“You certainly are a pretty pair of babies, playing with your live doll.”

I have seen “My Fair Lady” more times than I can count. I never get tired of it. Whether it’s school and community productions, Audrey Hepburn or Julia Roberts, it’s just a wonderful show.

But until now, I’d never read it. And of course, this trumps them all. Pygmalion is only my second book of his, but I can say with confidence that I just love reading George Bernard Shaw. This is a captivating play about relationships and social hierarchy, with characters chalk full of personality, and rapid-fire, witty dialog. And then, as if he just can’t help himself, Shaw tops it off with an essay at the end; a wonderful treatise on marriage and “the state of human affairs.”

It’s short, but densely packed. Highly recommended.

“I have learnt something from your idiotic notions: I confess that humbly and gratefully. And I have grown accustomed to your voice and appearance. I like them, rather.”

“My Fair Lady” is one of my very favorite musicals. I have avoided reading anything by GBS because I don’t care for his political views and because he was critical of Shakespeare. I actually enjoyed reading this play. It was very close to the “My Fair Lady” script, probably because Shaw also wrote the screenplay. (He was the first person to win both a Nobel Prize and an Academy Award.) The ending of “My Fair Lady” has always been a little unsettling for me. The mythical Pygmalion was a sculptor who fell in love with his statue, Galatea. Aphrodite brought Galatea to life and Pygmalion married her. Higgins represents Pygmalion and he feels Liza is his creation, but they do not get married.

Shaw wrote an epilogue that continues where “My Fair Lady” leaves you hanging. It has a strange twist: Higgins does not love his “Galatea,” but his mother.

“If an imaginative boy has a sufficiently rich mother who has intelligence, personal grace, dignity of character without harshness...she sets a standard for him against which very few women can struggle.....The word passion means nothing else to them.....We cannot help suspecting that the disentanglement of sex from the associations with which it is so commonly confused, a disentanglement which persons of genius achieve by sheer intellectual analysis, is sometimes produced or aided by parental fascination.” Interestingly, Shaw was married to Charlotte Payne-Townshend for over years 40 yet never consummated the marriage.

“Eliza’s instincts tell her not to marry Higgins.” She marries Freddy. Colonel Pickering sets her up in a floral shop. Freddy becomes a greengrocer. They struggle for years, Colonel Pickering bails them out from time to time, they take some business classes, and eventually make a go of it. “Eliza still manages to meddle in the housekeeping at Wimpole Street.” She realizes she is “no more to him than them slippers....Galatea never does quite like Pygmalion: his relation to her is too godlike to be altogether agreeable.”

The epilogue was highly disappointing. I don’t think I will be able to watch “My Fair Lady” without looking at Higgins as some type of Shaw-ish/Nietzschean/Freudian freak.

Eliza Doolittle, on the other hand, is a delightful character: Strong, pragmatic, feisty.

A side note, Shaw pays homage to Shakespeare: {Higgins}. “Remember that you are a human being with a soul and the divine gift of articulate speech: that your native language is the language of Shakespeare and Milton and The Bible...”

Una lectura que no tenía planeada en estos días. Por suerte, el desvío de los planes salió genial. Pigmalión es una obra de teatro distinta, que hace foco en un tema que no se aborda en estos días y que se lee rapidísimo porque divierte. Así de sencillo.

Cuento un poco el argumento, aunque ya muchos deben conocerlo por las versiones cinematográficas: un especialista en fonética (Henry Higgins) se encuentra casualmente con una vendedora de flores (Eliza Doolittle) cuya boca es, sin más ni menos, una cloaca. No sólo por las expresiones que usa, si no por lo mal que las pronuncia. Entonces él apuesta con un compañero/colega que puede transformarla en una señorita (lingüísticamente hablando, aunque también se espera un cambio superficial) y hacerla pasar por una dama de alta sociedad.

Y cuando yo creí que ya le había visto los hilos a todo esto, caí en la trampa y me llevé una sorpresa. No tomó la dirección que imaginé. Estas cosas, en lugar de decepcionarme, me producen una inmensa alegría. En primer lugar, los personajes no son como uno quiere, sino que se comportan de forma distante. El protagonista no es un héroe y tiene un carácter horrendo, a tal punto de comportarse duramente con la muchacha. Ella genera simpatía al instante (incluso cuando habla como habla) y vuelve más amenas las escenas en donde se tensa un poco la cuestión. Hay muchos personajes que se encargan de decir lo que uno no quiere escuchar y otros que dicen cosas que uno no esperaba que dijeran (pido disculpas por el trabalenguas). En segundo lugar, los diálogos son divertidos, pero también hay actitudes que molestan e incomodan. Nada que no pueda superarse con un "menos mal que es sólo una ficción".

La historia tiene un contexto construido por el mismo Shaw, porque hay un prefacio en donde explica su inspiración y un apéndice en donde termina de redondear la historia porque, al parecer, muchos espectadores de la obra no salían del teatro contentos con el final. A mí me gustó y no me pareció necesaria una explicación. La obra en general es bastante atípica, sobre todo por el carácter de los personajes principales, así que no esperaba menos. Fue una buena lectura y me sacó del sopor que me producen los libros pesados en verano. Tres hurras por Pigmalión.

I watched My Fair Lady about twenty years ago and all I remember is that a linguistic professor taking in a common flower girl to teach her proper language and speech and to improve her behaviour so that she'll become a lady. I didn't know then that the musical was based on the play Pygmalion by Bernard Shaw. I acquired that knowledge very recently. I cannot remember many details of the musical, so the reading of the play was quite fresh.

Pygmalion, the play, is centered on Henry Higgins, a professor of phonetics, and Eliza Doolittle, a common flower girl. Higgins makes it his "project" to reform Eliza and makes her a "duchess". He is successful in his project but he must face certain consequences that were not anticipated.

Under this light storyline, Bernard Shaw exposes a few powerful themes. The major one is speech and language defects in the lower classes of English society. Eliza represents them. Her life story is a blatant example of the lives of men and women of the lower class. Their lack of education and inability to speak proper English made their life circumstances dire. They were confirmed to have very low jobs and to become even a shop assistant is beyond reach. Shaw advocates the value of education irrespective of gender.

Another is the class difference and attitude of the higher classes toward the low class. Professor Higgins represents a higher class. His treatment of Eliza and the likes generally shows that the class Higgins represents does not see the likes of Eliza as humans with feelings. They are only mere objects to be used and then sent to the "gutter" as Professor Higgins so shamelessly states.

Finally, Shaw addresses the issue of women's position in English society. Eliza is a "project" for Higgins, and he keeps her in the house without any thought to her future. And when his "project" triumphs, all he does is to express his relief that it is all over. When Eliza is hurt and leaves the house, Higgins wants her back because he is "used to the sound of her voice and appearance". Using the cold and snobbish character of Higgins, Shaw portrays how women are seen and viewed. In men's eyes, they are nothing but objects to be possessed, used, abused, and manipulated. Higgins does not value Eliza. What is valuable to him is his creation, just like Pygmalion who loved the statue which he carved. Her leaving to find her independence and following her heart to be with the one who appreciates her is Shaw's way of signifying the women's emerging fight for independence.

Overall, this was an interesting play with witty dialogues, satire, and powerful themes. Simple writing and the light storyline made it very much fun to read.

Pygmalion of Cyprus, in Greek and Roman mythology, was granted a happy destiny, because (as recounted in Ovid’s Metamorphoses) he was able to marry Galatea, the beautiful woman he had created as a statue, fallen in love with, and then seen brought to life by the love goddess Aphrodite. Yet when the great Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw adapted the Pygmalion-and-Galatea legend into his play Pygmalion (1912), he had no intention of recasting the story so straightforwardly. Professor Henry Higgins, the British linguist who wagers that he can teach a working-class London flower girl to speak like a duchess, is a troubled Pygmalion with a great many issues; and Eliza Doolittle, the flower girl who serves as the subject of Professor Higgins’s experiment, is a Galatea with a difference – with a mind and a heart of her own.

The story, of course, is a familiar one – in large part, for modern readers and playgoers and moviegoers, because of the massive worldwide success of My Fair Lady, the wildly popular 1956 Lerner-and-Loewe Broadway musical that was subsequently adapted into an equally successful 1964 film that won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director (George Cukor), and Best Actor (for Rex Harrison as Professor Higgins). The success and cultural influence of My Fair Lady make it challenging, but worthwhile, for modern readers to go back to Shaw’s original play and try to experience it as a play – without automatically envisioning Eliza Doolittle as looking just like Audrey Hepburn, and without humming tunes like “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” while turning each page.

As film critic Roger Ebert aptly points out in his “Great Movies” review of My Fair Lady, it is Eliza who takes the initiative and sets the plot in motion. Hearing Professor Higgins’s idle boast, outside a Covent Garden theatre, that he could take a flower girl like Eliza and make her use of the English language fit for London high society, Eliza seeks out Professor Higgins’s services as a linguist, on a paying basis, and refuses to be put down by Higgins’s considerable capacity for scorn: “I want to be a lady in a flower shop stead of sellin’ at the corner of Tottenham Court Road. But they won’t take me unless I can talk more genteel. Well, here I am, ready to pay him – not asking any favour – and he treats me zif I was dirt” (p. 26).

Eliza is speaking here to Colonel Pickering, a military officer who has just returned from service in India – and who, as a linguist and “confirmed bachelor” like Professor Higgins, is settling in as a long-term guest at Higgins’s home. Colonel Pickering’s courtesy to Eliza from the beginning of their acquaintance – “Won’t you sit down, Miss Doolittle?” – contrasts nicely with Professor Higgins’s consistent disdain for anyone whom he considers not to be an intellectual equal. Higgins and Pickering make a “gentlemen’s wager” regarding whether or not Higgins will be able to teach the working-class Eliza how to speak the language, and take on the social manner, of the upper classes.

Reading Pygmalion while trying to keep My Fair Lady as far out of my mind as possible reinforced my sense of how truly it is Eliza’s play. Eliza Doolittle is a sharp observer of life and society; indeed, as an impoverished and working-class young woman, she has had to be, in order to survive. Installed at Professor Higgins’s home in the fashionable Wimpole Street area of central London, and transported to a new community with new norms and values, she offers wry commentary on the middle-class values among which she has been placed.

Told that she must have night-clothes – she has worn her day clothes to bed all her life – and that fashionable clothes will be furnished for her if she is willing to wait, Eliza replies in a manner that shows all that she is learning: “If I’m to have fashionable clothes, I’ll wait. I should like to have some. Mrs. Pearce [Professor Higgins’s housekeeper] says you’re going to give me some to wear in bed at night different to what I wear in the daytime, but it do seem a waste of money when you could get something to show” (p. 50).

As every viewer or reader of this play and every viewer of My Fair Lady knows, Eliza is a triumph in London high society, winning Higgins’s bet for him – and, in the process, foiling an arrogant rival linguist, once Higgins’s student, who now fancies himself Higgins’s equal. But the joy that Higgins and Pickering feel at Eliza’s triumph is clouded, for the reader, by the two men's failure to salute Eliza herself for her hard work and courage (Pickering’s insensitivity to Eliza at this point seems a rare false note in the play).

When Higgins asks why Eliza is upset, hears her say “What’s to become of me?”, and tries to assure her that Higgins and Pickering can secure her a good marriage, Eliza sees that as little more than a gentrified, upscale version of the sex trade she used to see going on around her in Covent Garden: “We were above that at the corner of Tottenham Court Road….I sold flowers. I didn’t sell myself. Now you’ve made a lady of me I’m not fit to sell anything else” (p. 78).

Higgins’s attempt to parry this devastating rhetorical thrust by Eliza – he accuses her of sullying the dignity of “human relations” – has no force. Higgins loves to toss off references and allusions to his favourite author, John Milton – a writer who, like Higgins, tended toward puritanical inflexibility, and toward a tendency to think and speak in moral absolutes. But in his readings and re-readings and re-re-readings of Paradise Lost, has Higgins had no time to read any Jane Austen?

In novels like Sense and Sensibility (1811) and Pride and Prejudice (1813), Austen set forth eloquently the dilemma facing young women in her time. Securing a good marriage in Regency England was, purely and simply, a matter of social and economic survival; there was no other way for a young woman to avoid a lifetime of poverty and social ignominy. One hundred years later, at the time of the first staging of Pygmalion, not much had changed. Eliza is right, and any reasonable viewer or reader of the play is likely to agree with her.

I trust that there is not too much need for me to inform the reader that Pygmalion does not end like My Fair Lady. Indeed, a core part of the history of the play is the story of audience dissatisfaction with the way in which Shaw as playwright resolved the question of the relationship between Higgins and Eliza. Shaw intended for his audience to see that his Pygmalion, Professor Higgins, did not deserve his Galatea, Eliza. But audiences were having none of that.

A good clue to how Shaw wanted his audience to see the relationship comes near the end of the play, after Eliza Doolittle has effectively declared her independence from Professor Higgins, devastating the once-so-self-confident linguist. Trying desperately to work out some compromise solution through which Eliza (who has quietly made herself indispensable) can remain at the Higgins household on somewhat the same basis as before, Higgins suggests that “I’ll adopt you as my daughter, and settle money on you if you like. Or would you rather marry Pickering?” Eliza retorts, “I wouldn’t marry you if you asked me; and you’re nearer my age than what he is” (p. 101).

The import here is clear; Higgins’s feelings toward Eliza are more fatherly or father-like than they are romantic, and both Higgins and Eliza are well aware of the age difference between them. It is perfectly understandable, in the context of these aspects of the play, that Eliza’s heart turns toward Freddy Eynsford-Hill, a feckless but likable young man whose family, clinging desperately to the outward forms of social-class “respectability,” has never managed to teach him how to do anything. Eliza and Freddy belong together; both are creatures of their class-ridden society, their lives malformed by strict social expectations of what people of different social strata are “supposed” to do. They can face the future by trying to build a new and better world together.

And consider this: if Freddy is not meant to be with Eliza by the play’s end, then what earthly dramatological reason is there for him to be in the play at all? In My Fair Lady, he recites a couple of witty lines, sings a nice song, and then disappears from the play as if by spontaneous combustion.

But Shaw, whether he realized it or not, was facing romantic-comedy conventions that were firmly in place long before “rom-com” was a standardized movie category at the video store, or on one’s streaming service. Higgins and Eliza spend so much time on stage together that audiences inevitably start thinking in romantic-comedy terms. Boy finds girl; boy loses girl; boy regains girl. It is an eminently safe first-date choice (take note, single friends), and it has long brought in handsome returns at box offices around the world.

It should be no wonder that Anthony Asquith’s 1938 film version of Pygmalion (with Leslie Howard as Higgins and Wendy Hiller as Eliza) caved to audience demands for a “happy” ending. Even though Asquith’s Pygmalion won Shaw an Academy Award for Best Screenplay – making Shaw the first person in history to win both a Nobel Prize and an Oscar – old G.B.S. couldn’t have been happy at that bit of movie-studio interference. Perhaps it is for the best that he did not live to see what Lerner and Loewe, and then Cukor, did to conclude My Fair Lady.

For his part, Shaw, perhaps somewhat defensively, added to a 1916 reprinting of his play a 13-page sequel showing conclusively why it was inevitable and necessary that Eliza would marry Freddy, not Higgins – and, while he was at it, Shaw set forth the later lives of all the major characters. The sequel is zesty, energetic, and well-written, and yet it begs the question: if the play is saying what the author wants it to say, in the script and on the stage, then why is it necessary for the author to write, four years later, a narrative sequel that most viewers of the play will never read? Why not just write a new play about Eliza, Freddy, Higgins, Pickering, Mrs. Pearce, et al.? Calling it Pygmalion II would have been unworthy of an artist of Shaw's stature; by contrast, Galatea would have been a good title.

But let that go. Shaw’s Pygmalion is one of the greatest and most influential plays ever written. For my part, I returned to Pygmalion in the context of a viewing of My Fair Lady at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., a few months before the coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic closed theatres around the world. The play’s director gave the ending a twist that made it slightly different from what one sees in Cukor’s film. From the audience, there were…murmurings.

The fact that Pygmalion and its ending still intrigue and trouble people more than 100 years after the play’s premiere testifies to its enduring power. Truly, Shaw, a 20th-century Irish Pygmalion, successfully sculpted an immortal creation.

My Fair Lady, which is based on this story, is a delightful musical I have seen many times over the years. I love the music and the story. It seems very one of a kind. I have never read the play by George and finally got around to doing so.

Henry Higgins simply jumps off the page completely realized and his own full character. He is so boorish and a big bully, he's easy to hate and also to see that somehow in that thick skull of his, he did mean well. Eliza is just a realized and we see a very smart woman of the streets move up in class, but has she really. Now she isn't really fit for any world.

There are some scenes from the movie that are not in the book such as the Rain in Spain song, which disappointed me, but the adaptation to movie was pretty faithful. They did change the end to give it a good end and George does not give us a happy ending. They are fighting like cats and dogs when the book ends and part leaving if they ever see each other in question.

George is brilliant and I should have been reading his stuff much sooner. I enjoyed this and will be reading the superman book of his next.

A pleasant tale, well-suited to distract theater-goers from the devastation soon to unfold through World War I. Maybe it's time now to watch My Fair Lady?

Reposting in honor of George Bernard Shaw's birthday, July 26.

I am writing this review to honor my grandmother who recently passed away. I lost track of the number of times we listened to the soundtrack of My Fair Lady either in her car, her apartment, or my house growing up. To me Eliza Doolittle, Henry Higgins, and Colonel Pickering are as much the actors who played them as they are are the memories I created with my grandmother and great aunt while watching the movie or listening to its timeless songs.

By the time I finally read Pygmalion in script form in eighth grade English class and then subsequently watched the movie in class, I had the entire script memorized. My entire class asked me for assistance in all the assignments associated with this unit, and of course, I demurred. Ask me today, I still have most of the songs memorized, which of course came from Shaw's brilliant script.
My daughters' favorite classic film is My Fair Lady because of the gorgeous costumes they see at Ascot race track and the Royal ball. But what makes this Cinderella story timeless is not the costumes but the prose down to the last line, "Eliza, where the devil are my slippers." For those who have not read this tale or seen the film, take the time to do so. You too could be captivated by Eliza the flower girl turned language pupil and create generations of memories.

Pygmalion: def. n. A sculptor in Greek mythology who created a sculpture so beautiful that he fell in love with her.

In this rendition of an age old story, professor of linguistics Henry Higgins plucks a flower girl off the streets so as to teach her proper diction and middle class manners. After befriending Colonel Pickerson, they wager that by the end of the lessons, the flower girl Eliza Doolittle, will be just as well-mannered as a duchess.

Higgins: I’m an eccentric professor of linguistics. And a confirmed bachelor. Some people say I’m a dick. They aren’t wrong.

Pickerson: I’m another confirmed bachelor. Less dickish than Higgins and for the life of me, I’m actually his bff.

Eliza: Ah-oo-ow-ow for some reason Shaw doesn’t know how women would express anger, excitement, sorrow even if in a cockney accent. I’m basically a broke ass ugly duckling prime for a makeover who sells marked up flowers trying to just survive, you know.

Higgins [writing in a notebook]: Fascinating those squawks you’re making.

Eliza: Dude, don’t nark on me. I aint done nothing.

Crowd: Yeah dude mind your damn business. Oh wait, you are harmless. For fuck’s sake girl, stop your hawing.

Eliza: Bitch, buy some flowers. You’re clearly rich.

They buy some flowers.

Some time later…

Eliza: I’ve come so you can teach me to talk proper and all so I can work at some uppity flower shop.

Higgins: Lmao no.

Pickerson: Could be interesting.

Higgins: Meh

Eliza: ah-he-hi-ho-uh if you will not have me I will not bother.

Higgins’ house manager: Quit it girl. Come get a bath and some new clothes.

Eliza: k

Eliza’s dad: Dudes, I’m broke, you’re rich, gimme some cash and I won’t bring any drama to the fact that you’re training my daughter.

The dudes: k

Months later

Higgins: Mum test this lady I’ve been teaching.

Mrs Higgins: Seriously? I told you not to come over when I’m home and expecting company.

Higgins: But I am an eccentric scholar! You must abide by my demands.

Mrs Higgins: So dramatic. Fine.

Months later...

Higgins: See, we succeeded. You owe me Pickering. I trained her and after the events last night keeping up with the posh folks, Eliza could speak circles around em. She’s simply the best. Takes up new language like a kid raised in a foreign country.

Pickering: You’re not wrong. I'm off to bed.

Higgins: Yeah now she can go and do whatever she wants.

Eliza [mentally]: Is that all I am to you.

Eliza [out loud]: pouts

Higgins: Now where are my slippers.

Eliza: goes to get them and tosses them at him

Higgins: what the fuck is your problem?

Eliza [mentally]: why do you not care about me?

Eliza [out loud]: Bah! Let’s fight.

Higgins: K

Eliza: Peace.

The next morning...

Higgins: Mother Eliza has disappeared. We’re gonna sic the cops on her.

Mrs Higgins: Dude, calm down. She’s here.

Eliza: Let’s fight. You don’t care about me.

Higgins: I don’t care about anyone.

Eliza: Give me kindness or give me independence.

Higgins: You can come back to our digs and life goes on as it was or try your luck back in the gutter I picked you from.

Eliza [having actually forgotten she’s the one who went to Higgins in the first place]: Damn you and your bullying. I’m not coming back. Oh my dad’s gotten a new job and is getting married right this instant. We’re off to the church.

Higgins: I hear you. When you come back life will go on as usual. You’ll do all the assistant stuff you were doing for me.

Eliza: Go fuck yourself. Imma marry that Freddy dude who is friends with your mum. When he is able to provide for me.

Higgins: Bitch please. You’ll be back.

Shaw: I have written hundreds of words explaining my ambiguous ending. Higgins is basically oedipal and holds his mama with the highest regard so no woman could ever compare. But you reader nudge nudge wink wink can see for yourself that he HAS fallen in love with Eliza but she declared that even if Higgins were to ask for her hand in marriage she would say no.

Scholar reviews: This carefully crafted minimalist short play which is likely Shaw's best work is an allegory of the caste system of which Shaw is showing disdain for via Higgins. He is also painting Higgins as a low key socialist. Furthermore, Eliza's courage in standing up to Higgins shows her growth as a student who ends up becoming better than her master. When she threatens to be his business competitor she challenges his socialist ideals by embracing the backbone of capitalism. No, not greed. Competition. But Eliza's independence is curtailed by Higgins trading her compliance for his dismissive friendship which is borderline abusive. This work is really seminal in observing the socio-economic....

Me:

4/5 stars

n  “I sold flowers. I didn't sell myself. Now you've made a lady of me I'm not fit to sell anything else.” n

Oh, I loved this play! It is hilarious, wildly entertaining and is also profound in its criticisms of class structure and traditional gender roles. If you have no idea what Pygmalion is, it is based of a Greek myth of the same name. Now, I'm lazy, and can't be bothered paraphrasing the myth to you or even researching it in detail for myself. Pygmalion is more commonly associated with the movie, My Fair Lady that is loosely based off of the play. Basically, just think of it as the inspiration for the Audrey Hepburn movie.



Eliza is a common, poor woman who makes a living on selling flowers on the street. After an encounter with Mr. Higgins, a phoneticist who prides himself on everything regarding diction and speech, Eliza wishes for Mr. Higgins to change her voice to pass her off as a lady and get her out of the slums. Making a bet of the situation, Higgins says that in a matter of months he will be able to pass Eliza off as a duchess. Only, the chauvinistic, rude and quite frankly socially inept Higgins never thought of what would happen to Eliza after the experiment and failed to recognise her as an equal person instead of a mere "guttersnipe".

n  “I can't turn your soul on. Leave me those feelings; and you can take away the voice and the face. They are not you.” n

I know that in my short description I made Higgins out to be some kind of awful character, but he actually brought most of the hilarity to the play. I believe that most of the time he didn't mean to be rude, he just didn't care or understand social customs. I think of him as just a few notches down from an olden day Sheldon Cooper. The way he interacted with people and used his blunt, matter-of-fact language made me laugh out loud on so many occasions. People who call all classics boring have obviously never read this play!



I absolutely flew through this page which isn't exactly surprising since it's only around 100 pages long. But the play was just so entertaining and it never faltered. It made it so much better because I listened to the audiobook whilst reading it which I don't normally do. I've never been into audiobooks but this one was downright amazing and I truly believe that the play wouldn't have had such a great effect on me if I just read it. Plus, drama is meant to be performed and not just read like a book so the audiobook was just perfect for experiencing the play.

n  “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.” n

At face value, I found this to be a super entertaining, cute and hilarious play that I one day hope to see live. But after much consideration, I realise that it's much more profound and clever than just entertainment. Hours after reading it, I decided to pick it up again and read it again but much more critically. In this second reading, I realised how many clever and witty ways that the author criticised the class system and also gender roles. I always liked Eliza but I only really appreciated how strong she was whilst reading it for the second time. Now, I have this greater respect for the play and love it a whole lot more!

Like many short stories and plays, I can't really give this five stars because it's always hard to get fully connected to a 100 page story. I'm also under the impression that I can never fully judge a play script until I've seen it in theatres or at least watch the play version on the internet.

I do feel like this play is quite under appreciated and would love for more people to read it or see it! Trust me, it is so darn entertaining as well as profound, you won't regret experiencing it!

n  FREDDY [opening the door for her] Are you walking across the Park, Miss Doolittle?
  LIZA. Walk! Not bloody likely. I am going in a taxi. [She goes out]. n

This was my favourite line in the play, though I don't know how funny it is out of context...but I just couldn't leave it out of my review!

This is the last book I will finish in 2012 as there are only 6 hours remaining in my day. It is certainly a fitting book (or rather play inside a book) to end the year on. For Pygmalion is a story about new beginnings and about transformation. What better book to symbolise the changing of the year, I say!

The classic musical My Fair Lady is perhaps my favourite musical film that I have seen. The acting is superb, the plotting excellent and all the music serves to add to the humorous feel of the film. If you've seen My Fair Lady the plot of Pygmalion will not be too unfamiliar to you. It is the tale of one professor of phonetics by the name of Henry Higgins who makes a bet that he can transform a girl from the street, Eliza Doolittle, into a woman of breeding - a lady - simply by changing her vocabulary and language. Of course if you have seen the musical I must add that the ending in Pygmalion is different, in a way that suits the differences apparent in the play.

The author of this play, George Bernard Shaw, is an interesting character. A man credited with wanting to use the intricacies of the English language to spell 'fish' as 'ghoti'. Which makes indefinitely more sense, who wouldn't want to catch a ghoti? I say 'credited' because various references indicate he likely did not come up with the idea in the first place. Bernard Shaw also won an oscar for the screenplay for My Fair Lady, which makes the differences between the two very interesting to observe. However it is clear as to why Bernard Shaw, with his obsession with language, chose to write a play with a phonetician as its protagonist, something not often done in literature.

The two notable themes I observed in this play are the presence and power of language as it connects to everyday life and also the idea of responsibility for that which we create. This second idea is apparent in connection particularly to the various mythological and literary references visible in Pygmalion.

Language

Language, I have always believed, is power. It is the power to shape the world and change lives. If you've seen the incredible Dead Poets Society you may remember (apart from 'carpe diem') the line about how language was made to 'woo women'. I believe language is far more than about romance or emotion however, though the idea in that line when expanded holds true: that language can influence people. Why else do we have the Biblical creation story where 'And God said "let there be light", and there was light.' (Genesis 1:3)? Why else do we have countless fairytales and fantasy stories where magic is produced through speaking language? Why do we find that the great leaders of all time were also great writers, thinkers and orators? Think of Winston Churchill or Adolf Hitler, a man who manipulated people with words! It is because words, language, has power. Power to affect our thinking processes, those parts of us connected to language and which control us. Language is what truly separates us from animals in many ways.

In Pygmalion language is shown in its transformative ability. The language of Liza Doolittle to begin with is atrocious and as such she belongs to the streets, selling flowers. Later she becomes a lady, largely thanks to the change of her vocabulary. It must also be noted, particularly in the garden party scene, how language among the upper classes is a thing of both culture and triviality. When Liza for a moment slips back into her street language the upper class gentry she is among think she is speaking with a new form of popular slang and though taken aback by her cursing something as 'bloody' consider this language progressive. Another instance of transformation is shown in Liza's father who has an eloquence with his tongue in regards to politics to begin with but later becomes a gentlemen because of this language ability.

Literary References

Pygmalion is full of references to literature. In particular John Milton's brilliant Paradise Lost (a must read for all literature lovers by the way), Frankenstein and the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea. According to this myth Pygmalion was a sculptor who created the most beautiful and lifelike sculpture of a woman, having vowed he never would marry. He did however fall in love with this sculpture thanks to Venus (or Aphrodite depending on the version I suppose), who then conveniently transformed the statue into a real woman for Pygmalion to marry. Each of these stories have the main theme of the responsibility of the creator to the created. Paradise Lost observes the relationship between God and his creations in Satan, Adam and Eve; Frankenstein observes the relationship between Victor Frankenstein and his creature; and the mythology of Pygmalion hints at the idea that it was Pygmalion's duty to look after Galatea (the statue) as a wife.

George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion could be seen as a subtle subversion of the Pygmalion myth in how in the end Liza rejects her 'creator' though he has clearly fallen in love with her. It further suggests that there is a moral obligation for a creator to care for the thing he has created, in Henry Higgins' case he had a duty to Liza and one which in the play he fails at.

Conclusion

Pygmalion is a deep literary play which has fascinating themes about language and moral obligation. It is also a social critique (as the best plays, poems and novels are) challenging the way we live our lives. Though it is humorous and witty the most powerful aspect of this play is in how it reflects on our true reality, leading the audience to ultimately question 'who in the end is at fault?'

Es divertido, con un final un poco repentino, pero me lo he pasado bastante bien leyéndolo.
Me encantan los personajes irónicos y aquí, de ironía hay mucha, sobre todo la que el propio autor se permite
Imposible no rememorar My fair lady con Audrey Hepburn y pese a que nunca encontré que Rex Harrison nunca me convenció como protagonista, entiendo el porqué de su elección

Una novela que se lee en apenas unas cuantas horas, ideal para echarse unas risas. Crítica social con moraleja