Title: Pygmalion:

By - George Bernard Shaw .

• As to our on-line version: Columbia University, Academic Information Systems (AcIS), Bartleby Library (publications@columbia.edu). Transcribed, proofread, and marked-up in HTML, July 1996. Markup, graphics, and added files © copyright 1996 by the Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York.

Sub-genre: - comedy

Nationality: - British // Irish

Time Period: - 19th - 20th Century

First and Last Read by Dr. Rearick - Jan. 2003

Rated: - A+

Location: - Dr. Rearick's Office and on the mainframe.

Follow this Link for some espececially memorable quotes from Pygmalion.

Comments: - This is of course the play which became the famous musical My Fair Lady

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The trouble is that I think he (as Gerturde of Hamlet notes) "doth protest too much."  In fact there is a lot of textual evidence in the play to suggest that Henry and Eliza would continue a romantic relationship. The problem is that such an ending is exactly what middle class people (including me and maybe you) want, and since Shaw had a disdain for anything which appealed to that class, he may have chosen to pull our legs. Certainly the ending of the play is a departure from what many of his viewers would have expected in his time. Dickens would have been shocked, but then Dickens was one of the great voices of the middle class.

I use this play as an analysis of both the interaction of classes in culture and of gender.  One aspect which emphasizes both is the experience which both Eliza and her stepmother have of loosing their personal power and independence as they rise in respectability.  Shaw's point is that the demands of a patriarchal culture have little meaning when one is poor. It is interesting that this point is emphasized about a character the audience never sees. Col. Pickering asked Alfred Doolittle why he has not married Eliza's stepmother.  Doolittle's response is unexpected to those of us used to the "middle class" assumptions:

Tell her so, Governor: tell her so. I'm willing. It's me that suffers by it. Ive no hold on her. I got to be agreeable to her. I got to give her presents. I got to buy her clothes something sinful. I'm a slave to that woman, Governor, just because I'm not her lawful husband. And she knows it too.

Eliza's stepmother is in the position of power within her relationship with Alfred because there is no stigma for just "living together" in her class.  If she married him the law would demand that she submit.  However, when Doolittle has his unexpected rise in fortunes, she has to marry him because the class they are rising to would never tolerate.  Thus submitting to the subservient position approved of by her new culture and the law is better than being left behind in the gutter.  As Alfred says when asked why she changed her mind:  "Intimidated, Governor. Intimidated. Middle class morality claims its victim."

Of course this is exactly what so deeply troubles Eliza.  Once she has been "improved" she finds herself unable to be independent.  In fact until she remembers that she has learned a skill, Eliza only sees herself as a marriageable woman, a pretty face.  But her own moral nature is repelled by what she sees as only one step away from prostitution.

HIGGINS [a genial afterthought occurring to him] I daresay my mother could find some chap or other who would do very well.
LIZA. We were above that at the corner of Tottenham Court Road.
HIGGINS [waking up] What do you mean?	55
LIZA. I sold flowers. I didn't sell myself. Now youve made a lady of me I'm not fit to sell anything else. I wish you'd left me where you found me.

So in a patriarchal culture which denies women real freedom, both Eliza and her stepmother find that when they are able to rise to a new station into middle class, they must also accept the limitations of the middle class's ideas about a woman's place. 

Another interesting aspect of the work is its use of "bloody."  For Americans the emotional impact of the word is completely lost.  On Mount Vernon Nazarene's campus--where profane language is discouraged--the reality that a word exists which means nothing to them but is utterly shocking to those across the sea is often a revelation.  Click here to see some dictionary definitions and scripture which lay out the nature of "dirty words"

The version viewed in class: It is impossible to buy this production on DVD. I have tried, and yet I enjoy it so much. Comparisons with "My Fair Lady" are unfair to this fine television version of "Pygmalion." O'Tool gives a wonderful eccentric performance as Henry Higgins and Margot Kidder is a fine Eliza, but the quality which I especially find valuable when I use this version to teach in my Introduction to Literature is the speeches both Mrs. Pierce and Mrs. Higgins give which are cut from the musical to make room for all that wonderful music. Thus the female voice of Mrs. Higgins, "No No, you two infinitely stupid male creatures!" (Act III line 198), is lost. Also the ending, which is even more vague than the musical about the future of the two main characters, is a wonderful leap off for class discussion about "middle class" expectations. I really enjoy all of this production.

Peter O'Toole .... Professor Henry Higgins

Margot Kidder .... Eliza Doolittle
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Helen Beavis .... Mrs. Pearce
Donald Ewer .... Alfred P. Doolittle
Frances Hyland .... Mrs. Higgins
Nancy Kerr .... Mrs. Eynsford-Hill
John Standing .... Colonel Pickering
Ron White .... Freddy Eynsford-Hill
 

"What is life but a series of inspired follies?                                  "I shall make a duchess of

The difficulty is to find them to do.                                                this draggle-tailed
Never lose a chance: it doesn't come every day."                         guttersnipe."

The following was taken from Mancer's Theatrical Companion to Shaw located in the MVNU library:

This play has been a consistent success since it was first produced in Austria and Germany (Lessing Theater, Berlin, November 1, 19I3) before the English production, Much of the sensation it caused in London was owing to the introduction of the word "bloody " to the stage. It was Shaw's first commercial West End success--written when his critics doubted he could achieve this end.

Professor Higgins is drawn from the professor phonetician, Henry Sweet of Oxford. The play is fully discussed in the Mrs. Patrick Campbell-Shaw letters, published in 1952.

On the eve of the New York production on October 12, 1914, Shaw wrote to George C. Tyler, who was presenting the play:

"You will find that Mrs. Pat. Campbell's changes of dress will take longer than the change of scenery. The play is very hard work for her in this way; and you must arrange her dressing accommodation in such a position as to avoid running up and down stairs. If you cannot give her a room on the stage level she will agitate for a tent (she had one at His Majesty's here); and when SHE starts agitating don't argue but surrender at once, even if it involves rebuilding the theatre; you will find it cheaper in the long run."

"When you have fixed her up comfortably in this respect you can then press her if necessary to keep pace with the stage staff," goes on Mr. Shaw. " If she does that, the play can be got through between 8 and 11. Tree got through by 11-30; and Merivale can easily save half an hour on Tree if the others keep going. You must be firm about this; for Mrs. Campbell wants to cut the play, partly because its length hurries her dressing and interferes with the delightful levees she holds in her dressing-room, and partly because she thinks that Mrs. Pearce and Doolittle are insufferable boors and should be cut down to two or three lines apiece. She has already told me that you want the play cut down by half an hour; that New York people will not stay so long in a theatre; that she will not play the last scene to empty benches, etc., etc., etc".

"You must agree with her in all that, and deplore my pigheadedness in insisting on the whole play without a word omitted. It is no use arguing; she is clever enough to talk your hair gray; but she has no more 'judgment than a baby, and will spoil the play if you will let her. She does not know where the interest of the play really comes and does not care twopence about the part, to which she has never given five minutes' serious thought, except as an excuse for fascinating and a 'joke; and unless she is forced to be serious and kept hard at work, she may quite possibly get on the wrong side of the public with the play, and let it drop through when every one is tired of the scandal of her saving, ' Not bloody likely '-which, by the way, unless it is said with perfect unconsciousness and sincerity, will wreck the play on the first night. She can give a charming performance if she likes and if she sticks loyally to the text and does not gag or play for silly laughs. The worst of it is she doesn't like, and, as I have said, is not really interested in the entrails of the play, but) only in its superficial effectiveness, which soon becomes tedious. The moral of all this is that for her sake and for your own you must stick to me and to the play, and resist all her wiles to have it cut down (which wouldn't save a moment of the time for she'd waste all N you saved) if mortal man can resist such a siren, which I rather doubt."

Pygmalion was the third play to be filmed. It was produced by Gabriel Pascal and directed by Anthony Asquith and Leslie Howard at Pinewood Studios, England, in 1938. The settings were designed by Laurence Irving, and the costumes by Professor Czettell, Worth and Schiaparelli. Additional scenes and dialogue were written by Shaw.

T
The cast of PYGMALION was:

HENRY HIGGINS Leslie Howard

COLONEL PICKERING.. Scott Sunderland

FREDDY EYNSFORD-HILL David Tree

ALFRED DOOLITTLE ..

THE FOUR BYSTANDERS

ELIZA DOOLITTLE

MRS. EYNSFORD-HILL

Miss EYNSFORD-HILL

MRS. HIGGINS

MRS. PEARCE

PARLOURMAID

Wilfrid Lawson

Ivor Barnard, Wally Patch,

H. F. Maltby and George Mozart

Wendy Hiller

Everley Gregg

Lueen MacGrath

Marie L6hr

Jean Cadell

Eileen Beldon

Additional scene at the end of Act 1, with the Taxi-driver taking Eliza home.

Taximan Frank Atkinson

In Act II there was a scene between Mrs. Pearce and Eliza, where she is given a bath. A lesson given by Higgens to Eliza was shown at the end of Act 11.

There were five additional characters in the tea-party scene in Act III. The main one was:

THE VICAR 0. B. Clarence

After the tea-party scene we were shown the reception to which Eliza was taken by Higgins and Pickering. Among the guests were the following characters:

COUNT ARISTID KARPATHY'

THE AMBASSADRESS

YSABEL

PERFIDE A DUCHESS SOCIAL REPORTERS

A GRAND OLD LADY

A LADY

Esm6 Percy

Violet Vanbrugh

@ Iris Hoey Viola Tree Irene Browne Kate Cutler Cathleen Nesbitt

In Act IV Freddy was seen calling on Eliza at Wimpole Street.

CONSTABLE Cecil Trouncer

SECOND CONSTABLE Stephen Murray

The film finished with the implied idea that Higgins would marry Eliza, giving it a romantic ending.

The film was first shown in London at the Leicester Square Theatre, October 6, 1938-

Renamed Nepommuck in the published version of the film script.