear. (Fredrik) She gives me funny names-- (Desiree) Like? (Fredrik) "Old Dry-as-Dust." (Desiree) Wouldn't she just? (Fredrik) You must meet my wife. (Desiree) Yes, I must, yes, I must. (Fredrik) A sea of whims that I submerge in, Yet so loveable in repentance. Unfortunately still a virgin, But you can't force a flower-- (Desiree) Don't finish that sentence! She's monstrous! (Fredrik) She's frightened. (Desiree) Unfeeling! (Fredrik) Unversed. She'd strike you as unenlightened-- (Desiree) No, I'd strike her first. (Fredrik) Her reticence, her apprehension-- (Desiree) Her crust! (Fredrik) No! (Desiree) Yes! (Fredrik) No! (Desiree) Fredrik! (Fredrik) You must meet my wife. (Desiree) Let me get my hat and my knife! (Fredrik) What was that? (Desiree) I must meet your wife. (Both) Yes, you must. Yes, I must.