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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Curious "mixed" edition of "Pygmalion", paired with "My Fair Lady",
By G.C. (St. Louis, MO, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Pygmalion & My Fair Lady (Paperback)
In retrospect, it seems quite obvious to have published Shaw's "Pygmalion" and Lerner and Loewe's "My Fair Lady" in one volume, but it took until 1975, apparently, for it to happen. It makes the ability to compare and contrast the works much easier.
This particular edition of "Pygmalion" is somewhat of an odd duck, in that it is not purely the 1914 original version. Instead, slotted within the original 5-act version, this Signet edition includes interstitial material in the first 4 acts, to fill in the narrative gaps that are present in the 5-act original, specifically between Acts 2 and 3, and between Acts 3 and 4. In the original, no teaching lessons are shown between Acts 2 and 3, and the culminating embassy ball, where the transformed Eliza goes out in high society for the first time, is not shown between Acts 3 and 4. This edition includes material adapted from the 1938 film screenplay into an edition originally published in 1941 as the interstitial material. The biggest omission in the "Shaw half" of this volume is the omission of Shaw's prose Preface and Epilogue, particularly the latter where Shaw explains the final fate of his characters, which differ from "My Fair Lady". However, there are 2 brief supplements to "Pygmalion" that are perhaps not readily available elsewhere. There are no such concerns about text edition with "My Fair Lady", of course. There is a very brief preface by Alan Jay Lerner, where he says in one line why he changed Shaw's ending. Clearly, there's more "filled in" material in the narrative in "My Fair Lady" compared to Shaw's original. On its own terms, however, even though the so-called "happy ending" of "My Fair Lady" is wrong, IMHO, it is a great musical theater work. But the omission of Shaw's epilogue perhaps tips, subliminally, the bias of opinion of the two endings perhaps a little towards the "My Fair Lady" ending, as expressed in the foreword to this volume by Richard Goldstone, who contrasts the two endings by calling that of "My Fair Lady" "unambiguously happy" and that of "Pygmalion" "deliberately inconclusive". Had Shaw's epilogue been included, that would have more forcefully presented the case for the "deliberately inconclusive" ending, and also why the "My Fair Lady" ending would not necessarily have been "unambiguously happy". But if you want a convenient volume that binds the two works together, and with the caveats on the limitations of the presentation of Shaw's full "Pygmalion" in mind, this is a useful volume to have.
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