Customer Reviews

Pygmalion

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It is not very likely that George Bernard Shaw knew he was writing the play that would become one of the seminal romantic comedies of the 20th when he penned `Pygmalion'. The play is delightful, with borrowed elements from many genres. There is comedy and romance, above all, but there is also a very clear social critic -- and even a Marxist idea of class struggle. What only enhances the reading of this masterpiece.

Professor Henry Higgins is a linguistic expert who is much more interested in how people say the words rather than what they say. He ends up taking a bet that he is able to transform a simple cockney flower seller, Eliza, into a sophisticated and refined young lady, who would be able to fool the Queen herself. To succeed in such a move he claims he will change only the way she speaks.

To work on Eliza he puts her up in his house and starts polishing her speech. This is not an easy job, because what the girl speaks is not English, but a language she has developed herself. After some time, the Professor decides to introduce her to a group of friends, without mentioning her backgrounds. At first the meeting is blast. Although Eliza can use a fine language it is clear she has not backgrounds to develop and keep up a conversation. And her behavior ends up being the laughing stock. But one of the guests notices how beautiful the girl is. Higgins feels sort of jealous and this could lead their relationship to another level.

Shaw's prose is funny and touching at the same time. He uses devices, like everybody speaking at the same time, which only enhances the fun of the play and brings more truth to the action. His characters are lively and well developed. His social critic is evident. Eliza doesn't want to be rich or sound as such, she only wants to get a better job in a flower store, in other words, she only wants to be what she is. But the Professor insists on making her another person, very different from what she really is. Eliza's presence is the sweetest thing in the play. She is a nice and good-hearted girl, who suffers the consequence of her surroundings.

The play is based on the Greek tragedy `Pygmalion and Galatea', and was the base for one of the most famous musicals of the cinema, `My Fair Lady'.

Pygmalion is a brilliant success by George Bernard Shaw to modernize the legendary Greek tale of a sculptor who falls in love with his artsitic creation and wishes to bring her to life. The rags-to-riches tale of Eliza Doolittle captivates the reader with its fast paced storyline, and witty dialogue. Shaw fascinates the reader with complicated characters such as Henry Higgins, Doolittle, and Colonel Pickering. Set in England, during a period of sophistication and elegance, Higgins and Pickering were faced with the seemingly impossible task of transforming a filthy flower girl (Eliza) into a beautiful duchess. The outrageous antics that ensue are both humorous and entertaining. Shaw's playful dialogue and timeless plot have been updated to fit the social and cultural standards of our time. For example, Alan Jay Lerner's My Fair Lady is an internationally acclaimed musical adaptation of Shaw's classic play. 1999 brought yet another adaptation of Pygmalion, in the form of the film She's All That, penned by R. Lee Fleming Jr. This teen comedy brings a new twist to the classic characters of Shaw's play. Pygmalion is a quick read and an enjoyable way to spend the day, and the characters in the story will remain with you forever.

Shaw's PYGMALION. like Julius Caesar's Gaul, is divided into three parts.

1. A preface, which was written after the play was already a hit, but was meant by Shaw to be a part of the reader's experience, and is necessary to the understanding of Shaw's main theme.

2. A five act play, meant to be performed, and which is annotated in such a manner so as to facilitate deletion, on the stage, of portions only possible in a film version.

3. What Shaw refers to as a sequel, written in prose, and outlining Liza and Freddy's life after their marriage which takes place after the end of Act V.

In the preface, Shaw first emphasizes the importance of reading his prose sequel. He then devotes the bulk of the preface to a discussion of the difficulties of learning to speak English, because its written alphabet so inadequately reflects the sound of the spoken word. He makes it very clear that he believes that the English Alphabet should be replaced by a 42 letter phonetic alphabet. He states that, "The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it." He also states that Henry Higgins, the speech therapist, is at least partially modeled on Henry Sweet, a leading phonetician of the period.

The central portion of PYGMALION is the five act play to which most of us have been exposed in one form or another; The original play, the screen play with the altered "happy ending," or the musical version, "My Fair Lady." By now, I would guess that we all are very familiar with the plot in which Professor Henry Higgins teaches the uneducated flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, proper language and manners, and, for an evening, passes her off as royalty.

In the all important sequel, Shaw makes it very clear that language alone, is not enough to make the transition from street person to high society. After a long struggle, Eliza and Freddy enter the world of tradesmen and, with Colonel Pickering's backing, open a flower shop in the arcade of a railway station. Because neither Eliza nor Freddy have any concept of how to handle money (Eliza can't count or make change), the shop nearly fails. Colonel Pickering subsidizes them for several years, helping them to get a modest practical education, and eventually the shop does become self supporting. In this section, Shaw also explains why Liza picked the weaker Freddy over the stronger, but domineering Higgins. For a fuller explanation, one should read the sequel which, as I mentioned above, is included in the book.

Shaw makes it very clear that, while proper language is a necessity for success in this world, it alone is not enough. There is something to be said for proper upbringing, education, and exposure to culture.

A number of reviewers on these pages have seen PYGMALION as some sort of skewering of the British Upper Classes. Some have seized on Shaw's political leanings to support these views. There is merit in these observations, but I prefer to take Shaw at face value and accept his statement that his lifelong belief that language is everything and that it IS language that strongly influences the world's opinion of each of is his main reason for writing PYGMALION. He even went so far as to attempt, in his will, to set up a foundation for the purpose of getting the English speaking world to accept an alternate phonetic alphabet and short-hand.

I would probably be remiss if I ended this review without a reference to the Pygmalion of Ovid's "Metamorphosis." Pygmalion was a king of Cyprus and a sculptor. He sculpted a statue of a beautiful woman with which he fell in love. In answer to his prayers to Aphrodite, the statue was brought to life as Galatea, and Pygmalion married her. Shaw needed to look no further for a model plot. PYGMALION should be read in its entirety, preface, play, and prose sequel. By so doing, one can both enjoy the play, and better understand Shaw's motivation in writing PYGMALION.

What happens when you pull a girl out of the gutter and make it your goal to teach her how to act like a princess? All kinds of hilarity!

This story was smart and funny. I loved it and wanted more when it was over. I'll have to buy another one of Shaw's books. I just love his style. I can't resist any chance I can get to peek into the mind of a genius, and Shaw was a true genius. This story was delightful and brilliant. Eliza is unforgettable. She's intelligent, fiery, and stubborn and makes Higgins earn every cent of the money wagered in his bet that he can transform her into a lady. This is an absolutely charming story. I highly recommend it.

The greatest problem in communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished. -George Bernard Shaw

Though almost universally interpreted as a critical statement on the artificiality of class and social status, Pygmalion is really just an update of Paradise Lost and the Genesis story of the Fall of Man. This is most obvious from the way that Shaw changes the ending of the classic myth from which he borrows the plot and title and by his referring several times to Henry Higgins as Miltonic. The original Pygmalion was a character in Ovid's Metamorphoses, a woman-hating sculptor who chiseled a perfect female out of stone. He became so enamored with his creation that he asked the gods to grant her life. Venus answered his prayers, turning the statue into a living woman, Galatea, whom Pygmalion then married.

In his version of the Pygmalion tale, Shaw eschews this happy ending and, whether wittingly or no, turns the story into a Biblical allegory. Henry Higgins takes the role of God :

You see this creature with her kerbstone English: the English that will keep her in the gutter to the end of her days. Well, sir, in three months I could pass that girl off as a duchess at an ambassador's garden party. I could even get her a place as lady's maid or shop assistant, which requires better English. Thats the sort of thing I do for commercial millionaires. And on the profits of it I do genuine scientific work in phonetics, and a little as a poet on Miltonic lines.

Lifting Liza--who it must be noted is a flower girl, deriving her living from the products of the garden, get it?--up from the gutter (note the implication that she is dirt), Higgins turns her into a cultured woman, remakes her in his own image, only to find himself taken with his creation. He finds that he has not merely given her form, but has revealed a worthwhile soul too :

HIGGINS [arrogant] I can do without anybody. I have my own soul: my own spark of divine fire. But [with sudden humility] I shall miss you, Eliza. [He sits down near her on the ottoman]. I have learnt something from your idiotic notions: I confess that humbly and gratefully. And I have grown accustomed to your voice and appearance. I like them, rather.

LIZA. Well, you have both of them on your gramophone and in your book of photographs. When you feel lonely without me, you can turn the machine on. It's got no feelings to hurt.

HIGGINS. I cant turn your soul on. Leave me those feelings; and you can take away the voice and the face. They are not you.

But this is not the same thing as love, and Liza wishes to be loved, resulting in an impasse between the two :

LIZA. What did you do it for if you didnt care for me?

HIGGINS [heartily] Why, because it was my job.

LIZA. You never thought of the trouble it would make for me.

HIGGINS. Would the world ever have been made if its maker had been afraid of making trouble? Making life means making trouble. Theres only one way of escaping trouble; and thats killing things. Cowards, you notice, are always shrieking to have troublesome people killed.

LIZA. I'm no preacher: I dont notice things like that. I notice that you dont notice me.

HIGGINS [jumping up and walking about intolerantly] Eliza: youre an idiot. I waste the treasures of my Miltonic mind by spreading them before you. Once for all, understand that I go my way and do my work without caring twopence what happens to either of us. I am not intimidated, like your father and your stepmother. So you can come back or go to the devil: which you please.

Liza ultimately chooses independence from her creator and marries the dull but earnest Freddy. As Shaw said in a postscript which was added to later editions :

Galatea never does quite like Pygmalion: his relation to her is too godlike to be altogether agreeable.

And so you have it : God creates a creature in his own image, and is pleased with it, but wishes it to remain wholly His. The creature, created too well, wants its independence, more than it wants to bask in the reflected glow of the Creator, and so rebels. Odd as it may seem, coming from a Socialist and an Atheist, Shaw's Pygmalion is a devoutly Biblical work, derived entirely from the most classic themes in Western thought.

In addition, though we try to avoid psychology as much as possible here, there are inevitable comparisons to Shaw's own life. Read Higgins as a stand-in for Shaw, bringing culture to the unwashed masses (his Adams and Eves, Galateas, and Lizas) through his advocacy of Socialism. However, this process will not create any love between him and the objects of his endeavor. Instead, he will wish them to remain true to his vision of what they should be, and they will resent their creator and seek their independence from the life he envisions for them. Looked at from this perspective, the play reflects the uneasy relationship between intellectuals and the intended beneficiaries of their theories.

At any rate, you can interpret the play on a number of levels, it has several memorable characters and it's quite funny, probably the greatest work of a Nobel laureate. One recommendation : because of the reliance on language and dialects, you really need to hear it, rather than just read it. The CD version--featuring Michael Redgrave, Lynn Redgrave, Michael Hordern, and Donald Pleasence--is especially good.

I strongly recommend this book. It's a brilliant satire on the British class system. In this classic play George Bernard Shaw shocked audiences by turning a Cockney flower girl into a lady who could pass for a royal by merely being trained to speak with an upper class accent and taught good manners. At the time the idea of girl like the character Eliza being able to be pass herself off as a royal, was unthinkable. There was a very strong "us and them" mentality between the classes. They may as well have been from different planets; that's how large the divide was.

This was truly a bold and scandalous idea that Shaw had brought to life. He dared to deem the only difference between the classes to be environment and education rather that blood and breeding.

George Bernard Shaw created numerous masterpieces over the span of his writing career. He has the distinction of being the only person to ever be awarded both an Oscar and the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was a very humble and conscientious man, a political activist and a vegetarian. His conscientiousness shows in his work by his inability to write meaningless fluff at a time when fluff dominated the stage. His trademark is his classic use of ample humor in dramas with serious subject matter. It takes a special kind of genius to be able to pull that off as flawlessly as he did.
This book is excellent. It's as thought provoking as it is entertaining. There are times when you can't help laughing out loud. You'll be better for reading it. His works just have that effect - they both enrich and uplift you.

This is the best and most famous of Shaw's works. I could read it over and over again. The characters are vibrant, the banter is brilliant, and the plot is excellent. Shaw takes on the class system, and the results are side splitting hilarious.

Eliza Doolittle is my favorite character. She's wonderfully outrageous. The words that came out of her mouth really shocked audiences back in the day. It's wonderful to see this duckling turn into a swan without losing any of her fire. Her transformation is an amazing thing to behold, and her headstrong stunts and the times when she suddenly reverts back to her Cockney accent and lingo are hilarious.

Shaw is my favorite of the Victorian playwrights. His works were revolutionary in many ways. Use of humor was rare and exceptional for playwrights during that era, but Shaw was not afraid to make audiences laugh. He also tackled serious moral, political, and social issues in his plays at a time when sappy dramas were all the rage. He was truly bold and innovative and greatly contributed to dramatic art. He had an amazing gift, the ability to make people think while simultaneously making them laugh.

Reading Shaw's works are a genuine treat. All of his plays are fabulous. His characters are memorable, and his humor is brilliant.
This is a wonderful story, charming, significant, and insightful. I can't recommend it enough.

This is not the complete play--which is important to note if you were thinking of using it in the classroom. If you just want to listen to a pretty good (albeit incomplete misrepresantation) version of Shaw's play, it's good for a drive in the country.

George Bernard Shaw's `Pygmalion' is an intriguing piece accenting the differences between class and gender of the late eighteen hundreds. Shaw exhibits his skill as a playwright from its commencement as characters are immediately developed as in-depth individuals, each bringing very different attributes to the plot. Shaw's eloquent language and expressive writing style exposes readers to the world of Professor Henry Higgins, a linguistic expert, who attempts to transform Eliza Doolittle, a smug and snooty flower girl, into a first-class lady by way of perfecting her mannerisms and dialogue to first rate standards.

Shaw's light and humorous tone is entertaining and brings humour to the plot, especially when dealing directly with the British class system. In this ultimate form of literature, Shaw's job of attaining the drama's purpose of entertaining, informing, persuading, and sharing his personal ideals are all effectively exhibited through the main theme: we are constructed by the language that we speak. As Henry Higgins works with Eliza Doolittle, his character flaw of distributing little or no respect for anyone other than himself is seen in excess as readers may find it hard to relate to the Professor. On the other hand, Eliza's journey for her true identity draws readers into her world of freedom and curiosity. Nevertheless, the Professor eventually grows on the reader through his virtuous wit and classy intelligence as we find him falling in love with his masterpiece-in-progress.

`Pygmalion' holds the attention of the reader from the very beginning as it's off to a quick start with numerous enlightening tidbits of literary brilliance sprinkled throughout the narrative. An easy read, I recommend it to anyone, young our old, looking to explore both eloquent literature and eighteenth century British ideals.

George Bernard Shaw proves his talent in the play Pygmalion. This book has a balance of all the topics that make a story worth reading: love, politics, romance, and suspense. This is the story of Eliza Doolittle, a girl who is looked down upon by society but is determined to better her life. Eliza seeks help through Professor Higgins and Colonel Pickering. These two men help Eliza with her phonetics and manners. With the help of these men we see how Eliza is developing into a respectable woman. She has even begun to experience love from an unlikely boy named Freddy. Eliza becomes loved by many people. Her stubbornness and forwardness gets her into trouble occasionally which keeps the reader entertained. I could never tell whether Eliza was going to follow Higgins' wishes or just leave. The suspense of not knowing what is in store keeps you reading. It is hard to not fall in love with Eliza Doolittle; a young girl with big dreams. This story is a story of hope and love. It proves to the reader that you can hope for something and accomplish it and it proves that when love is meant to be, you cannot ignore it. As Eliza grows as a person we become attached to her character. Shaw does an amazing job at creating a character/reader connection. This is a must read for anyone who wants to believe that there is a better life out there for all of us.