Pygmalion Study Guide

© 2023 eNotes.com, Inc. or its Licensors.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

No part of this work covered by the copyright hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means
graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, Web distribution or information storage
retrieval systems without the written permission of the publisher.

1
eNotes | TABLE OF CONTENTS

PYGMALION STUDY GUIDE 1

SUMMARY 3
Summary 3

CHAPTER SUMMARIES 5
Chapter Summaries: Act 1 Summary 5
Chapter Summaries: Act 2 Summary 6
Chapter Summaries: Act 3 Summary 7
Chapter Summaries: Act 4 Summary 9
Chapter Summaries: Act 5 Summary 10

THEMES 11
Themes 11

CHARACTERS 13
Characters 13

ANALYSIS 16
Analysis: Places Discussed 16
Analysis: Historical Context 16
Analysis: Literary Style 18
Analysis: Compare and Contrast 19
Analysis: Media Adaptations 20
Bibliography: Bibliography and Further Reading 21
Bibliography 24

2
Summary

Summary
George Bernard Shaw’s prefaces are usually long, complex works, often printed in a separate volume alongside the
plays. The preface to Pygmalion is brief by Shavian standards, though Shaw begins by writing, “[this play] needs, not
a preface, but a sequel, which I have supplied in its due place.” The preface deals mainly with phonetics and
suggests various models for Henry Higgins, particularly the phonetician and grammarian Henry Sweet.

The first act begins at 11:15 p.m. on a rainy summer’s night in Covent Garden. Freddy Eynsford Hill is attempting to
hail a cab when he bumps into flower seller Eliza Doolittle, spilling the contents of her basket on the street. As she
remonstrates with him, a bystander points out that a man with a notebook is writing down everything they say. A
crowd begins to assemble, and there is a general assumption that the notetaker is a police agent. However, he soon
distracts them by telling all who address him what part of London they come from. When challenged to perform the
same feat with a gentleman who is standing nearby, he promptly identifies the man’s hometown, school, university,
and most recent residence with the words “Cheltenham, Harrow, Cambridge, and India.”

The gentleman is impressed by this accuracy and identifies himself as Colonel Pickering. The notetaker is Professor
Henry Higgins. Both have published books on phonetics and are familiar with the other’s work. Higgins reveals that
he makes his living by teaching rich people with low social origins to speak upper-class English, boasting that he
could even teach Eliza, “with her kerbstone English,” to speak so perfectly that in three months, people would
mistake her for a duchess. Higgins and Pickering then decide to have dinner together and leave. Eliza tries to sell a
flower to Pickering as they go, saying that she has no money for her lodging. Higgins rebukes her for lying but then,
hearing a church clock strike, impulsively throws a handful of money into her basket. This is far more money than
Eliza was expecting to make from selling her flowers. Elated, she returns home in a taxi.

The second act opens the next day at eleven o’clock in the morning in Higgins’s laboratory in Wimpole Street.
Higgins has been giving Pickering a tour when Mrs. Pearce, his housekeeper, announces that he has a visitor, who
turns out to be Eliza. Higgins tries to send her away, but Eliza announces that she has come for lessons in English.
Pickering reminds Higgins of his boast that he could pass Eliza off as a duchess after teaching her for three months,
betting him the costs of the experiment that he will not be able to do it.

Higgins accepts the wager and instructs Mrs. Pearce to wash Eliza, burn her clothes, and order some more. While
Eliza is bathing, her father, Alfred Doolittle, arrives, announcing that he has come to take Eliza away. Higgins
correctly assumes that he would rather have money and gives him five pounds, assuring both Doolittle and Pickering
that his intentions are strictly honorable and his only interest in Eliza lies in the phonetic experiment he is to conduct.
As Doolittle leaves, Eliza reenters, freshly bathed and dressed in a kimono. Doolittle at first fails to recognize her.
When he has left, Eliza remarks that she hopes he will not be back.

The third act begins on the “at home” day of Mrs. Higgins, Henry Higgins’s mother, between four and five o’clock,
when she is expecting guests. She is not, however, expecting her son, who is unwelcome on these days, as he
invariably behaves badly. However, Higgins enters and announces that he wants his mother to participate in an
experiment. He has invited Eliza and intends to see how the guests react to her and whether they notice that she is
3
not a member of their own social class.

As Higgins is explaining this, his mother’s guests arrive. Mrs. Eynsford Hill, her daughter, Clara, Colonel Pickering,
Freddy Eynsford Hill, and finally Eliza enter the drawing room. Eliza is dressed exquisitely and looks beautiful, but
she gives herself away almost as soon as she opens her mouth. She embarks on a long and highly inappropriate
story about the death of her aunt, then goes on to discuss her father’s drunkenness. When she is about to leave and
Freddy suggests walking across the park, she creates a sensation by announcing, “Walk! Not bloody likely. I am
going in a taxi.”

After the Eynsford Hills have left, Mrs. Higgins tells her son that his experiment has been a complete failure. No one
in upper-class society would ever mistake Eliza for one of their own. Moreover, she agrees with Mrs. Pearce that
Eliza will never learn good manners while living with Higgins, since he behaves so atrociously himself. Both Higgins
and Pickering exasperate Mrs. Higgins by their refusal to take seriously her questions about Eliza’s position in
Higgins’s house as well as her future life.

The act ends with a separate short scene in which Higgins and Pickering take Eliza to a grand reception at an
embassy. A former pupil of Higgins’s, named Nepommuck, who specializes in detecting impostors, declares that
Eliza speaks English too perfectly to be an English aristocrat. He concludes that she is a Hungarian princess and
rejects Higgins’s suggestion that she might be a girl from the English lower classes. Eliza is afraid that she has lost
Higgins’s bet for him, but he tells her that she has won it ten times over.

The fourth act takes place at midnight in Higgins’s laboratory. Higgins, Pickering, and Eliza all enter, wearing
evening dress. Higgins has won his bet, but he is now bored by the whole matter and wants to go to bed. When he
starts searching for his slippers, Eliza throws them at him in a rage, showing her anger at his neglect and his refusal
to acknowledge her role in the success of the experiment. She is also upset because her future is so uncertain now
that the experiment is over. Higgins suggests, without much interest, that she might marry, or that Pickering could
“set [her] up” in a florist’s shop. His obvious lack of concern further enrages Eliza, and she asks Higgins, with cold
formality, to look after the jewels she is wearing, since she would not want to be accused of stealing them. Her
attitude infuriates Higgins, and he storms off to bed, complaining that he has wasted his knowledge and regard “on a
heartless guttersnipe.”

The fifth act begins with Mrs. Higgins in her drawing room. Higgins and Pickering enter in consternation, saying that
Eliza has disappeared. Doolittle then joins them, magnificently attired in frock coat and top hat. He reveals that he
has been left a fortune by an American millionaire with an interest in moral reform, to whom Higgins had facetiously
described Doolittle as the most original moralist in England. Doolittle is not happy being rich—he yearns for his old,
carefree life.

Eliza, who has been staying with Mrs. Higgins since her disappearance from Wimpole Street, enters the room. Her
cool assumption of equality infuriates Higgins. Doolittle invites Mrs. Higgins and Pickering to attend his wedding,
leaving Higgins and Eliza alone. They argue about Eliza’s future, and she says she will marry Freddy, a fate Higgins
regards as a preposterous waste of his “masterpiece.” The act and the play end with Higgins instructing Eliza to buy
various items for him, assuming that she will return to Wimpole Street. Eliza refuses, but Higgins expresses
confidence that she will do as she is told.

The play is followed by a lengthy “sequel,” or an explanation of what Shaw believes would occur after the play,

4
including Eliza’s marriage to Freddy.

Chapter Summaries

Chapter Summaries: Act 1 Summary

It is 11:15 p.m. on a summer evening in Covent Garden, and rain is coming down in torrents. A mother is taking
shelter under the portico of St. Paul’s Church with her daughter while her son tries to find a cab to take them home.
Mother, son, and daughter are all of upper-class appearance and wearing evening dress. At this time, none of the
characters are named. Their names appear in the script after being mentioned in dialogue. They are, in fact, Mrs.
Eynsford Hill, her son, Freddy, and her daughter, Clara.

Freddy has failed to find a cab and is rushing away to try to find one in the Strand when he bumps into a flower
seller, scattering the contents of her basket over the pavement. She remonstrates with him angrily. Shaw at first
attempts to reproduce her dialect phonetically, using the Roman alphabet (“Ow, eez ye-ooa san, is e?” for “Oh, he’s
your son, is he?” etc.), but quickly gives up, explaining that this method of trying to represent the sound of her accent
must be “unintelligible outside London.” Mrs. Eynsford Hill gives the girl sixpence for the flowers, much to Clara’s
disgust.

The girl tries to sell a flower to a gentleman standing nearby, but a bystander points out to her that there is a man
with a notebook who appears to be writing down their entire conversation. By this time, a crowd has gathered. Most
of them, including the girl, assume that the notetaker is a police agent. This arouses their hostility, and the girl
vociferously protests that she has harmed no one.

The general suspicion only increases when the notetaker identifies what part of London all the bystanders come
from. They challenge him to try the same trick with the gentleman, thinking that he will not dare to “take liberties” with
a member of the upper classes. The note taker, however, promptly identifies the gentleman with the words
“Cheltenham, Harrow, Cambridge, and India,” meaning that he comes from the town of Cheltenham, was educated
at Harrow School and Cambridge University, and has since lived in India. The gentleman confirms that the notetaker
is correct and asks him if he does this for his living at a music hall.

The rain stops, and everyone leaves the church portico except the notetaker, the gentleman, and the flower girl. The
notetaker then explains that he was able to identify the origins of the gentleman, the flower girl, and everyone else
through his knowledge of phonetics, the “science of speech.” He has made a particular study of London dialects and
can place any Londoner within two miles, “sometimes within two streets.” He explains that he makes his living by
teaching people of low social origins who have made a lot of money to speak the upper-class English appropriate to
their new station in life. He boasts that in three months, he could teach even the flower girl to speak such perfect
English that he could pass her off “as a duchess at an ambassador's garden party” or even get her a job in a flower
shop, which would require even better English.

It transpires that the notetaker is not only of the same social class as the gentleman—the two also share an interest
in phonetics and are aware of each other’s work. The gentleman is Colonel Pickering, author of “Spoken Sanskrit,”
5
and the notetaker is Professor Henry Higgins, author of “Higgins’s Universal Alphabet.” The two men quickly become
friends and go to the Carlton Club, where Pickering is staying, to have supper together. As they leave, the flower girl
(who still has not been provided with a name–the audience has to wait until act 2 to learn that she is Eliza Doolittle)
asks Pickering to buy a flower, saying that she is short of money for her lodging. Higgins calls her a liar, pointing out
that she previously claimed to be able to change half a crown (two shillings and sixpence in pre-decimal coinage,
when a pound or “sovereign” was twenty shillings).

Eliza is furious with Higgins and flings her flower basket at his feet. As she does so, the church clock strikes, and
Shaw’s stage directions explain that Higgins hears in this “the voice of God, rebuking him for his Pharisaic want of
charity to the poor girl.” He throws a handful of coins into her basket as he and Pickering depart. Eliza is astonished
to find that Higgins has thrown quite a large sum of money into her basket, including a half-sovereign (ten shillings)
—an amount it would normally take her at least a couple of days to earn by selling flowers. At this point, Freddy
Eynsford Hill finally returns with a cab, only to find that his mother and sister left some time ago when the rain
stopped. However, Eliza decides to use a fraction of her newfound wealth to take the cab home and grandly tells him
that she will take it off his hands, leaving Freddy feeling quite bewildered.

Chapter Summaries: Act 2 Summary

At eleven o’clock the next morning, Higgins and Pickering are in Higgins’s laboratory in Wimpole Street, a
fashionable and expensive area in Westminster, close to the Royal Society of Medicine and the consulting rooms of
many distinguished specialist doctors. Higgins has been giving Pickering a tour of the laboratory and demonstrating
the equipment to him when his housekeeper, Mrs. Pearce, enters and announces that a young woman with a
“dreadful” accent has come to see him.

Eliza Doolittle (or Liza–she is called both), the flower girl Higgins and Pickering met the night before, enters the
laboratory, dressed in what were evidently the cleanest and most respectable clothes she could find, though they
create a pathetic impression on the two gentlemen and the audience. Higgins had been hoping to have a new accent
to study, so he is disappointed and irritated to see Eliza, as he made notes on her accent the night before. He
dismisses her brusquely, but Eliza announces that she has come to take lessons and intends to pay for them. She
recalls Higgins’s boast from the night before and states that she wants to learn to speak English correctly so that she
can “be a lady in a flower shop stead of selling at the corner of Tottenham Court Road.”

Eliza offers Higgins a shilling an hour to teach her English, since a friend of hers pays eighteen pence an hour for
French lessons and it cannot cost as much as that to learn one’s own language. Higgins points out to Pickering that
if one considers the shilling as a proportion of Eliza’s income, this is actually a handsome offer, equivalent to sixty
pounds from the millionaires he is accustomed to teaching. The mention of such a large sum of money leads Eliza to
panic and she begins to cry.

Pickering, who, unlike Higgins, has treated Eliza with consideration and courtesy since her arrival, says that he is
interested in the notion of teaching Eliza to speak English properly. He reminds Higgins of his boast and suggests
that they should conduct an experiment to see whether they can really pass Eliza off as an upper-class lady at a
social event, wagering Higgins the expenses of the experiment that he will not be able to do it. Higgins agrees to
this, regarding it as an irresistible challenge. He continues to talk about Eliza as if she were not present, exhibiting a

6
complete lack of regard for her feelings and announcing, “I shall make a duchess of this draggletailed guttersnipe.”

Higgins then instructs Mrs. Pearce to take Eliza away and wash her, burning her clothes and ordering new ones.
Pickering, Mrs. Pearce, and Eliza all protest that, as Mrs. Pearce expresses, “you can't take a girl up like that as if
you were picking up a pebble on the beach.” They ask what Eliza’s position is to be in the house and what is to
happen to her when the experiment is finished. Higgins treats these objections scornfully, pointing out that Eliza has
no future as things stand. She is not married, and nobody else wants her. Finally, he prevails, and Mrs. Pearce takes
Eliza to the bathroom.

When the two of them are alone, Pickering asks Higgins if he is “a man of good character where women are
concerned.” Higgins flippantly replies that he has never met such a man, but he assures Pickering that his interest in
Eliza is purely professional. Mrs. Pearce returns briefly while Eliza is bathing and, much to Higgins’s chagrin, asks
him to be careful about his language and personal habits while Eliza is staying with him. She notes in particular his
propensity to curse and to neglect his personal cleanliness to the extent of wiping his fingers on his dressing gown.
While Higgins is still fuming at this, Eliza’s father, Alfred Doolittle, enters.

Doolittle has adopted the attitude of a father concerned about his daughter’s honor. He tells Higgins that he wants
Eliza back, and Higgins immediately replies that he should take her, suggesting that Doolittle has arranged the entire
situation to extort money from him. He then threatens to call the police. This confuses Doolittle, who has indeed
come for money but is flustered to find the topic broached so suddenly. He asks Higgins for five pounds, adopting a
wheedling tone and complaining that he is generally prevented from receiving charity by “middle class morality,”
which regards him as “one of the undeserving poor.” Higgins is so delighted by Doolittle’s rhetoric that he offers him
ten pounds, but Doolittle says that he would rather have five, since ten pounds is a large sum of money which he
“wouldn’t have the heart” to spend.

As Doolittle leaves the laboratory, he passes a beautiful young lady in a kimono, whom he fails to recognize as
Eliza. Eliza has enjoyed a luxurious hot bath for the first time in her life and now says that she understands why the
upper classes are so clean: washing is a pleasure for them. Doolittle leaves, and Eliza remarks that she does not
want to see him again. She is already delighted with her new station in life, and she rushes out of the laboratory with
an excited shriek when Mrs. Pearce tells her that her new clothes have arrived. The scene ends with Higgins and
Pickering both realizing from this reaction just how much Eliza will have to learn if Higgins is to succeed in the
experiment.

Chapter Summaries: Act 3 Summary

It is between four and five o’clock, and Mrs. Higgins, Henry Higgins’s mother, is at home to visitors (ladies at this
time would have had regular weekly hours when their friends could be sure of finding them “at home” and dispensing
tea and cake). She is in her drawing room, which is tastefully decorated in the style of Morris and Burne Jones, when
Higgins enters with his hat on. Mrs. Higgins promptly takes it off as he bends down to kiss her, telling him to go
home at once. She has friends coming to visit, she says, and Higgins always offends her friends so that they never
come again.

Higgins explains, in a roundabout and rather unhelpful way, that he has a job for his mother. He has invited Eliza to
her “at home” day as part of his experiment, to see whether she will pass for an upper-class woman among Mrs.
7
Higgins’s friends. His hasty explanations are interrupted by the arrival of Mrs. Eynsford Hill and her daughter, Clara.
Higgins is reluctant to meet them but cannot escape and is offhand and distant, proving his mother’s point about his
lack of social graces. They are soon joined by Colonel Pickering, then Freddy Eynsford Hill, whereupon Higgins
abruptly decides that the Eynsford Hills will do as well as anyone else for his experiment, though he still refuses to
preoccupy himself with small talk and audibly wonders, “what the devil are we going to talk about until Eliza comes?”

Eliza enters, exquisitely dressed and looking beautiful. Her pronunciation is pedantically correct, but she has little to
say. When she talks about the weather, she sounds like a meteorological report. Mrs. Eynsford Hill’s mention of
influenza then leads her to tell a story about the death of her aunt which, though perfectly pronounced, is wildly
inappropriate in both vocabulary and content: it includes theft, drunkenness, and possible murder. She then
proceeds to discuss her father’s bouts of drunkenness. Freddy finds her conversation immensely amusing, while
Mrs. Eynsford Hill is rather shocked. Higgins decides that they should leave, and Freddy, who is already smitten with
Eliza, asks her to walk across the park with him. This gives rise to Eliza’s parting line: “Walk! Not bloody likely. I am
going in a taxi.” The word “bloody” was regarded as quite shocking at the time and would never have been used in
polite society. Its use created a sensation among audiences of the play, as it does in Mrs. Higgins’s drawing room.
The consternation of Mrs. Eynsford Hill in particular sets the seal on the failure of this section of Higgins’s
experiment.

The Eynsford Hills leave soon after Eliza. Clara imitates her by using the word “bloody,” which she thinks is a mark
of fashionable society, but Mrs. Eynsford Hill apologizes to Mrs. Higgins, saying that Clara does not get out in society
much and does not know any better. As soon as they have gone, Mrs. Higgins informs her son of the utter failure of
his experiment, telling him that Eliza betrays her lowly origins “in every sentence she utters.”

Like Mrs. Pearce, Mrs. Higgins wants to know what Eliza’s status is within Higgins’s household. She accuses
Higgins and Pickering of behaving like children, playing with a live doll. They brush off her concerns in a way that
only serves to exacerbate them and demonstrate the justice of her accusation. The two men then leave, deciding
impulsively to take Eliza to the Shakespeare exhibition at Earls Court, where “her remarks will be delicious,”
according to Pickering. After their departure, Mrs. Higgins exclaims in exasperation, “Oh, men! men! men!!!”

An abbreviated version of the play, which is sometimes used in stage performances and often appears in online
versions, concludes act 3 at this point. However, Shaw wrote another scene and placed it at the end of act 3,
allowing the audience to witness Eliza’s triumph at first hand.

The setting is a grand reception at an embassy in London. It is after dark, and everyone is in full evening dress.
Higgins, Pickering, and Eliza enter, whereupon Higgins is immediately accosted by a voluble Hungarian with an
enormous moustache. This is Nepommuck, a former phonetics student of Higgins’s. He describes himself as
Higgins’s first and greatest pupil, though Higgins does not appear to be at all pleased to see him or to rate his
intelligence highly.

Nepommuck prides himself on his skill in detecting linguistic impostors, whom he blackmails in return for his silence
and complicity. He speaks to Eliza to try to discover who she is and later, when he joins the group of people in which
Higgins is standing, dramatically announces that she is a fraud. When pressed for further details, Nepommuck
explains that Eliza speaks English too perfectly for her to be a native. She is clearly a foreigner, as he is. Moreover,
he announces, she is clearly a Hungarian of royal blood. When Higgins disagrees and suggests that Eliza might be
“an ordinary London girl out of the gutter and taught to speak by an expert,” everyone, including Nepommuck, laughs

8
at this preposterous suggestion. When Eliza comes and tells Higgins that she cannot bear much more of this society
and apologizes for losing his bet for him, Higgins responds that she has not lost it; She has “won it ten times over.”
Tired but triumphant, they leave the embassy to have supper.

Chapter Summaries: Act 4 Summary

It is midnight when Higgins, Pickering, and Eliza enter the Wimpole Street laboratory, all resplendent in evening
dress. The two men are talking with some animation, while Eliza is “brooding and silent.” Higgins and Pickering
discuss how tired they are and how glad they are that the experiment is over. It has been a triumphant success for
Higgins and, although Pickering gives Eliza some credit for the way in which she carried off the imposture, Higgins
does not seem to register that she played any role at all. Pickering confesses to having enjoyed some of the day’s
social events, but Higgins is relentlessly vehement about his boredom. He inveighs against the stupidity of society
people, who spend all their time obsessing over trivial class distinctions yet do not have the wit to spot the impostor
in their midst. He concludes that “the silly people don’t know their own silly business.”

Having decided to go to bed, Higgins starts hunting for his slippers. Eliza, who has been ominously quiet, though the
stage directions describe her mounting fury, finds the slippers and throws them at him, displaying her anger at the
way he is ignoring her after she won his bet for him. Higgins expresses astonishment when she tells him the reason
for her resentment. He is entirely unsympathetic and arrogantly responds, “YOU won my bet! You! Presumptuous
insect! I won it.”

Higgins has mentioned before (in act 3 particularly) that Eliza is a particularly apt and skilful pupil with a remarkable
gift for mimicry, but he has never given her credit for what he regards as his triumph in the experiment. Eliza knows
this, and it brings her anger to boiling point by this stage in the play. When she and Higgins begin to argue, however,
it transpires that this lack of appreciation was only the trigger for her emotion. She has other, deeper concerns—the
first of which is her future, which Higgins has continually dismissed as a matter beneath his concern. What is to
become of her now that the experiment is over? What can she do now that she is a poor girl with the accent and
manners of an upper-class lady? Higgins is still quite uninterested in the subject, expressing that she is now free and
can do whatever she likes, as he can. He expects her to share his relief that the experiment is over. When Eliza
persists, he makes some suggestions in a vague and desultory manner. He says she might marry, patronizingly
telling her that she should not find it too difficult to acquire a husband, since she is “not bad-looking” and since most
men might find her quite an attractive companion.

Higgins’s obvious boredom and condescension further enrage Eliza. She responds that even when she was a poor
flower girl on Tottenham Court Road, she only sold flowers, not herself, adding, “Now you’ve made a lady of me I’m
not fit to sell anything else.” Higgins clearly regards this as melodramatic, remarking that she doesn’t have to marry
anyone she doesn’t like. He then suggests that Eliza stick to her original plan of working in a florist’s shop. Colonel
Pickering, who has plenty of money, could probably “set [her] up in one.” He points out that six months ago, it was
the summit of Eliza’s ambition to have a flower shop of her own. Now she seems to have grander, though ill-defined,
goals which only appear to be making her fractious and unhappy.

Eliza’s manners to Higgins become cold and formal. She asks if her clothes belong to her or to Colonel Pickering,
since she would not want to be accused of stealing them. She then asks Higgins to take charge of the jewels she is
wearing for the same reason. Higgins is hurt and outraged by these words, as Eliza intended. He roughly takes
9
possession of the jewels, and when Eliza hands him a ring he bought for her earlier, he violently hurls it into the
fireplace. Eliza thinks, or pretends to think, that he intends to strike her. She shields her face and cries out, “Don’t
you hit me.” This infuriates Higgins more than anything else she has said. He tells her that she has wounded him “to
the heart” by suggesting that he is capable of such an action.

Eliza retorts that she is glad to have hurt him, as she has now “got a little of her own back.” Higgins regrets having
lost his temper with her and moodily goes off to bed, finally observing that he has wasted his “hard-earned
knowledge and the treasure of [his] regard and intimacy on a heartless guttersnipe.” Eliza smiles for the first time
since the beginning of the scene. She is initially triumphant, but, after Higgins has left, she kneels down to look for
the ring he threw away. When she finds it, she does not know what to do and eventually flings it away herself, then
goes upstairs “in a tearing rage.”

Chapter Summaries: Act 5 Summary

Mrs. Higgins is in her drawing room when her parlormaid announces that Higgins and Pickering are downstairs.
They are both distraught and are telephoning the police because Eliza has disappeared. Mrs. Higgins instructs the
parlormaid to inform Eliza that Higgins and Pickering are there, but she does not immediately reveal to them that
Eliza is in her house—though she does express irritation at their involving the police. As they are speaking, Alfred
Doolittle is announced. The parlormaid assumes he must be a gentleman, since he is fashionably and expensively
dressed in a morning coat and silk hat. He immediately reproaches Higgins, claiming that he is responsible for all
this finery.

As a joke, Higgins had told an American millionaire who spent vast sums on founding societies for moral reform that
Doolittle was “the most original moralist at present in England.” The millionaire apparently took this seriously and
provided Doolittle with an income of three thousand pounds a year to deliver lectures to his Moral Reform World
League. Higgins thinks this is tremendously amusing and a great stroke of luck for Doolittle, but the dustman is not
happy with his newfound wealth and respectability, finding it onerous compared with his former carefree life.

When Doolittle has spent some time complaining about the woes of prosperity, Mrs. Higgins reveals that Eliza is in
the house. She scolds Higgins for his treatment of Eliza, telling him that he ought at the very least to have praised
her for accomplishing a very difficult task. She then says that Eliza will not want to return to Wimpole Street,
particularly as her father is now a wealthy man who will be able to keep her in the style to which she has become
accustomed. However, she will meet Higgins on friendly terms, an assumption of equality which infuriates him.

Eliza enters. Her manner is cold and formal, further angering Higgins, who complains that he taught her “this game”
and that she should not presume to try it on him. She addresses herself principally to Colonel Pickering, recalling
that he was always kind and courteous to her, teaching her by example how ladies and gentlemen ought to behave,
which she could never have learned from Higgins. She concludes,

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.

10
Now that Doolittle has risen in society, he is going to marry Eliza’s stepmother, and he invites Colonel Pickering and
Mrs. Higgins to the wedding. They exit, leaving Higgins and Eliza alone. Higgins asks her, hesitantly, obliquely, and
brusquely, to return to Wimpole Street, stipulating that he will not treat her any differently and that, in any case, his
manners are “exactly the same as Colonel Pickering’s.” He asserts that if Pickering treats a flower girl like a
duchess, he treats a duchess like a flower girl—an attitude which Eliza says resembles her father’s.

Eliza complains that Higgins takes her for granted. She does not mind his rudeness, but she will not be ignored.
Higgins grudgingly admits to caring for Eliza, saying, “I have grown accustomed to your voice and appearance. I like
them, rather.” He even offers to adopt Eliza as his daughter and settle money on her; alternatively, he suggests that
she might marry Colonel Pickering. To this, she fiercely replies that she would never marry Higgins (who has not
asked her), though he is closer to her age than the Colonel. She states that Freddy Eynsford Hill is always writing to
declare his love for her, at which Higgins, who regards Freddy as a fool, expresses scorn and disgust.

Eliza explains that she wants kindness from Higgins and begins to cry. He responds that she is “being a common
idiot.” Common people regard the educated classes as cold because educated people have more important things to
concern them than sentiment. If Eliza finds Higgins too unfeeling, she should marry some “sentimental hog” with “a
thick pair of lips to kiss [her] with and a thick pair of boots to kick [her] with.” Eliza responds that she could never
marry “a low common man” after living with Higgins and Pickering but that she will marry Freddy. Higgins seems to
regard this as very nearly as bad, remarking, “I’m not going to have my masterpiece thrown away on Freddy.”

Eliza then threatens to set herself up as a teacher of phonetics, selling Higgins’s secrets to his rivals or advertising
that she will teach them to anyone who pays her a thousand guineas. (A guinea is a pound and a shilling and was
the normal unit of payment for professionals, such as doctors and lawyers.) Higgins admires this newfound
truculence, telling Eliza that he really does want her to come back to live with him and Pickering now that she is such
a “tower of strength.”

Mrs. Higgins reenters, having prepared herself for the wedding. Eliza exits with her and, as she does, Higgins
offhandedly gives Eliza a list of errands to run, including buying him a tie and gloves, making a great show of
certainty that she will return to live with him in Wimpole Street. Eliza tells him to buy them himself as she leaves, but
Higgins, in his final line, assures his mother that Eliza will certainly do as he has told her. On this inconclusive note,
the play ends.

The play is followed by an epilogue, which Shaw calls the “sequel,” in which he outlines what he believes would
happen to the major characters after the conclusion of the drama. Although Eliza continues to be intensely interested
in Higgins, even regarding him as “godlike,” Shaw says that she will almost certainly marry Freddy Eynsford Hill.

Themes

Themes
SOCIAL CLASS AND ACCENT
11
Although all countries have social classes and divisions between rich and poor, England is unusual in the degree to
which accent and vocabulary are correlated with class. Bernard Shaw points out in the preface that

It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him.

Higgins is a professor of phonetics and conducts serious scientific research, but he makes his money by using his
knowledge of phonetics to help people whose origins lie in the lower classes to pretend that they are part of the
upper class. No matter how much money they have or how much they achieve, they will never be accepted in
aristocratic or even middle-class society unless they have the right sort of accent.

Although this linguistic phenomenon was well-established by 1913, it was actually of comparatively recent origin, as
Shaw was well aware. By the middle of the nineteenth century, it had become established practice for rich families to
send their sons to public schools (which were called “public” because they were famous, not because they were
open to the general public). Higgins immediately recognizes that Colonel Pickering attended Harrow, one of the best-
known of these schools. At these public schools, the pupils all learned to speak in the same way, giving rise to a
single “received pronunciation,” which had not existed before. In 1750, an aristocrat from Yorkshire would have
spoken approximately the same sort of English as the men who worked on his estate. By 1850, he would have
barely been able to understand their dialect.

Shaw had lived in England for a long time when he wrote Pygmalion, but he remained an observer and an outsider.
In the play, he is constantly commenting on the extreme importance of accent in English social life. For Higgins,
correct and articulate speech is so central to identity that he imagines (quite wrongly) that he can remake Eliza into a
completely different person simply by changing the way she speaks. It is Colonel Pickering and Mrs. Higgins who
teach Eliza what it really means to be a lady, and they begin by treating her like one, which Higgins never does.
They demonstrate to Eliza and to the audience the fallacy of Higgins’s view that accent is synonymous with class. In
this respect, Higgins is guilty of the same mistake as the social snobs he describes with such scorn at the beginning
of act 4.

MANNERS AND ETIQUETTE

Etiquette is a matter of correct form, whereas manners involve considering the feelings of others. A man who holds
his knife and fork incorrectly commits a breach of etiquette, while those who sneer at him for it exhibit bad manners.
The distinction between manners and etiquette is central to the play.

While Eliza is taking a bath in act 2, Mrs. Pearce returns to warn Higgins that he will have to alter his own behavior if
he is to set a good example for his new pupil. Higgins is prone to cursing at the slightest provocation, and his
personal habits, such as wiping his fingers on his dressing gown, leave much to be desired.

Higgins has been well brought-up. His mother is a lady who has elegance, good taste, and irreproachable manners.
However, though Higgins knows the correct way to behave, he is often too impatient and preoccupied with other
matters to pay attention to his conduct or to the effect that he creates in polite society. Both his manners and his
etiquette are at fault, but he is aware of the latter when he makes the effort to remember it. His manners are bad
because he is self-centered. This is why Eliza says that if she had only had the example of Higgins before her, she
would never have learned to be a lady. Higgins retorts that it is not important how one treats people as long as one
treats them all the same. He tells Eliza,
12
 The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or any other particular sort of
manners, but having the same manner for all human souls: in short, behaving as if you were in Heaven,
where there are no third-class carriages, and one soul is as good as another.

Eliza, however, dismisses this as preaching.

The debate about what it means to have good manners and the connection between manners and etiquette are both
important themes in the play. Higgins teaches Eliza etiquette, which is correct form, but he cannot teach her
manners, since good manners involve caring about the feelings of others, as Colonel Pickering and Mrs. Higgins do.
It is only when Eliza has learned to speak like a lady that Higgins shows any interest in her as a human being, which
suggests that his claim to treat everyone equally is not well-founded. The etiquette of others has an effect on him,
whether he admits it or not.

SUBVERSION OF CONVENTIONAL ROMANCE

Higgins and Eliza are clearly the two major figures in the play, which explores their feelings for each other in some
depth. These are not conventionally romantic feelings, however, and the play does not not have a conventional
happy ending—or even a conclusive one. Shaw objected to plots where the hero marries the heroine and tended to
avoid them in all his plays. He wrote a long epilogue or “sequel” to Pygmalion at least partly to make it clear that
Eliza will not marry or have a conventional romantic relationship with Higgins. In the last paragraph, he says that she
sometimes longs to “drag him off his pedestal and see him making love like any common man,” but she will never do
so. She finds Higgins immensely interesting. There is a sense in which she loves him, but she does not like him as
she likes Freddy, for “his relation to her is too godlike to be altogether agreeable.”

Shaw states it as a simple fact that in real life, Eliza would marry Freddy, a man close to her own age whom she
likes and who makes her feel comfortable, rather than have a passionate but probably dysfunctional relationship with
Higgins. In addition, he regards Eliza’s choice as perfectly sensible. Her strong personality is more compatible with
Freddy’s weak one than it is with Higgins’s equally strong character. It is for the best that Eliza’s fantasies about
Higgins should remain fantasies. Higgins himself certainly has feelings for Eliza, but he is too devoted to his work—
and perhaps to his mother—to make a good husband. The complexities of Higgins and Eliza’s feelings for one
another do not allow a simple solution, such as marriage or even a love affair. They are not shoehorned into any
type of conventional arrangement but remain complex and difficult to define. The “sequel” describes Eliza and
Freddy’s marriage in realistic terms: not unhappy, but far from a fairy tale or even a traditional comedy.

Characters

Characters
HENRY HIGGINS

13
Henry Higgins is a character who clearly demonstrates the influence of Nietzsche on Shaw. A brilliant, energetic
“Superman” figure, he is rather similar in character and outlook to many other Shavian heroes, such as Andrew
Undershaft in Major Barbara or Jack Tanner in Man and Superman. He is described as “a robust, vital, appetizing
sort of man of forty or thereabouts.”

Higgins is irascible and arrogant but also good-humored and companionable. He takes an instant liking to Pickering,
and the two become close friends almost as soon as they meet. He is also absolutely devoted to his mother, despite
the fact that each exasperates the other all too frequently. His temperament is mercurial, and he is restless and
easily bored, impatient with conventions and formalities. Although he is highly emotional, often given to sulking and
fits of temper, he likes to think of himself as purely scientific and cerebral in his approach to life. He has a particular
affinity for Milton and a tendency to philosophize. His work is of overriding importance to him, and he finds phonetics
to be a never-ending source of fascination.

ELIZA DOOLITTLE
Eliza Doolittle is a young woman who has endured a hard life of poverty and neglect. At the beginning of the play,
she has the modest ambition to work in a florist’s shop rather than selling flowers from a basket in the street.
However, she quickly adapts to her new social position. Her achievement in learning to speak standard English,
though treated by Higgins solely as a triumph for his teaching, clearly takes high intelligence and dedication, and she
is furious when Higgins fails to give her any credit. By the end of the play, she is talking to and arguing with Higgins
on equal terms, having quickly cast off her status as his pupil or even his creation.

Eliza is a strong character, and Shaw depicts her in the sequel to the play as coping well with her ambiguous
situation as a poor flower girl who has suddenly acquired the manners and deportment of a duchess.

ALFRED DOOLITTLE
Alfred Doolittle is a dustman and Eliza’s father. He is lazy and mendacious and has been a negligent and
thoughtless father, though not a cruel one. Despite his humble origins and lack of education, Doolittle has a
marvellous gift for rhetoric. He describes himself as a member of “the undeserving poor” and treats middle-class
moral codes with contempt and hostility. Ironically, he becomes a well-paid lecturer on moral philosophy when
Higgins makes a joke to an American philanthropist that Doolittle is the most original moralist in England. The
philanthropist then dies, leaving Doolittle three thousand pounds a year (a very substantial income in 1913) to lecture
for his Moral Reform League. Doolittle is unhappy with his newfound wealth, since his old, carefree life of poverty
was better suited to his irresponsible nature.

COLONEL PICKERING
Colonel Pickering is a benevolent, generous gentleman who is interested in phonetics and has studied Higgins’s
work; he has written about Indian dialects himself. He and Higgins quickly become friends, and it is Pickering who
suggests the experiment to teach Eliza to speak like a lady. Pickering always treats Eliza (and everyone else) with
great kindness and courtesy, and he is altogether a much more approachable figure than Higgins. He is still capable
of insensitivity, however, as when he fails to appreciate how much work Eliza herself has put into making Higgins’s
experiment a success.

14
MRS. HIGGINS
Mrs. Higgins is the mother of Henry Higgins. Higgins adores her, though they often spar and exasperate one
another. Higgins tells her that his “idea of a loveable woman is something as like [her] as possible,” and it is clear
that the perfection of her example has led him to expect too much from women in general. Mrs. Higgins is gracious
and elegant, furnishing her house and conducting her life with excellent taste. She is a strong character and has no
difficulty standing up to her son’s outbursts. She is also kind and highly intelligent, showing greater understanding of
Eliza than anyone else in the play.

MRS. EYNSFORD HILL

Mrs. Eynsford Hill is an upper-class woman who has lost money and is now struggling to keep up appearances on a
greatly reduced income. She is a friend of Mrs. Higgins and is one of the first people to encounter Eliza socially after
her linguistic transformation. Being from an upper-class background, she does not know what to make of Eliza and is
mortified when her daughter, Clara, decides to imitate her.

FREDDY EYNSFORD HILL

Freddy is Mrs. Eynsford Hill’s son. Although Shaw writes that he was educated at a “cheap, pretentious, and
thoroughly inefficient” school, he seems to have been less affected than his sister by the family’s lack of money and
still behaves like a member of the upper classes. He finds Eliza’s conversation very amusing when they first meet,
and he quickly falls in love with her, though he failed to notice her at all when he encountered her in act 1, before her
transformation. Shaw does not make much of their relationship in the play, but he tells the reader in the epilogue, or
“sequel,” that Freddy and Eliza will marry.

CLARA EYNSFORD HILL

Clara Eynsford Hill is an awkward girl who is painfully aware of the discrepancy between her position as a member
of the upper classes and the relative poverty of her family. She attempts to cover her insecurity with a false bravado
which is rarely convincing and leads her mother to apologize to Mrs. Higgins for her gaucheness, saying that she
“doesn’t quite know” how to behave.

MRS. PEARCE
Mrs. Pearce is Higgins’s long-suffering housekeeper. She is against the idea of Eliza joining the household but treats
her kindly when she does. Mrs. Pearce admonishes Higgins for his offhand treatment of Eliza and for the bad
example he sets in terms of manners and deportment.

NEPOMMUCK
Nepommuck is a former pupil of Higgins’s and a Hungarian. He is a brilliant linguist who speaks thirty-two
languages, but Higgins regards him as intellectually negligible in every other way. He is, however, an expert at
detecting linguistic frauds, whom he blackmails. Nepommuck realizes that Eliza’s English is too perfect to be natural,
but he fails to identify her as a woman of the lower class, believing her instead to be a princess from his native
15
Hungary.

Analysis

Analysis: Places Discussed

*London

*London. In the early twentieth century, London was the center of world commerce and the leading city of the
democratic societies. However, for all its importance to world democracies, London was home to the British Empire
and organized into a rigid class system, which permitted no crossing of boundaries. One of the chief means of
enforcing such a system was categorizing people according to their language patterns. Pygmalion is about how a
guttersnipe, Eliza Doolittle, overcomes the English class system by exchanging her Cockney accent for an upper-
class English one with the help of linguistics expert Henry Higgins. During the course of the lessons, they fall in love
with each other, but Higgins is never able to escape his own class sufficiently to reciprocate Eliza’s love.

*St. Paul’s Cathedral

*St. Paul’s Cathedral. Magnificent late seventeenth century church located located in Covent Garden, London’s
entertainment and market district. St. Paul’s portico, at the entrance to the building, is a place where the different
classes are permitted to mingle. There, Eliza encounters Higgins and decides to accept the challenge of changing
her speech patterns.

27A Wimpole Street

27A Wimpole Street. Address of Henry Higgins’s Covent Garden home and speech laboratory, located in an upscale
area. It comes to represent the place of learning where Eliza is reborn as a “lady,” with an entirely new habit of
speech. Higgins assumes that Eliza will never leave Wimpole Street, but to his surprise she does leave him to marry
a young man from fashionable Earls Court, the final proof of her transformation.

Mrs. Higgins’s home

Mrs. Higgins’s home. As a test of her new social skills, Higgins brings Eliza to his mother’s home in exclusive
Chelsea. There, Eliza meets the Eynsford Hills, who, although poor, are nevertheless members of the upper crust
residing in Earl’s Court. Freddy Eynsford Hill falls in love with her almost immediately. Mrs. Higgins’s home is also
where Eliza passes her first test in a new social setting and where she ultimately rejects Higgins.

Analysis: Historical Context

16
World War I
Nineteen-fourteen, the year of Pygmalion's London premiere, marked tremendous changes in British society. On
July 28, the Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated in Sarajevo, Bosnia, setting off an
international conflict due to a complicated set of alliances which had developed in Europe. Within two weeks, this
conflict had erupted into a world war (known in Britain at the time as the "Great War"). By the end of World War I (as
it came to be known later), 8.5 million people had been killed and 21 million wounded, including significant civilian
casualties. The war constituted the most intense physical, economic and psychological assault on European society
in its history; Britain was not alone in experiencing devastating effects on its national morale and other aspects of
society.

It is ironic, Eldon C. Hill wrote in George Bernard Shaw, that Pygmalion, "written partly to demonstrate that language
(phonetics particularly) could contribute to understanding among men, should be closed because of the outbreak of
World War I." The war brought out Shaw's compassion, as well as his disgust with the European societies that would
tolerate the destruction of so many lives. When the actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell informed Shaw of the death of her
son in battle, he replied that he could not be sympathetic, but only furious: "Killed just because people are blasted
fools," Hill quoted the playwright saying. To Shaw, the war only demonstrated more clearly the need for human
advancement on an individual and social level, to reach a level of understanding that would prevent such tragic
devastation.

Colonialism and the British Empire

In 1914 Great Britain was very much still a colonial power, but while victory in the First World War actually increased
the size of the British Empire, the war itself simultaneously accelerated the development of nationalism and
autonomy in the provinces. Even before the war, British pride in its Empire had reached a climax prior to the death of
Queen Victoria in 1901, and the brutalities of the Boer War (1899-1902), fought to assert Britain's authority in South
Africa. Still, British society proudly proclaimed that "the sun never sets on the British Empire'' and believed in
Britain's providential mission in geographies as widely diverse as Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, India, Burma,
Egypt, the Sudan, South Africa, Nigeria, Guyana, Honduras, Jamaica, and numerous other islands throughout the
Caribbean, and Canada.

In addition to providing a symbolic unity to the Empire, the long reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901) also gave
coherence to British society at home, through a set of values known as Victorianism. Victorian values revolved
around social high-mindedness (a Christian sense of charity and service), domesticity (most education and
entertainment occurred in the home, but children, who "should be seen and not heard,'' were reared with a strict
hand) and a confidence in the expansion of knowledge and the power of reasoned argument to change society. By
the time of Victoria's death, many of the more traditional mid-Victorian values were already being challenged, as was
the class structure upon which many of these values depended. Victorianism, however, survived in a modified form
through the reign of Victoria's son, Edward. 1914, the year of Pygmalion and the onset of the Great War, constituted
a much different kind of break, symbolic and social.

Industrialization
The growth of industrialization throughout the nineteenth century had a tremendous impact on the organization of
British society, which had (much more so than the United States) a tradition of a landed aristocracy and a more
hierarchical class system—a pyramid of descending ranks and degrees. Allowing for the growth of a merchant
middle class, industrialization changed British society into a plutocracy—an aristocracy of money more than land.
Social mobility, however, still did not widely extend into the lower classes, propagating a lack of opportunity reflected
in Liza's anxiety over what is to happen to her following Higgins's experiment.
17
Industrialization brought about a demographic shift throughout the nineteenth century, with more and more
agricultural laborers coming to seek work in the cities. Unskilled laborers like the Doolittles competed for limited
employment amid the poverty of the inner city and were largely at the mercy of employers. Increased health
standards combated urban crises like tuberculosis and cholera, but slum conditions and rampant urban poverty
remained a major social problem after the turn of the century. Pygmalion suggests the subjectivity of class identity,
and the rapid deterioration of many pre-industrial social structures, but strict class distinctions of another kind
nevertheless persisted. This fact is suggested by the severely disproportionate distribution of wealth in Britain at the
time: during the years 1911-1913, the top 1% of the population controlled 65.5% of the nation's capital. The poorest
of the poor, meanwhile, were often forced into workhouses, institutions which had been developed in the 17th
century to employ paupers and the indigent at profitable work. Conditions in the workhouses differed little from
prisons; they were deliberately harsh and degrading in order to discourage the poor from relying upon them.
Conditions in the workhouses improved later in the 19th century but were still unpleasant enough that fear of going
to one, for example, causes Doolittle in Pygmalion to accept his new position in the middle class even though it is
displeasing to him for other reasons.

The Rise of Women and the Working Classes

During the decade which produced Pygmalion, the political power of the working class increased greatly, through
massive increases in trade union membership. Bitter class divisions gave rise to waves of strikes and disturbances,
including a major railway strike in 1911, a national miners' strike in 1912, and the "Triple Alliance'' of miners, railway,
and transport workers in 1914. A new political party, Labour, came into existence in 1893, advancing an eight-hour
work day and other workplace reforms. Meanwhile, reforms to laws concerning suffrage, the right to vote, further
brought men (and later, women) of the working class into Britain's ever-more participatory democracy. Suffrage (the
right to vote) had in Britain always been based on requirements of property ownership, reflecting the contemporary
idea that only landowners were considered reasoned and informed enough to vote but also that they would do so in
the best interest of those in the classes below them. These property requirements were gradually relaxed throughout
the nineteenth century, gradually increasing the size of the male electorate.

Only after many years of political struggle by organizations of women known as "suffragettes" did women achieve
the right to vote: first in 1918 for women over 30 who also met a requirement of property ownership, then extended in
1928 to all women over the age of 21 (as was already the case for men). Increased political participation further
prompted a shift in sex roles: British society had already noted the phenomenon of "the new woman," and was to
see further changes such as increasing numbers of women in the work force, as well as reforms to divorce laws and
other impacts upon domestic life.

Analysis: Literary Style

Plotting with a Purpose
In Pygmalion's plot, Higgins, a phonetics expert, makes a friendly bet with his colleague Colonel Pickering that he
can transform the speech and manners of Liza, a common flower girl, and present her as a lady to fashionable
society. He succeeds, but Liza gains independence in the process, and leaves her former tutor because he is
incapable of responding to her needs.

18
Pygmalion has a tightly-constructed plot, rising conflict, and other qualities of the "well-made play," a popular form at
the time. Shaw, however, revolutionized the English stage by disposing of other conventions of the well-made play;
he discarded its theatrical dependence on prolonging and then resolving conflict in a sometimes contrived manner
for a theater of ideas grounded in realism. Shaw was greatly influenced by Henrik Ibsen, who he claimed as a
forerunner to his theatre of discussion or ideas. Ibsen's A Doll House, Shaw felt, was an example of how to end a
play indeterminately, leading the audience to reflect upon character and theme, rather than simply entertaining them
with a neatly-resolved conclusion.

Intellect vs. Entertainment

Shaw broke both with the predominant intellectual principle of his day, that of "art for art's sake," as well as with the
popular notion that the purpose of the theatre was strictly to entertain. Refusing to write a single sentence for the
sake of either art or entertainment alone, Shaw openly declared that he was for a theater which preached to its
audience on social issues. Edward Wagenknecht wrote in A Guide to Bernard Shaw that Shaw's plays "are not
plays: they are tracts in dramatic form." He further reflected a popular perception of Shaw's plays as intellectual
exercises by stating that Shaw "has created one great character—G.B.S. [George Bernard Shaw]—and in play after
play he performs infinite variations upon it." Thus, in his day Shaw was viewed as succeeding despite his dramatic
technique rather than because of it. Wagenknecht again: "it is amazing that a man whose theory of art is so patently
wrong should have achieved such a place as Shaw has won."

Though his plays do tend towards ideological discussion rather than dramatic tension, Shaw succeeded because he
nevertheless understood what made a play theatrical, wrote scintillating dialogue, and always created rich, complex
characters in the center of a philosophically complex drama. Among his character creations are some of the greatest
in the modern theatre, especially the women: Major Barbara, Saint Joan, Liza Doolittle. Also, Shaw's deep belief in
the need for social improvement did not prevent him from having a wry sense of humor, an additional component of
his dramatic technique which helped his plays, Pygmalion most predominantly, bridge a gap between popular and
intellectual art.

Romance
In calling Pygmalion a romance (its subtitle is "A Romance in Five Acts"), Shaw was referencing a well-established
literary form (not usually employed in theatre), to which Pygmalion does not fully conform. (Shaw was aiming to
provoke thought by designating his play thusly.) The term romance does not imply, as it was misinterpreted to mean
by many of Shaw's contemporaries, a romantic element between Liza and Higgins. Since the middle ages,
romances have been distinguished from more realistic forms by their exotic, exaggerated narratives, and their
idealized characters and themes. Shaw playfully suggests Pygmalion is a romance because of the almost magical
transformations which occur in the play and the idealized qualities to which the characters aspire.

Analysis: Compare and Contrast

1910s: Women in Britain do not have the right to vote, and their opportunities for education and employment remain
limited.

Today: Since 1928, all women over the age of 21 have had the right to vote in Britain. The direct participation of
women in government continues to be more limited than that of men, although the election of Margaret Thatcher as

19
Prime Minister in 1979 set an important precedent. Women were admitted to full admission at Oxford in 1920 and to
Cambridge University in 1948. Women make up a much larger portion of the work force than they did at the turn of
the century, and although their compensation and employment opportunities continue to lag behind those of men,
the Equal Pay Act of 1970 and other measures have addressed this issue. It is no longer the case that a woman's
natural role is widely assumed to be limited to domestic work.

1910s: With industrialization and legislative reform beginning a process of diversification, Britain's society is still
rigidly hierarchical, with a tradition of a landed aristocracy and a pyramid of descending ranks and degrees. In 1911,
the power of the royally-appointed House of Lords in Parliament to veto the legislation of the democratically-elected
House of Commons is reduced to a power to delay legislation.

Today: The political power of royalty and the nobility has been greatly reduced through a process of legislative
reform. While titles of nobility remain, Britain's society remains stratified primarily by wealth rather than rank. While
the middle class grew considerably throughout the century and there was significant growth in economic indicators
such as owner-occupation of homes, sharp divisions between rich and poor persist in Britain. With the growth of the
technical institutes, the "polytechnics," the expansion of the university system after World War II greatly increased
opportunities for higher education in the country.

1910s: Despite the promotion of a standard "Queen's English," beginning in the Victorian era, the British Isles—even
London itself—is marked by a wide diversity of spoken English. The diversity of British population (including its
varieties of English) was further shaped by large-scale immigration, by Irish beginning in the 1830s, Germans in the
1840s, Scandinavians in the 1870s, and Eastern Europeans in the 1880s.

Today: The diversity of English culture—especially in London and the major cities—has been further increased,
along with the diversity of English dialects, by twentieth-century immigration from Britain's colonies and former
colonies in Africa, the Caribbean, the Indian subcontinent, and the Far East.

1910s: Europe is devastated by the 8.5 million dead and 21 million wounded in "the Great War'' (World War I),
including unprecedented levels of civilian casualties. Britain was not alone in experiencing the most intense physical,
economic, and psychological assault in its history.

Today: The specter of civilian death leads to a realization that modern warfare potentially endangers the future of
the entire nation. This feeling has been accentuated since the end of World War II by the threat of nuclear
destruction. Much more so than at the beginning of the century, citizens have come to perceive war and the
necessity of avoiding it as their business, and they often try to impact their government's policies to this end. Shaw's
position against war, still somewhat radical in his day, has become much more common.

Analysis: Media Adaptations

Pygmalion was adapted as a film produced by Gabriel Pascal, directed by Anthony Asquith and Leslie Howard,
starring Howard and Wendy Hiller; Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1938. The film received Academy Awards for Shaw's
screenplay and for the adaptation by Ian Dalrymple, Cecil Lewis, and W. P. Lipscomb.

20
Pygmalion was also filmed for American television, directed by George Schaefer for the Hallmark Hall of Fame
series, starring Julie Harris and James Donald, adapted by Robert Hartung; Compass, 1963.

The play has also been produced in audio recordings. In 1972 Peter Wood directed a recording starring Michael
Redgrave, Donald Pleasence, and Lynn Redgrave (Caedmon TRS 354). In 1974, the play was recorded in
association with the British Council, starring Alec McCowen and Diana Rigg (Argo SAY 28).

Pygmalion was also adapted into the musical My Fair Lady by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe. An original cast
recording was released in 1959, starring Rex Harrison, Julie Andrews, and Stanley Holloway (CK 2015 Columbia).

My Fair Lady was made into a film in 1964, produced by Jack L. Warner and directed by George Cukor, starring
Audrey Hepburn as Liza with Rex Harrison reprising his stage role of Higgins. The film was nominated for twelve
Academy Awards and received eight. It is considered a film classic in the musical genre.

Bibliography: Bibliography and Further

Reading
Sources
Berst, Charles A. Bernard Shaw and the Art of Drama, University of Illinois Press (Urbana), 1973, pp. 197-218.

Further Reading
Bentley, Eric, Bernard Shaw, 1856-1950, amended edition, New Directions, 1957.
Though Bentley's book (originally published in 1947) is not adulatory, Shaw considered it "the best book written
about himself as a dramatist.'' Bentley states that his double intention in the book is "to disentangle a credible man
and artist from the mass of myth that surrounds him, and to discover the complex component parts of his 'simplicity.'"
Pygmalion is discussed in detail, pages 119-126, and elsewhere in the book.

Crane, Milton. "Pygmalion: Bernard Shaw's Dramatic Theory and Practice" in Publications of the Modern Language
Association, Vol. 66, no 6, December, 1951, pp. 879-85.
Crane begins with the question of whether Shaw was old-fashioned in his approach to drama or innovative.
Wrapped up in this issue is the figure of Ibsen, who Shaw declared was revolutionary for giving his plays
indeterminate endings and concluding with "discussion," rather than the clear unraveling of a dramatic situation in
the "well-made play"—the popular form of the day. Crane demonstrates that Ibsen did not present a new innovation
so much as modify earlier forms and claims that something similar holds true for Shaw as well. Although Shaw
denied his audience a romantic ending in Pygmalion, Crane does not feel it is true of the playwright what many have
said, "that he is primarily a thinker, who chose for rhetorical reasons to cast his ideas in dramatic form." Rather than
viewing his characters abstractly, as means to a rhetorical end, Shaw was passionately invested in their lives and
destinies, which highlights a basic "conventionality" in his technique.

Dukore, Bernard F. "The Director As Interpreter: Shaw's Pygmalion" in Shaw, Vol. 3, 1983, pp. 129-47.
A three-part article analyzing, first, "Shaw's concept of the question of directorial interpretation"; then his own
directorial interpretation of Pygmalion (in the London premiere and several subsequent productions); and finally, the

21
revisions he made to Pygmalion as a result of the experience of directing the play. Dukore shows the careful
separation Shaw maintained between "Playwright Shaw" and "Director Shaw": rather than explain to his actors the
ideas in his play in a literary manner, Shaw was able to help them in very practical terms to develop their
performances. Often these actors led him to new insights about his own characters. "While he recognized that there
are a variety of appropriate ways to interpret any well-written role," however, Shaw also "rejected what he
considered inappropriate interpretations."

Evans, T. R., editor. Shaw: The Critical Heritage, Routledge & Kegan Paul (London), 1976.
An extremely useful collection of 135 contemporary writings on Shaw's plays: reviews, essays, letters, and other
sources. Arranged roughly in chronological order and grouped by play, the items "give a continuing picture of the
changing and developing reaction to Shaw's dramatic work." Pygmalion is covered on pages 223-29.

Harvey, Robert C. "How Shavian is the Pygmalion We Teach?" in English Journal, Vol. 59, 1970, pp. 1234-38.
This article by a former high school English teacher begins with the observation that while Shaw lived, he absolutely
refused to let his plays be published in school textbooks: "My plays were not designed as instruments of torture," he
wittily commented. Harvey recognizes that despite the wishes of the playwright, there are definite values to students
reading his work in a school setting. Too often, however, the work is taught to support grammar lessons, with the
message that like Liza, students can succeed if they learn to speak "correctly." Harvey affirms that the real value of
the piece for students is in trying to grasp its literary complexity. If anything, the play should show students "the
social importance of all varieties of language ... the equality of every dialect," rather than being used "to forge the
very chains [Shaw] wrote the play to break."

Henderson, Archibald. George Bernard Shaw: Man of the Century, Appleton-Century-Crofts (New York), 1956.
A final, culminating book by Shaw's "official" biographer, incorporating much material from his previous works.
Henderson studied Shaw first-hand and wrote on him for over fifty years.

Hill, Eldon C. George Bernard Shaw, Twayne (Boston), 1978.

A biography and critical study intended not for the Shaw specialist but for the general reader "who seeks an
understanding of Shaw's life and work." Pygmalion is discussed in detail, pages 118-21.

Huggett, Richard. The Truth about Pygmalion, Heinemann (London), 1969.

Focusing predominantly on Mrs. Patrick Campbell, the actress who created Liza for the London premiere, this study
is the result of three years of research into the play and its performances.

Kaufman, R. J., editor. G B. Shaw: A Collection of Critical Essays, Prentice-Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1965.
While none of the essays examines Pygmalion exclusively, the topics of these compiled studies overlap extensively
with issues in that particular play. Notable contributions include a short, provocative piece by Bertolt Brecht, showing
Shaw's influence on his work. Brecht states of Shaw's view towards society, "it should be clear by now that Shaw is
a terrorist. The Shavian terror is an unusual one, and he employs an unusual weapon—that of humor." In his article
"Born to Set It Right. The Roots of Shaw's Style," Richard M. Ohmann investigates the development of Shaw's
position as a social outsider, "the critic of things as they are.'' Eric Bentley' s "The Making of a Dramatist" examines
the formative years 1892-1903 in Shaw's life.

MacCarthy, Desmond. Shaw. The Plays, Newton Abbott, 1951.

Originally published as a series of essays from 1907 to 1950, this book offers a unique chance to trace the
development of a particular perspective on Shaw's long and prolific career. Pygmalion is discussed in detail, pages
22
108-13.

Miller, Jane M. "Some Versions of Pygmalion" in Ovid Renewed: Ovidian Influences on Literature and Art from the
Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century, edited by Charles Martindale, Cambridge University Press, 1988.
A study of Ovid's version of the Pygmalion myth (including possible antecedents for it), and its influence on later
works, Miller stresses the sexual implications of the Pygmalion-Galatea relationship in Ovid's story (which suggest
possible consequences for Shaw's version). Miller states that the various versions of Pygmalion tend in general to be
of two types: historical, which depict a social transformation and which usually contain "an element of social
comment" (she places Shaw's Pygmalion in this category); and mystical, which explore "love as a divine
experience." Miller suggests Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale as an early example of the "mystical" interpretation
but comments that the form abounded in the nineteenth century in particular. Miller concludes that the "historicist"
versions of Pygmalion, Shaw's included, "are interesting products of their time but lack the vitality of the Ovidian
original."

Muggleston, Lynda. "Shaw, Subjective Inequality, and the Social Meanings of Language in Pygmalion" in Review of
English Studies: A Quarterly Journal of English Literature and the English Language, Vol. 44, no. 175, August, 1993,
pp. 373-85.
A detailed study of the social importance of Pygmalion's, exploration of accent and pronunciation as determiners "not
only of social status but also of social acceptability." Although difficult only in places for readers not familiar with
some linguistic vocabulary, the article's central argument is easily grasped, that Shaw rebelled against the idea that
there was something inherently better about people of the upper classes and therefore demonstrated that social
judgments of a person's merit depend on superficial, subjective qualities (like proper speech). Pygmalion is a
"paradigm of social mobility," illustrating that social transformation is possible, and "a paean to inherent equality,"
suggesting that a person's merit is distinct and separate from one's level of social acceptability.

Quinn, Martin. "The Informing Presence of Charles Dickens in Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion" in the Dickensian, Vol.
80, no. 3, Autumn, 1984, pp. 144-50.
This article traces a number of connections between Pygmalion and various works of Dickens, who Quinn states
"entered Shaw's life early and completely and was thereafter always at his fingertips when not on the tip of his
tongue." Quinn shows that Dickens was specifically on Shaw's mind when writing Pygmalion in 1912, because he
was completing at the same time an introduction to Dickens's novelHard Times. The influence of Dickens was
"pervasive" throughout Shaw's career, however. The value of Quinn's article is in documenting the exhaustive
reading of "[a]n intellect as comprehensive as Shaw's," and inserting the name of Dickens, a novelist, among the list
of dramatic artists considered to be Shaw's major influences: Shakespeare, Moliere, and Ibsen.

Shaw Bulletin, Shaw Review, Shaw: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies, the Shavian.
Publications of the Shaw Society of America (The Shaw Bulletin, 1952-1958; Shaw Review, 1951-1980; and the
Shaw annual, 1981-present) and the Shaw Society, London (the Shavian, 1953-present). These journals have
published extensively on all topics related to Shaw's work; check their title and subject indexes for further
information.

Small, Barbara J. "Shaw on Standard Stage Speech" in Shaw Review, Vol. 22, 1979, pp. 106-13.
A short but enlightening study of Shaw's interest in diction and stage speech. Not entirely about Pygmalion, but its
references to that play suggest the close relationship between Higgins and Shaw's own ideals of spoken speech.
"Shaw was preoccupied with the dearth of good standard speech on the English stage,'' Small wrote "Good diction

23
was, for Shaw, associated with fine acting." Shaw did not blame individuals for their poor pronunciation; in his
preface to Pygmalion, for example, he decries the problems stemming from English not being a language with
phonetic spellings of words. These larger issues Shaw addressed through a phonetic system of his own devising,
and other means, but regarding individual persons what Shaw hated most was pretension. "An honest slum dialect''
was preferable to him "than the attempts of phonetically untaught persons to imitate the plutocracy."

Wagenknecht, Edward. A Guide to Bernard Shaw, Russell & Russell (New York), 1929.
A study written while Shaw was alive and at the peak of his career (he had won the Nobel Prize only a few years
previously). Wagenknecht wrote that the purpose of his book is expository rather than critical: that is, "to gather
together... all the information which, in my judgment, the student or general reader needs to have in mind in order to
read Shaw's plays intelligently." As a study, it has largely been superseded by other later works, but it remains an
important historical document.

Bibliography
Berst, Charles A. “Pygmalion”: Shaw’s Spin on Myth and Cinderella. New York: Twayne, 1995. An excellent source
for students that examines the literary and historical contexts of the play and provides an intelligent and thorough
interpretation tracing Eliza’s transformation into a woman and lady. Focuses on Shaw’s use of the Pygmalion myth
and the Cinderella fairy tale.

Bloom, Harold, ed. George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion.” New York: Chelsea House, 1988. A judicious selection of
eight critical essays that represent major interpretations of the play. In his introduction, Bloom argues that Pygmalion
is Shaw’s masterpiece. Excellent for students.

Hornby, Richard. “Beyond the Verbal in Pygmalion.” In Shaw’s Plays in Performance, edited by Daniel Leary.
University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1983. Examines Shaw’s stagecraft and the performance
qualities inherent in the play as a script. Goes beyond “the purely verbal or literary” qualities of the play to show how
the visual and aural elements convey meaning.

Huggett, Richard. The Truth About “Pygmalion.” New York: Random House, 1969. A fascinating narrative account of
the original 1914 London production, in which “three of the most monstrous egoists the theatre ever produced”
participated: actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell, who played Eliza; actor Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, who played
Higgins; and Shaw himself.

Silver, Arnold. Bernard Shaw: The Darker Side. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1982. A major part of this
challenging and unconventional book on Shaw is a very thorough and complex psychological interpretation of
Pygmalion that shows Shaw working out intense personal conflicts. Fascinating materials for more advanced
students.

24