- _ -_- __-_ .

--------- - __I___- ---I

UNIvI' 4 LANGllAGE AND STYLE

---.-----.--.----*-----. "".-.- - ------

Ubjectives
Iritroducfioil
Shaw's Prose style slid dialogues: 'effectiveness of assertion": recreation of
actua, speeches; speech rhythms of characters; literary and ~nusicalallusions;
verbal humour
Critical approaches to Shaw and Screen Responses to Pygmalion
Passages fi*onnihe play for Annotation
Let Us SUIT^ Up
Questions
Suggested Readirig

This unit will f~rsta~~alyse:Shaw's prose style and dialogues in Pygracrlion ii~cluding
individual speecl~rhythms when noticeable of nrajar characters. Subsequenrtly, we
shall look at the reception sf Pygnzalion including film versioiis and significant
criticismi, observing in the process major critical approaches to the play.

4,l INTRODUCTION

Shaw marshals tlie resources of his prose to aim at 'effectiveness of assertion." He

also recreates the actual speeches of his characters by reproducing their granlinar and
pronunciation. Within limits he gives distinct speech rhythms to many of his
dramatist personae, Literary and musical allusions and verbal humour further
contribute towards Shaw's goal.

Shavian criticism has been diverse but a pattern of approaches can be traced there.
With the audience, Pygmalion itself was a modest success, but its "unauthorised"
musical adaptation My Fair Lady was an astonishing box office hit. We would like
you to keep these in mind as you look at Shaw's style and his reception.

4.2 SHAW'S PROSE STYLE AND DIALOGUES:

EFFECTIVENESS OF ASSERTION: RECREATION
OF ACTUAL SPEECHES; SPEECH RHYTHMS OF
CHARACTERS: LITERARY AND MUSICAL
ALLUSIONS; VERBAL HUMOUR

Bernard Shaw in his famous " Epistle Dedicatory to Arthur Bingham Walkley" which
serves as his preface ofMan andsuperman, wrote, "Effectiveness of assertion is the
Alpha and Omega of style. He who has nothing to assert has no style and can have
none: he who hassomething to assert will go as far in power of style as its
momentousness and his conviction will carry him. Disprove his assertion after it is
made, yet its style remains."' Years later, Shaw commented, "I have never aimed at
style in my life: style is a sort of melody that comes into my sentence by itself. If a
writer says what he has to say as accurately and effectively as he can, his style will
 take care of itself, if he has a style."2 Nevertheless, Shaw striyves for this Language and style
ueffectivenuesssf asseriiomn" in a variety of ways. It is smx~cthlethrough a sheer
c ~words;. Thus he describes Clara ila his "epilogue" ("sequel") as
a b u n d a ~ of
follows," she was, in shoit, an utter failwe, an ignosa~lt,incompetent yr~etenitiorns,
unwelcome, pelmiless, useless lit& sslsb" (p289) Sometimes, Shaw shows an
abundance of words of negation. Thus if we look at the first page of the play, we
observe ncgatiorls in the s e e s ~ ~speech
d - the Mother says "Not so longt'- , the third
speech - a bystar~derspeaks, "He won't get no cab not until halfpast elevenw-, , the
fourth speech -the Mother says, "We can't stand h a e until half-past eleven. It's too
bad"-, and the fifth speech -when the bystander retorts, "Well; it aint ilngr fault, missus'
(p.197).

Consider the beginning of Shaw's sequel to the play: "'Fhe rest of the story need not
be shown in action, and indeed, would hardly need telling if our imaginations were
not so enfeebled by their lazy dependence on the ready-mades and reach-me-
downs..."(p.281) Let us look at the beginning of Act 1V:-

HIGGINS [calling down to Pickerind I say, Pick lock up, will you? I shan't be
going out again.

131CKERING. Wight. Can Mrs. Pearce go to bed? We don't want anything more, do .
we7

HIGGINS. Lord, no! Ip.252)

Both the passages are replete with negations.

Ohmann rightly refers to the "pattel-11of negation that gives structuse to Shaw's
arguments". They also contain what Ohmann calls "a number of other forms of
denial and opposition."4 Expressions like "too bad" (p.197) and "so enfeebled" (281)
cited above illustrate these forms of denial.

Sometimes, Shaw reveals a special fascination for certain sounds. An apt example
comes from his description at the very beginning of the play:-

"Covent Garden at 1 1.15 p.m. Torrents of heavy summer rain. Cab whistles blowing
frantically in all directions. Pedestrians running for shelter into the market and under
the portico of St. Paul's Church." (p.197) one can notice here the preponderance of It1
and (dlsounds conveying the harshness of rain, the confusion engendered by it and
the sad plight of those seeking shelter. Another telling illustration occurs at the
beginning of Act 111.

"It is Mrs. Higgins's at-home day. Nobody has yet arrived. Her drawing
room, in a flat on Chelsea Embanlanent, has three windows looking on the
river; and the ceiling is not so lofty as it would be in an older house of thp
same pretension." (p.236)

Here, too, the same sounds are repeated and the effect is one of a prosaic, dry manner.
. Perhaps it even goes with the personality of Mrs. Higgins, a formidable character.

Shaw paid special attention to the printing of his plays, often carefully using different
kind of types and spaces between them for emphasis. Thus, when Higgins asks "The
Gentleman" Do you know Colonel Pickering, the author of spoken Sanscrit7" He
answers "I am Colonel Pickering" (p.206), emphasising his identity. The speech of
Mrs. Pearce categorically telling Higgins not to swear before Eliza and citing
instances of his swearing is printed as follows: "what the devil and where the devil
and who the devil -" (p.223) Later as Higgins meets Freddy at his mother's (Mrs.
Higgins's) at home, he tells him, " I've met you before somewhere", clearly stressing
the word "you" (p.240) After Eliza leaves, Higgins asks his mother, "Do you mean
that my language is improper?" (p.247) He is evidently shocked at the possibility of
anyone regarding his language, unlike more common people's as improper.

Shaw deviated from the standard spellings of several words, justifying his departures
from the conventional "correct" spellings on the ground that he was trying out a more
"logical" and "scientific" spelling of the word by approximating to its actual sound.
Thus he spells "Shakespeare" as "Shakespeare", "Show" as "Shew", till as "Yil". Here
one can see the point of "Shakespeare" but not of "Shew". He replaces "you are"
with "youre". He also omits apostrophes from such expressions as "haven't" "can't,
"wasn't and don't " respectively. Here perhaps Shawls contentions that in real speech
we are not conscious that we are dropping the letter 'lo" from "not".

Although Shaw acknowledged that his characters had the "power of expression". .."
that differentiated me (or Shakespeare) from a gramophone and camera", he in his
own way in Pygrnalion tried in his dialogues to recreate the speeches of people in real
life, thus ignoring the "correct" spellings and instead spelling the words as characters
pronounce them. An example is the flower girl in Act I saying "Will ye-oo py me
fthem?" (p.199) instead of "will you pay me for them?" Shaw goes on to explain.
[Here with apologies, this desperate attempt to represent her dialect without a
phonetic alphabet must be abandoned as unintelligible outside London] (p.199) The
dialogues also contain expressions such as "I knowed" (p.204), "A Copper's nark"
(p.201), "a tec" (p.202), "toff' (203) etc., each one aiming at a recreation of exact
speech.

In his attempt to faithfully reproduce the "actual" speeches of characters, Shaw also
writes dialogues which are replete with the common grammatical mistakes of spoken
English. Thus a bystander tells the Mother at the beginning of the play, "He won't get
no cab not until half past eleven" (p.197). The above sentence contains not only
double but triple negatives. Double negatives can also be found in Eliza's sentence,
"I don't want to have no truck with himU.(203)Later on a bystander tells Eliza "of
course he aint" and asks Higgins: "what call have you to know about people what
never offered to meddle with you?" (203) Eliza also uses the tenses wrongly e.g.
"But I done without them" (p.217). She combines double negative with wrong use of
pronouns when she talks of her father's drunkenness "It never did him no harm what I
could see" (p.244) Her father Doolittle himself uses expressions like "You and me is
men of the world aint we?" (p.228), misusing the numbers.

Although, it cannot be said of Pygrnalion that every character has his own speech
rhythm, one can disceni certain distinguishing features in the speeches of some of the
characters. Thus Higgins - as Mrs. Pearce and his mother coroborate -swears a lot
and use expressions that show his peremptory, impatient manner. One of his
favourite expressions is "By Georgy" which he utters frequently in his dialogues. To
take up a few examples, when he tried to tempt Eliza to learn proper English speech
from him in order to pass off as a Duchess, he tells her, "By George, Eliza, the streets
will be strewn with the bodies of men shooting themselves for your sake before Ive
done with you". (p.217) Later when he runs into Eynsford Hills at his mother's place,
he finds them useful for experimenting with Eliza's social skills and says, "Yes, by
George" We want two or three people. You'll do as well as anybody else." (240)
Soon after this, when he suddenly realizes where he had met Freddy, he says, "By
George, yes: it all comes back to me! (They stare at him). Covent Garden!
[Lamentably1what a damned thing! (p.242) In the very last Act, when his mother
tells him, ''She says she is quite willing to meet you on friendly terms and to let by
gones be by gones," Higgins is indignant and says "Is she, by George? Ho! " (p.267)
Just before the end, when he wonders at the transformation in Eliza's personality, he
says, "By George, Eliza, I said I'd make a woman of you: and I have. I like you like
this." (p.280) In all these five examples, culled out of many, "By George" is an
exclamation indicating Higgins's surprise or excitement or sense of discovery or
anger.
Higgins's expressions are strong, fitful and often exclamatory. Thus after Eliza utters, Language and style
ttAh-ah-ah-ow-ow-ow-oo",he responds with "Heavens! What a sound!" (p.206)
Earlier, he tells Eliza, "Oh, shut up, shut up. Do I look like a policeman?" (p.201) He
is generally quite direct. He tells Mrs. Hill, "Ha! ha! What a devil of a name! Excuse
me. [To the daughter1 you want a cab, do you?" (p.204) once in a while, this
directness turns into picturesque, colourful expressions which describe people vividly
e.g. "I shall make a duchess of this draggletailed guttersnipe" says he to Pickering and
Mrs. Pearce (p.215).

Higgins generally prefers simple and compound sentences to complex oil(,?, He tells
Pickering "simply phonetics. The science of speech. That's my profession: dso my
hobby' (p.205). When Eliza comes up to his house, he simply exclaims, "Be off with
you: I don't want you." 9p.211) He says to his mother,.when his is looking for Eliza,
"Of course. What are the police for? What else could we do?" (p.261) soon afey; as
Doolittle surprises him with his accusation, he retorts, "Youre raving. You'w drunk.
Your mad." (p.263). However, Higgins can be longwinded or complex, when he
wants to be e.g. he tells Eliza, "And you shall marry an officer in the Guards, with a
beautiful moustache: the son of a marquis, who will disinherit him for marrying you,
but will relent - when he sees your beauty and goodness (p.219) His rhetorical
manner can easily include a sentence like "I should imagine you won't have much
difficulty in settling yourself some-where or other, though I hadn't quite realized that
you were going away." (pp. 256-57)

In contrast, Pickering tends to have more indirect and convoluted expressions. e.g to
the notetaker (HIGGINS), "Really, sir, if you are a detective, you need not begin
protecting me against molestation by young women until I ask you" (p.202) The
indirectness usually indicates his courtesy and politeness. Thus he asks Higgins,
"May I ask, sir, do you do this for your living at a music hall?" (p.203) When Eliza
uses the word "bloody", Pickering talks about "something to eliminate the sanguinary
element from her conversation." (p. 247)

Eliza with a different background has another "mode of speech'. Sometimes, her
lingo is extremely colourful e.g. when.talking about the death of her aunt at Mrs.
Higgins's "at-home", she says, "my father he kept ladling gin down her throat till she
came to so sudden that she bit the bowl off the spoon." She continues, "What call
would a woman with that strength in her have to die of influenza? What became of
her new straw hat that should have come to me? Somebody pinched it; and what I
say is, them as pinched it done her in." Immediately Mrs. Eynsford Hill has to ask,
"What does doing her in mean?" (p.243)

As an assertive person, Eliza invariably repeats certain words and phrases for
emphasis e.g. she says to Higgins, "your a great bully, you are .. ..I never asked to go
to Buckham Palace, I didn't. I was never in trouble with the police, not me." (p.221)
she ends this speech with "I'm a good girl-" a statement that she must have repeated
several times in the play. In fact in Act 11, Higgins gets so exasperated with her that
he has to say, "Eliza, if you say again that youre a good girl, your father shall take
you home." (p.233)

Her father, Doolittle, on the other hand, can be quite rhetorical as Higgins points out
by saying "this chap has a natural gift for rhetoric" (p.226) He tells Higgins and
Pickering "What am I, Governors both? I ask you. What am I? I'm one of the
undeserving poor: that's what I am. Think of what that means to a man. It means that
.
he's up agen middle class morality all the time. .. I don't need less than a deserving
man: I need more. I don't eat less hear hearty than him; and I drink a lot more. I
want a bit of amusement, cause I'm a thinking niah. I want cheerfulness and a song
.
and a band when I feel low. .. Will you take advantage of a man's nature to do him
out of the price of his own daughter what he's brought up and fed and clothed by the
sweat of his brow until she's growed big enough to be interesting to you two
gentlemen? Is five pounds unreasonable? I put it to you; and I leave it to you: (pp.
229-30) Andrew Kenney refers to Shaw's "Comic-didactic bravura speech for a
'ventriloquist' like Doolittle.. . .'16 Shaw himself compared Doolittle's oration on
middle class morality to Falsteff s speech on honour.'

However, when Doolittle gets very excited, he uses like Higgins very short sentences
e.g.
... see here! Do you see this? You done this.
HIGGINS. Done What, man?
DOOLIITLE. This, I tell you. Look at it. Look at this hat.
Look at this coat.
PICKERING. Has Eliza been buying you clothes?
DOOLITTLE. Eliza! Not she Not half! .Why would shy buy me clothes?" (p.262)

Ogmalion, like many plays of Shaw, is replete with literary allusions, in fact
references to not only literature but other arts as well. Thus Higgins, who admires
Milton and writes "a little as a poet on Miltonic lines," quotes from Milton when he
tells Pickering about Alfred Doolittle, "observe the rhythm of his native woodnotes
wild" (p.226) In his "epilogue" or "afterward" to the play, Shaw, when referring to
H.G.Wells writes, "Age had not withered him, nor could custom stale his infinite
variety in half an hour" (p.291) The allusionhere to Cleopatra of Shakespeare's
Antony and Cleoptra not only describes Wells but also parodies Shakespeare. A
comparison with the captivating Cleopatra shows how Wells looks by contrast and it
also deflates Cleopatra, the last phrase "in half an hour" clearly adding a touch of
bathos to the entire description and undermining both. Pickering talking of Eliza's
perfect musical ear, alludes to Beethoven and Brahms or Lehar and Lionel Monckton
(p.249) Here he not only refers to Eliza's sensitivity but also enriches the texture by
bringing in the context of musical history. A similar effect is produced when at the
beginning of Act IV, after returning from the successful party, Higgins !begins half
singing, half yawning an air from Le Fanciulla del Goden West1'- ( a piece by
Pucccini) (p.252). A little different is the description of the response of the Director
of the London School of Economics to the appeal of Elizaa and Freddy to
"recommend a course bearing on the flower business." Shaw writes, "He, being a
humorist, explained to them the method of celebrated Dikensian essay on Chinese
Metaphysics by the gentleman who read an article on china and an article on
Metaphysics and combined the information. He suggested that they should combine
the London School with Kew Gardens" (292-93). Here the added dimension from
Dickens, not only enriches the texture but also mildly deflates the Director. The fact
that the original is comic certainly reduces the possibility of parody but it does not
altogether abolish it.

As briefly mentioned in unit 3.3 a great deal of humour in our play is verbal and
Shaw exfiibits great ability to play with language to evoke laughter. To take up a few
examples, when Mrs. Pearce tells Higgins not to "swear before the girl," the dialogue
proceeds as follows:-

HIGGINS [indignantlyJ I swear! [most emphatically] I never swear. I detest the

habit. What the devil do you mean? MRS. PEARCE [stolidly] That's what I mean,
Sir. You swear a great deal too much. I don't mind your damning and blasting, and
what the devil and where the devil and who the devil- HIGGTNS. Mrs. Pearce: this
language from your lips! Really!" (p.223).

Then she indirectly tells him not to continue using the word "bloody."

MRS. PEARCE. Only this morning, Sir, you applied it to your boots, to the butter
and the brown bread.

e, natural to a poet." (223)

 Language and style
In Act 111, when Higgins opens the door violently and enters his mother's drawing
room, Mrs. Higgins scolds him, "what are you doing here to-day: you promised not to
(p. 237) The humour here arises fiom someone being told thatxd isgot
i el come on the at-home day. A little later, when Eliza begins talking of the weather,
she says "The shallow depression in the West of these islands is likely to move
slowly in an easterly direction. There are no indications of any great change in the
barometrical SitUation."

Responds FREDDY "Ha! ~ a How ! awfully humy!" @. 243) %fact, Eliza's

reference to her father pouring gin down her aunt's throat and then her drinking gin
like "mother's a milk" makes the entire conversation extremely humorous. Freddy "is
in convulsions of suppressed laughter" (p. 244) A little later, after Eliza leaves,
Higgins and Pickering talk about her to Mrs. Higgins:-

I
"PICKXRING. We're always talking Eliza.
HIGGMGS. Teaching Eliza.
PICKERING. Dressing Eliza.
Mrs. HIGGMS. What! " (pp. 248-49)

In the last Act, as Doolittle condemns Higgins for writing to Ezra D Wannafeller
about his (Doolittle) being "the most original moralist at present in England" and thus
making a gentleman of him, He says: "And the next one to touch me will be you,
Henry Higgins. I'll have to learn'to speak middle class language from you, instead of
speaking proper English." (261) Higgins, reacting to his mother's view that Doolittle
can now look after Eliza, exclaims, "he can't provide for her. He shant provide for
her. She doesn't belong to him. I paid him five pound for her". (p. 265) He implies
that he could buy an adult female for five pounds! Soon, as Mrs. Higgins tells her
son, "If you promise to behave yourself, Henry, I'll ask her to come down. If not, go
..
home;". He replies, "Oh, all right. Very well. Pick: you behave yourself". (267)
Obviously, Higgins cannot realize that he is the only person whose behaviour is
improper. After Eliza comes down, he tells her "Don't you dare try this game on me.
I taught it to you; and it doesn't take me in. Get up and come home; and don't be a
fool." (p.268) His mother responds, "Very nicely put, indeed, Henry. No woman
could resist such an invitation." (p.269) She of course uses irony. Interestingly the
media personalities, the audiences, the critics have been unable to resist the invitation
to respond to Pygmalion.

4.3 CRITICAL APPROACHES TO SHAW AND SCREEN

RESPONSES TO PYGMALION

There have been phases in the reception of Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion: if we ignore
many theatre reviewers and journalistic critics, much of whose criticism was
E ephemeral, rather than long lasting, we encounter first of all eminent contemporaries:
men of letters, theatre personalities and social, political, ethical thinkers writing on
his plays. They are followed by more "academic" critics. Later, there were two
revivals of Shaw, one after his death and the other at the time of his centenary, The
more recent criticism has been more ideological, embracing Feminist and Post-
colonial approaches as well-much of it following the publication of Halroyd's
monumental biography of Shaw.

The major contemporaries writing on Shaw included G.K. Chesterton (1909) and
Frank Harris (193 1). A detailed account of the early criticism can be found in T.F.
Evans, ed. Shaw: The Critical Heritage (1976), which traces critical responses to
Shaw over a period of time, In the 30s and 40s the notable studies were by H.C.
Duffin, The Quintessence of Bernard Shaw (1920: rev.ed. 1939) Maurice Colbourne,
The real Bernard Shaw (1930) which approaches him from a performer's angle,
P'gmalion S.C.Sen Gupta, The Art of Bernard Shaw (1936) and Edmund Wilson, "Bernard
Shaw at Eighty," Triple Thinkers.(l939). Slightly later appeared Eric Bentley, Shaw:
A Reconsideration (1947), C.E.M.Joad, Shaw (1949), A.C.Ward, Shaw (1950).
A.C.Ward also edited and wrote useful introductions to many Shaw plays.

The significant biographical studies written before Shaw's death were by Archibald
Henderson Shaw: His lfe and Works (1911) and Bernard Shaw: Play boy and
Prophet (1932) and Hesketh Pearson, Bernard Shaw: His Life and Personality
. (1942). William Ervine's The Universe of G.B.S. (1949) is a worthwhile critical
biography.

There was a spate of studies following his death and later his centenary. To begin
with the relevant biographical studies, Archibald Henderson added to his earlier
writings George Bernard Shaw: Man of the Centuly (1956). Hesketh Pearson
brought out the enlarged edition in 1961. St. John Ervine's Bernard Shaw: His Life,
work and Friends (1956) was received as a standard life. These book admirably
supplemented Shaw's autobiographical work Sixteen Self-Sketches-which appeared
only a year before his death. Stanley Weintraub not only came out with Private Shaw
andPublic Shaw: A Dual Portrait of Lawrence ofArabia and GBS-(1956) but also
edited Shaw: An Autobiography 1856-1898 (1969). A fine study of Shaw in his
historical, social, political background was by Ivor Brown Shaw in his own Time
(1965)

Major books on Modern Drama that contained chapter's -oRen perceptive chapters -
on Shaw included Eric Bentley's The Playwright as Thinker (1946), Ronald Peacock,
Poet in the Theatre- (1946) Francis Ferguson. The idea ofa Theater (1949),
Raymond Williams, Dramaporn Ibsen to Eliot (1952) revised as Dramaporn Ibsen
to Brechtin (1968) T.R.Tenn The Harvest of Tragedy (1956), J.L. Styan, the Dark
Comedy (1962) and Robert Brustein, the Theatre ofRevolt-(1964). However, many
of these have not even touched upon Pygmalion, let alone devoted a few pages to the
analysis of our text.

The significant full length studies of Shaw's drama to appear during this period ,

included L.Kronenberger George Bernard Shaw: A Critical Survey (1 953), H.

Nethercot, Men and Supermen: The Shavian Portrait Gallern(1954) - a discussion of
Major Shavian characters, Richard Ohmann, Shaw: The style and the Man-(1962) - an
analysis of his style as the vehicle of his attitudes and goals, Martin Meisel, Shaw and
the Nineteenth Century Theatre-(1963) - a landmark study, Audrey Williamson,
Shaw: Man and Artist-1963, R.M. Roy, Shaw's Philosophy of lfe (1964). Colin
Wilson's Bernard Shaw: A reassessment (1 968), a remarkable study of his life and
works analysed him to an extent from an existential perspective.

The most important critical anthoIogy of the 50s and 60s was R.J. Kaufmann's
G.B.S/taw: A Collection of Critical Essays (1965) in the 201hCentury view series.
Among the contributors, it had the playwright Bertolt Brecht, the psychologist Erik
H. Erickson and distinguished critics like Eric Bentley and G.Wilson Knight.

R. Mander and J.Mitchensonts (edited) Theatrical Compansion to Shaw (1954)

provides perspectives on Shaw on stage. C.B. Purdom's A Guide to the Plays of
Bernard Shaw (1963) performs a similar function, although it is written by only one
author. In addition to describing the life and Time of Shaw, it also surnmarises and
comments on individual plays.

This generation of Shaw criticism ended with Leion Hugo's Bernard Shaw:
Playwright and Preacher (1971) and Maurice Valency's The Cart and the Trumpet:
7he Plays of Bernard Shaw (1973). The new studies that emerged with novel
approaches comprised of Margery Morgan The Shavian Playground: an Enploration
of the Art of Geo,.ge Bernard Shaw (1972). Alfred Turce, Jr; Shaw's Moral Vision :
The Segand Salvation (1 976), Robert F. Whitrnan, Shaw and the Play of Ideas
(19771, C.D. Sidhy, The Pattern of Tragicomedy in Bernard Shaw and J.L.Wisentha1,
the ~ a r r i a g of
e Contraries: Shaw's Middle Plays-(1974). A separate mention must be and me
made of Rodelled Weitsaub, ed. Fabian Feminist: Bernard Shaw and Women (1977).

Later on, the Feminist Approach to Shaw was continued in J.Ellen Gainer's Shaw's
Daughters: Dramatic and Narrative Construction of Gender (199 1 ) and Sally Peters,
-
~ernardShaw: The Accent of the Superman (1996) a biographical study. However,
the monumental biography of Shaw was Michael Holroyd's Bernard Shaw in four
volumes, Bernard Shaw 'The Search for Love' (I), Bernard Shaw 'The Pursuit of
Power' (II), Bernard Shaw 'The Lure of Fantasy'_(III),The Last Laugh which also
forms part of Vols IV and V The Shaw Companion-(I 988-92).

The other major books fiom new perspectives were Arthur Ganz, George Bernard
Shaw (1983) and David J.Gordon, Bernard Shaw and the Comic Sublime (1990).
Among the seminal critical anthologies were Harold Bloom, George Bernard Shaw:
Modern Critical Views (1987), Daniel Leary, ed. Shaw's Plays in Pe$ormance (1983)
and Christopher Innes, ed. The Cambridge Companion to George Bernard Shaw
(1998) - the last one including articles also fiom the perspectives of Feminism and
Post-Colonial Theory. ~ r a C.c Davis
~ George Bernard Shaw and the Socialist
Theatre (1994) locates the plays in the wider social, cultural, historical and
ideological context. The critical response, to Shaw, as we have seen, has remained
alive and vibrant and there may be a spurt as we approach the Fiftieth year of his
death.

Written in 1912, Pygmalion was first staged (in German) on Oct 16,1913 at the
Hoftburg Theatre, Vienna. It was first presented in England on April 11,1914 by
Herbert Beerbohm Tree at His Majesty's Theatre, London. The play had several
revivals in both England and the U.S. The cast at one time included Mr. Patrick
Combell (Stella) as Eliza. In later years, it was produced in 1974 at the Albert
Theatre, directed by John Dexter with Diana Rigg and Alec Mccown in the title roles.
In the early 1980's Peter O'Toole's "theatre of comedy series included Pygmalion. It
has also been produced at the Annual Shaw festival in Niagera on the Lake.

There have also been many film versions of Pygnzalion. It was first screened in
Germany on September 2, 1935 at Berlin with Erich Angel as the Director and
Heinrich Oberlander and Walter Wassermann as the screenplay writers. The first
dutch screening was at Amsterdam in March 1937. Ludwig Berger directed the play
and also wrote the screenplay. Shaw was unhappy with both the versions as they
hinted at Higgins and Eliza romantically coming together at the end. The first
English screening was at London on October 6, 1938 followed by the New York
screening of December 7, 1938. This Gabriel Pascal production was directed by
Anthony Asquith and Leslie Howard and the screen play was by Shaw himself (with
additional dialogues by W.P Liscornb and Cecil Lewis). Arthur Honegger composed
the music, Wendy Hiller played Eliza and Leslie Howard acted Higgins. The film
was a great success and it bagged several Academy awards. Shaw was given the
award for the best screenplay, the film was adjudged the best film of the year. Later
Alan Howard and Frances Barber staged a "complete representation" of Pygmalion
"conflating the theatre and film" at the Oliver.

When Franz Lehar proposed a musical version of Pygmalion to Shaw, he firmly

rehed. As holroyd points out, he rejected all appeals to 'downgrade' Pygmalion into
a musical. In 1948, he wrote "I absolutely forbid any such outrage."g However,
Pygmalion's musical adaptation My Fair Lady (cockney slang for "Mayfair Lady")
opened at the Mark Hellinger Theater on Broadway on Maroh 15, 1956. It contained
fifteen numbers composed by Frederick Loewe with lyrics by Alan 5. Learner, and it
was directed by Moss Hart. Julie Andrews played Eliza, Rex Harison was Higgins
and Stanley Holloway acted as Alfred Doolittle. An astonishing hit with songs like
"Wouldn't it be Lovely," With a Little Bit of Luck" and "I Could Have Danced All
Night," the musical had 2,717 performances on Broadway over six and a half years.
Pygmalion At the Drury Lane Theatre London where it opened in the spring of 1958, it had a run
of six years encompassing 2,281 performances.

First screened in October 1964 at New York by CBS~Warner,the Film Version

retained Rex Harrison as Higgins, but replaced Julie Andrews by Audrey Hepburn as
Eliza. Alan J. Lerner wrote the screenplay. For the film, Oscars were presented to
Andre Prev in for his musical adaptation of the original score by Frederich Lowewe,
to Rex Harrison for the hero's role, to George Cukor for direction and to Cecil Beaton
for costumes. Thus ironically, Bernard Shaw acquired enormous posthumous,~ealth
and popularity through a musical, he did not want to be produced.

4.4 PASSAGES PROM THE PLAY FOR ANNOTATION

ACT I
"THE NOTETAKER. Simply phonetics. The science of speech. That's my
profession: also my hobby. Happy is the eman who can make a living by his bobby!"
(p. 205).

"THE NOTETAKER. A woman who utters such depressing and disgusting sounds
has no right to be anywhere - no right to live. Remember that you are a human being
with a should and the divine gift of articulate speech: that your native language is the
language of Shakespeare and Milton and the Bible: and don't sit there crooning like a
bilious pigeon." (p.206)

ACT I1
"Women upset everything. When you let them into your life, you find that the
woman is driving at one thing and you're driving at another." (p.221)

"Here I am, a shy, diffident sort of man. I've never been able to feel really grown-up
and tremendous like other chaps." (p.224)

"I'm willing to tell you. I'm wanting to tell you. I'm waiting to tell you." (p.226)

"What is middle class morality? Just an excuse for never giving me anything."
(P-230)

"A few good oil paintings from the exhibitions in the Grosvenor Gallery
thirty years ago (the Burne Jones, not the Whistler side of them) are on its
walls. The only landscape Cecil Lawson on the scale of a Rubens. There is a
podrait of Mrs. Higgins as she was when she defied fashion in her youth in
one of the beautiful Rossettian Costumes" (p.236)

"MRS. HIGGINS. Well, you never fall in love with anyone under forty-five. When
will you discover that there are some rather nice-looking young women about?''
(p.237)

"But you have no idea how frightfully interesting it is to take a human being and
change her into a quite different human being by creating a new speech for her. It's
filling up the deepest gulf that separates class from class and soul from soul." (p.248)

ACT IV
"What am I fit for? What have you left me fit for? Where am I to go? What am I to
do? What's to become of me?" (p.256)
C :.
 "I'm only a common ignorant girl: and in my station I have to be carehl. There can't Language and style
be any feelings between the like of you and the like of me." (p.258)

ACT V
TIDOLITTLE. No: that aint the natural way, Colonel: It's only the middle class way.
My way was always the undeserving way," (pp. 271-72)

"The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or nay other
particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls:" (p.274)

THE EPILOGUE (THE SEQUEL)

"If an imaginative boy has a sufficiently rich mother who has intelligence, personal
grace, dignity of character without harshness, and a cultivated sense of the best art of
her time to enable her to make her house beautiful, she sets a standard for him against
which very few women can struggle, besides effecting for him'a disengagement of
his affections, his sense of beauty, and his idealism from his specifically sexual
impulses." (p.283) "Eliza has no use for the foolish romantic tradition that all women
love to be mastered, if not actually bullied and beaten." (p.284).

"But when it comes to business, to the life that she really leads as distinguished from
the life of dreams and fancies, she likes Freddy and she likes the Colonel: and she
does not like Higgins and Mr. Doolittle. Galatea never does quite like Pygmalion: his
relation to her is too godlike to be altogether agreeable." (p. 295)

4,.5 LETUSSUMUP

In this unit, as we analysed facets of Shaw's prose style and dialogues, we noticed his
abundance of words, especially words of negation, use of harsh consonants, leaving
space between letters for emphasising certain words, modifying spellings to make
them more "phonetic" and reproducing faulty grammar and pronunciation of
characters. Higgins, Eliza, her father and even Pickering are given within limits their
,own speech rhythms. Literary and musical allusions enrich the texture of the play by
bringing in another context and sometimes, they serve a parodic purpose. The style is
also embellished by abundant verbal humour.

Shavian criticism had different phases: There was a gradual development from the
somewhat impressionistic reviews of the earlier period to the more theoretical and
ideological approaches of the 1980's and 90's. On the stage, although Pygmalion was
only a modest success, it was screened and after Shawls death, the musical My Fair
Lady proved to be an extraordinary commercial hit.
t

4.6 QUESTIONS

1. Give an example of Shaw's "pattern of negation" in any dialogue or stage

description in Pygmalion (other than the ones cited here)

's "s~acine"of letters in words an effective device for

3, -
Is it justifiable on Shaw's part to reproduce the wrong grammar and
pronunciations of his characters or should he use only "correct" English? Is
his habit especially relevant to a play about phonetics?

4. It has been said that Shaw's characters are mouthpieces, who sound alike.
Can you distinguish Mrs. Higgins's speech rhythms from say Mrs. Pearce's?

5. Do you enjoy literary allusions in Shaw, or do you find them irritating?

JustifL your answer.

6. Is Shawls verbal humour only funny, or is it also instructive? Give reasons

for your answer and provide suitable illustrations fiom the play.

7. How did the critical response to Shaw change over the years (actually
decades)?

8. Why do you think My Fair Lady-has been so popular with the audience when
Pygmalion was never a great commercial success?

9. ow is Pygmalion an early 20" century English play set in England

meaningful to you in India at the end of the millenium?

4.7 SUGGESTED READING

Out of a few hundred books *tten on Shaw, it was difficult to separate the major
ones from the less seminal ones. From our select list, I give below a smaller
bibliography of books especially important for you and I add the names of few
journals.

References

1. George Bernard Shaw, Complete Plays with Prefaces (New York: Dodd,
Mead, 1962) Vol. III514. As mentioned in Unit 3, all the references to the
text of Shaw is from this edition and page numbers are indicated in
parentheses (Pygmalion is included in Volume I).

2. George Bernard Shaw's "Preface" to Immaturity (1921) Prefaces as quoted in

Andrew K.Kennedy, Six dramatists in search of a language: Studies in
dramatic language (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1975) 47-48 note 15.

3. Richard M. Ohmann refers to "one of these Colossal series,.. The syntactical

.
heaping up.. such superabundance.. . the language of
exaggeration...Hyperbole.. . the Shavian catalogue "Shaw's purpose is to '
"smother the audience and confront the opposition" As he M e r says
"Shaw frequently compounds the smcture of a whole piece fiom a set of
negations" See "Born to set It Right: The Roots of Shaw's Style," from Shaw:
The Style and the Man (Middletown, Coon: Wesleyan University Press,
1962) rapt, in R.J. Kaufinann, ed. (G.B.Shaw: A Collection of Critical Essays
(Englewood Cliffs, N.J.;Prentice -Hall, 1965) 33.

4. Ibid - 34-35.

5. Shawls letter to Alexander Bashky (1923) published in The New.

York Times*12 June 127 as quoted in Andrew K Kennedy, Six dramatists in
search of a language 53.
 -i

6, Six drahatists in search of a language. 54. Language and style

7, Shaw on Theatre. ed. E.J.West (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1956) 132 as
cited in Andrew Kennedy, Six dramatists in search of a language 54.

8, Andrew Kennedy says, "In Eliza's mechanical parroting of the cliches and
noises of upper-class speech there was just a suggestion, within the comedy
of manners, that social speech is synthetic, laboratory induced." See Six
dramatists in search of a language 78.

9, Michael Holroyd, The Shaw Companion (London: Chatto & Windus, 1992)
56-57.

Books
Entley, Eric. Shaw: A Reconsideration (1947)
Bloom, Harold. George Bernard Shaw: Modem Critical Views (1987)
Brown, Ivor Shaw in his own Time (1965)
Davis, Tracy George Bernard Shaw and the Socialist Theatre,(1954)
Evans, T.F. Shaw: The Critical Heritage ( 1 976)
Holroyd, Michael Bernard Shaw,,Vols I and I1 ( 1 988-92)
Innes, Christopher The Cambridge Companion to George Bernard Shaw-(1998)
Kaufinann, R.J.ed. G.B.Shaw: A Collection of Critical Essays- ( 1 965)
Meisel, Martin, Shaw and the Nineteenth Century Theatre (1963)
Pundom, C.B. A Guide to the Plays of Bernard Shaw ( 1 963)
Valency, Maurice The Cart and the Trumpet: The Plays of Bernard Shaw (1973)
Weintraub, Rodelle ed. Fabian Feminist: Bernard Shaw and Women-(1977)
Wisenthal, J.L. The Marriage of Contraries: Shaw's Middle Plays (1974)
Wilson, Colin Bernard Shaw: A reassessment (1968)

Journals
The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies,ed. Stanley Weintraub.
-
Modern Drama 2 (Sept 195 9) A Shaw number
The Shavian
The Shaw Review