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In George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion a phonetician believes the power of speech is such that he can introduce a Cockney flower girl to polite society after careful language and etiquette training, and no one will discern her true roots. The professor and the flower girl grown close, but after her successful debut she rejects the professor and his overbearing ways for a poor gentleman.
The most famous adaptation of the play is the 1964 film My Fair Lady, starring Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison.
7/10 Although I've never seen My Fair Lady (a travesty, I know), I've heard of it quite a bit - so reading the source play made a lot of sense when I picked this up. The story is simple enough - two bachelors making a bet to themselves that they could pass off a flower girl as a princess in six months - and the younger of the two falling in love (or not, it's never made clear) with the flower girl in the process. I'll not spoil it for others who've never read it, but the ending was a welcome surprise. There are two endings in the version I read, along with a sequel of sorts - in which Shaw elaborates why he chose the ending he did (which is rife with casual sexism), but if you can get past that - I suppose it does make sense. Pygmalion was a pleasant and short read, with some laugh-out-loud moments - I couldn't have asked for anything more. ( )
A study of the effects of manners of speech on social stabnding. The effects are still with us today, though much subtler, due to mass media. This is the basis of the hit musical "My Fair Lady"as well as a classic in its own right. the musical ends well before the afterword to the play does. ( )
I don‘t have much to say about this. A retelling of the myth, it‘s a very unusual premise for a play, but I‘m so glad it ends differently than the musical. The afterword by Shaw is helpful to read, but his analysis of the characters has a pop-psychology style which is bizarre. The only reason I‘m not panning this is because Eliza sticks up for herself at the end. I‘m rewatching the musical for a class so the comparison will be interesting. ( )
I bailed on this play after Act II because I found Henry Higgins to a patronizing chauvinist who thinks he knows best for everyone. He bullies Eliza Doolittle into becoming his protégée and goes far beyond his appropriate remit of giving elocution lessons by insisting she stay in his house and be given new clothes and taught to behave like a Lady. However, reading about the play after returning the book to the library tells me that Act III seems to be where the play really gets going, and that Higgins gets his comeuppance. But I had too many books on the shelves to read and had already dragged my feet about reading this play to begin with, renewing the book three times before even touching it, so although I don’t plan to come back to the play, I feel it would be unfair to rate it.
The edition of the play I read came in an omnibus with four other Shaw plays and had a preface as well as extra scenes added from the motion picture version and photos from early stage productions. Also, I’d forgotten that one of Shaw’s hobbyhorses was reforming the English language, and that comes across in the missing apostrophes in contractions (cant rather than can’t, wont rather than won’t). So those parts of the reading experience were interesting.
This is the original play version much better known as the musical My Fair Lady. As such, this lacks the variety of scenes of the latter, with the Ambassador's ball taking place off-stage and no Ascot race day. The hilarious scenes of Eliza's elocution lessons ("the rain in Spain is mainly in the plain" etc. are missing here). Aside from that, the dialogue is nearly identical and sparkles and flows like quicksilver though, as when I saw the musical a few days ago, I was irritated by the way Eliza is treated not only by Higgins, but perhaps even more so by the housekeeper Mrs Pearce, as though she is little more than an object with no feelings. In any case, the play/musical are both well worth reading/watching. ( )
[from the sequel] And so it came about that Eliza's luck held, and the expected opposition to the flower shop melted away. The shop is in the arcade of a railway station not very far from the Victoria and Albert Museum; and if you live in that neighbourhood you may go there any day and buy a buttonhole from Eliza.
You see, really and truly, apart from the things anyone can pick up (the dressing and the proper way of speaking, and so on), the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she's treated. I shall always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins, because he always treats me as a flower girl, and always will; but I know I can be a lady to you, because you always treat me as a lady, and always will.
Last words
Galatea never does quite like Pygmalian: his relation to her is too godlike to be altogether agreeable.
In George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion a phonetician believes the power of speech is such that he can introduce a Cockney flower girl to polite society after careful language and etiquette training, and no one will discern her true roots. The professor and the flower girl grown close, but after her successful debut she rejects the professor and his overbearing ways for a poor gentleman.
The most famous adaptation of the play is the 1964 film My Fair Lady, starring Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison.
Although I've never seen My Fair Lady (a travesty, I know), I've heard of it quite a bit - so reading the source play made a lot of sense when I picked this up.
The story is simple enough - two bachelors making a bet to themselves that they could pass off a flower girl as a princess in six months - and the younger of the two falling in love (or not, it's never made clear) with the flower girl in the process.
I'll not spoil it for others who've never read it, but the ending was a welcome surprise. There are two endings in the version I read, along with a sequel of sorts - in which Shaw elaborates why he chose the ending he did (which is rife with casual sexism), but if you can get past that - I suppose it does make sense.
Pygmalion was a pleasant and short read, with some laugh-out-loud moments - I couldn't have asked for anything more. ( )