Play cover, depicting Mrs Campbell as Eliza

Pygmalion (1913) is a play by George Bernard Shaw based on Ovid's tale of Pygmalion. It tells the story of Henry Higgins, a professor of phonetics (based on phonetician Henry Sweet or possibly Alexander Melville Bell), who makes a bet with his friend Colonel Pickering that he can successfully pass off a Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, as a refined society lady by teaching her how to speak with an upper class accent and training her in etiquette. In the process, Higgins and Doolittle grow close, but she ultimately rejects his domineering ways and declares she will marry Freddy Eynsford-Hill, a poor and young gentleman. Image File history File links Pygmalion-PlayCover. ... Image File history File links Pygmalion-PlayCover. ... Mrs. ... Year 1913 (MCMXIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Tuesday of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856–2 November 1950) was an Irish dramatist, literary critic, and socialist. ... For other uses, see Ovid (disambiguation) Publius Ovidius Naso (March 20, 43 BC – 17 AD) was a Roman poet known to the English-speaking world as Ovid who wrote on topics of love, abandoned women and mythological transformations. ... Étienne Maurice Falconet: Pygmalion & Galatee (1763) Pygmalion is a fictional character from the Roman poet Ovid, found in the tenth book of his Metamorphoses. ... The meaning of the word professor (Latin: one who claims publicly to be an expert) varies. ... Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone meaning sound, voice) is the study of the sounds of human speech. ... Phonetics (from the Greek word phone = sound/voice) is the study of speech sounds (voice). ... Henry Sweet (1845-1912) was a philologist, and is also considered to be an early linguist. ... Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... St Mary-le-Bow The term cockney refers to working-class inhabitants of London, particularly east London, and the slang used by these people. ... Upper class refers to the group of people at the top of a social hierarchy. ... It has been suggested that Office etiquette be merged into this article or section. ...

Shaw wrote the lead role of Eliza Doolittle for Mrs Patrick Campbell (though at 49 she was considered by some to be too old for the part). Due to delays in mounting a London production and Campbell's injury in a car accident, the first English presentation did not take place until some time after Pygmalion premiered at the Hofburg Theater in Vienna on October 16, 1913, in a German translation by Shaw. The first production in English finally opened at His Majesty's Theatre, London on April 11, 1914 and starred Mrs Patrick Campbell as Eliza and Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree as Henry Higgins; it was directed by Shaw himself. Mrs. ... This article is about the capital of England and the United Kingdom. ... “Wien” redirects here. ... October 16 is the 289th day of the year (290th in leap years). ... Year 1913 (MCMXIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Tuesday of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... A perfomance at Opera House, Haymarket, predecessor of Her Majestys Theatre in circa 1808. ... Mrs. ... Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree (December 17, 1853 - July 2, 1917) was an English actor-manager. ...

Plot

Act One

Covent Garden - 11.15p.m. A group of people are sheltering from the rain. Amongst them are the silly, shallow, social climbing Eynsford-Hills, consisting of mother and daughter, Clara. Freddy Eynsford-Hill enters after being unable to find a cab to take them home. He is a weak and ineffectual character. His sister bullies him, and enjoys seeing him look ridiculous. As he goes off once again to find a cab, he bumps into a flower girl, Eliza. Her flowers drop into the mud of Covent Garden, the flowers she needs to survive in her poverty-stricken world. Shortly they are joined by a gentleman, Colonel Pickering. While Eliza tries to sell flowers to the Colonel, a bystander informs her that a man is writing down everything she says. The man is Professor Henry Higgins. A row occurs when Higgins tells people where they were born, which creates both amazement and irritation. One man accuses Higgins of coming from Hanwell Insane Asylum. It becomes apparent that he and Colonel Pickering have a shared interest in phonetics. Indeed, Pickering has come from India to meet Higgins and Higgins was planning to go to India to meet Pickering. Higgins tells Pickering that he could turn the flower girl into a duchess. These words of bravado spark an interest in Eliza, who would love to make changes in her life and become more mannerly, even though, to her, it only means working in a flower shop. At the end of the act, Freddy returns after finding a taxi, only to find that his mother and sister have gone and left him with the cab. The streetwise Eliza takes the cab from him, using the money that Higgins tossed to her out of pity, leaving him on his own. Hanwell Insane Asylum was a mental hospital that was built in 1831 in England. ...

Act Two

Higgins' Laboratory - Next Day. As Higgins demonstrates his equipment to Pickering, the housekeeper, Mrs. Pearce, tells him that a young girl wants to see him. She is shown up, and to his disappointment it is Eliza. He has no interest in her, but she says she wants to pay to have lessons, so she can talk like a lady in a flower shop. Higgins claims that he could turn her into a duchess. Pickering makes a bet with him on his claim, and says that he will pay for her lessons. She is sent off to have a bath. Mrs. Pearce tells Higgins that he must behave himself in the young girl's presence. He must stop swearing, and improve his table manners. He is at a loss to understand why she should find fault with him. Then Alfred Doolittle, Eliza's father, appears with the sole purpose of getting money out of Higgins. He has no interest in his daughter in a paternal way. He sees himself as member of the undeserving poor, and means to go on being undeserving. He has an eccentric view of life, brought about by a lack of education and an intelligent brain. He is also aggressive, and when Eliza, on her return, sticks her tongue out at him, he goes to hit her, but is prevented by Pickering. The scene ends with Higgins telling Pickering that they really have got a difficult job on their hands.

Act Three

Mrs Higgins' drawing room. Henry tells his mother he has a young 'common' whom he has been teaching. Mrs Higgins is not very impressed with her son's attempts to win her approval because it is her 'at home' day, in which she is entertaining visitors. The visitors are the Eynsford-Hills. Henry is rude to them on their arrival. Eliza enters and soon falls into talking about the weather and her family. The humour stems from the knowledge the audience have of Eliza, of which the Eynsford-Hills are curiously ignorant. When she is leaving, Freddy Eynsford-Hill asks her if she is going to walk across the park, to which she replies; " Walk! Not bloody likely..." (This is the most famous line from the play, and, for many years after, to use the word 'bloody' was known as a pygmalion.) After she and the Eynsford-Hills leave, Henry asks for his mother's opinion. She says the girl is not presentable, and she is very concerned about what will happen to the girl; but neither Higgins nor Pickering understand her, and leave feeling confident and excited about how Eliza will get on. This leaves Mrs Higgins feeling exasperated, and she says "Men! Men!! Men!!!"

Act Four

Higgins' laboratory - The time is midnight, and Higgins, Pickering, and Eliza have returned from the ball. Pickering congratulates Higgins on winning the bet. As they retire to bed, Higgins asks where his slippers are, and on returning to his room Eliza throws them at him. The remainder of the scene is about Eliza not knowing what she is going to do with her life, and Higgins not understanding her difficulty. Higgins says she could get married, but Eliza interprets this as selling herself like a prostitute. "We were above that at the corner of Tottenham Court Road." Finally she returns her jewellery to Higgins, including the ring he had given her, as though she is cutting her ties with him, but retrieves it from the hearth. Tottenham Court Road looking north with the Euston Tower in the distance Tottenham Court Road is a road in Central London, England, running from St Giles Circus (the junction of Oxford Street and Charing Cross Road) north to Euston Road, near the border of the City of Westminster and the...

Act Five

Mrs Higgins' drawing room. Higgins and Pickering are perturbed at discovering that Eliza has walked out on them. Doolittle returns now dressed in wedding attire and transformed into the middle class in which he feels '..intimidated..'. The scene ends with another confrontation between Higgins and Eliza, which is basically a repeat of the previous act. The play ends with everyone leaving to see Doolittle married, and Higgins leaves on his own.

Ending

Despite the intense central relationship between Eliza and Henry, the original play ends with her leaving to marry the eager young Freddy Eynsford-Hill. Shaw, annoyed by the tendency of audiences, actors, and even directors to seek 'romantic' re-interpretations of his ending, later wrote an essay^[1] for inclusion with subsequent editions, in which he explained precisely why it was impossible for the story to end with Higgins and Eliza getting married.

Some subsequent adaptations have changed this ending. Despite Shaw's insistence that the original ending remain intact, director Gabriel Pascal provided a more ambiguous end to the 1938 film: instead of marrying Freddy, Eliza apparently reconciles with Henry in the final scene, leaving open the possibility of their marriage. The musical version My Fair Lady and its 1964 film have similarly happy endings. Pygmalion (1938) is a British film based on George Bernard Shaws play of the same name, and adapted by him for the screen. ... My Fair Lady is a musical with a book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe, based on George Bernard Shaws Pygmalion. ... My Fair Lady is an Academy Award-winning 1964 film adaptation of the stage musical, My Fair Lady, based in turn on the play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw. ...

Adaptations

The play led to a series of adaptations:

• Pygmalion (1938), a film adaptation by Shaw.
• My Fair Lady (1956), the Broadway musical by Lerner and Loewe, based on the 1938 film.
• My Fair Lady (1964), a film version of the musical starring Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison.
• Pretty Woman (1990), a modern film take on Pygmalion starring Julia Roberts and Richard Gere.
• She's All That (1999), a modern film take on Pygmalion.

Pygmalion (1938) is a British film based on George Bernard Shaws play of the same name, and adapted by him for the screen. ... My Fair Lady is a musical with a book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe, based on George Bernard Shaws Pygmalion. ... Alan Jay Lerner (August 31, 1918 – June 14, 1986) was an American Broadway lyricist and librettist. ... Frederic Loewe (June 10, 1901 - February 14, 1988) was a highly successful Austrian-American composer. ... My Fair Lady is an Academy Award-winning 1964 film adaptation of the stage musical, My Fair Lady, based in turn on the play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw. ... Audrey Hepburn (May 4, 1929 – January 20, 1993) was an Academy Award-winning Anglo-Dutch actress of film and theatre, Broadway stage performer, ballerina, fashion model, and humanitarian. ... Sir Reginald Carey Rex Harrison (b. ... Pretty Woman is an American romantic comedy motion picture that was one of the top films at the box office in 1990. ... Julia Fiona Roberts (born October 28, 1967) is an American film actress and former fashion model. ... Richard Tiffany Gere[1] (born August 31, 1949) is an American actor. ... Shes All That is a 1999 romantic comedy film, directed by Robert Iscove, and is a modern remake of George Bernard Shaws Pygmalion (which was also the basis for the musical comedy My Fair Lady starring Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison). ...

Television References

• The Simpsons referenced the title in the episode "Pygmoelian" in which Moe Szyslak has cosmetic surgery in order to be socially accepted. The show also made reference to Pygmalion in the episode My Fair Laddy where Lisa Simpson turns Groundskeeper Willie into a proper gentleman after betting her brother Bart Simpson that she can turn Willie into a proper gentleman by the school science fair.

• Family Guy made reference to Pygmalion in the episode "One If by Clam, Two If by Sea" when Stewie Griffin attempts to turn a little Cockney-accented English girl named Eliza Pinchley into a proper lady.

• Will and Grace referenced the title in the four part episode "Fagmalion" in which Will and Jack make-over newly queer Barry.

• Boy Meets World made reference to the story in the episode "Turnaround", where Cory and Shawn enlist the help of a friend to turn Cory's date to the dance popular. Shawn gets the idea from reading Pygmalion in English Class.

• Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends made a reference to Pygmalion in the episode "My So-Called Wife" when Mr. Harriman has to pretend Coco is his wife, and thus attempts to teach her English using the following sentence: "The sleet in Crete stays neatly in the street."

Simpsons redirects here. ... Pygmoelian is the sixteenth episode of the eleventh season of The Simpsons. ... Morris Moe Lester Szyslak (pronounced //) is a fictional character on the animated series The Simpsons, voiced by Hank Azaria. ... My Fair Laddy is the twelfth episode of The Simpsons seventeenth season. ... Lisa Marie Simpson is a character in the animated television series The Simpsons, voiced by Yeardley Smith; Lisa is the only character Smith voices on a regular basis. ... Groundskeeper Willie (a. ... Bart and his sister Lisa as news anchors. ... Family Guy is an Emmy award winning American animated television series about a nuclear family in the fictional town of Quahog (IPA or ), Rhode Island. ... “One If by Clam, Two If by Sea” is an episode of Family Guy. ... Stewart Gilligan Stewie Griffin is a fictional character in the animated television series Family Guy. ... Will & Grace is an American television situation comedy focusing on Will Truman, a gay attorney and his best friend Grace Adler, a straight Jewish woman who runs her own interior design firm. ... Boy Meets World is an American television sitcom that chronicles the events and everyday life lessons of Cory Matthews, who grows up from a pre-pubescent boy to a married man. ... Ben Savage as Cory Matthews Cornelius A. Cory Matthews is a fictional character played by Ben Savage on the television sitcom Boy Meets World. ... Shawn Hunter (right) with best friend Cory Matthews in Season 1 Shawn Patrick Hunter is a fictional character played by Rider Strong on the television sitcom Boy Meets World, the best friend of protagonist Cory Matthews. ... Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends (sometimes called Fosters for short, and abbreviated as FHIF/FHFIF) is an American animated television series created and produced at Cartoon Network Studios by animator Craig McCracken, who also created The Powerpuff Girls. ...

Trivia

Some have speculated that Alexander Melville Bell was the model for Professor Higgins. Evidence supporting this includes the fact that Eliza is not a common name, and Eliza Grace Bell was Alexander Melville Bell's wife. However, in earlier retellings of Ovid's story a similar name is used; Goethe calls her Elise, based upon the variants in the story of Dido/Elissa. The play also owes something to the legend of King Cophetua. Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (pronounced [gø tə]) (August 28, 1749–March 22, 1832) was a German writer, politician, humanist, scientist, and philosopher. ... King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid, 1884, by Edward Burne-Jones, currently hangs in the Tate Gallery, London. ...

Shaw's play shocked Edwardian audiences with Eliza's swearing in the line "Not bloody likely!". Campbell was considered to have risked her successful career by speaking the line. The Edwardian period or Edwardian era in the United Kingdom is the period 1901 to 1910, the reign of King Edward VII. It succeeded the Victorian period and is sometimes extended to include the period up to the sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912, the start of World War... Look up Profanity in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Joseph Weizenbaum named his artificial intelligence computer program ELIZA after the character Eliza Doolittle. Joseph Weizenbaum. ... Garry Kasparov playing against Deep Blue, the first machine to win a chess game against a reigning world champion. ... A computer program is a collection of instructions that describe a task, or set of tasks, to be carried out by a computer. ... ELIZA is a computer program by Joseph Weizenbaum, designed in 1966, which parodied a Rogerian therapist, largely by rephrasing many of the patients statements as questions and posing them to the patient. ...

A story goes that Shaw, as part of an ongoing feud with Winston Churchill, sent Churchill tickets to the opening night of Pygmalion, with an attached note saying that "I have included two tickets so that you may bring a friend, if you have any." Churchill sent a reply: "I regret to say that I am unable to attend that night; I would like tickets to the second performance, if there is one." Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, KG, OM, CH, TD, FRS, PC (Can) (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955. ...

Similar works

Willy Russell's 1980 stage comedy Educating Rita, and the subsequent film adaptation, are similar in plot to Pygmalion, but are based on the author's own experiences.^[2] William Martin Russell (born 23 August 1947 in Whiston, Merseyside) is a British playwright, lyricist and composer. ... Educating Rita is a stage comedy by British playwright Willy Russell which premièred at The Warehouse, London, in 1980; and a film (1983) directed by Lewis Gilbert and starring Julie Walters, Michael Caine, and Maureen Lipman with a screenplay by Russell. ...

She's All That 1999 romantic comedy film, directed by Robert Iscove, and is an appropriation of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion. Shes All That is a 1999 romantic comedy film, directed by Robert Iscove, and is a modern remake of George Bernard Shaws Pygmalion (which was also the basis for the musical comedy My Fair Lady starring Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison). ...

References to Play

In the 2004 film, Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, starring Lindsay Lohan, the musical which the school drama club performs is a modern-day adaptation of "Pygmalion," but with a New York twist (meaning it focuses on a New Yorker woman, rather than a British one). Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen is a 2004 American comedy movie. ... Lindsay Dee Lohan[1] (born July 2, 1986) is an American actress and pop music singer. ...

References

1. ^ page 86 of the Project Gutenberg edition.
2. ^ http://www.willyrussell.com/page2intro.html

External links

• Pygmalion stories across history
• Pygmalion, available at Project Gutenberg.
• GradeSaver study guide: Pygmalion