PYGMALION
BY GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
G.B. SHAW (1856-1950)
• An Irish playwright
• Winner of the Nobel Prize
for Literature
• After those of William
Shakespeare, Shaw's plays
are some of the most
widely produced in English
language theatre.
The Dramatist
• Irish dramatist, literary critic, a socialist
spokesman, and a leading figure in the 20th
century theater.
• Shaw was a freethinker, defender of women's
rights, and advocate of equality of income. In
1925 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for
Literature. Shaw accepted the honor but
refused the money.
An Irish Native…
• George Bernard Shaw was born in
Dublin, where he grew up in something
close to genteel poverty. "I am a typical
Irishman; my family came from
Yorkshire," Shaw once said.
The Shaw Family…
• When George Carr Shaw died in 1885,
his children and wife did not attend his
funeral. Young Shaw and his two sisters
were brought up mostly by servants.
Shaw's mother eventually left the family
home to teach music, singing, in
London.
Family Reunion in London…
• In 1876 he went to London, joining his sister
and mother. Shaw did not return to Ireland for
nearly thirty years.
• Most of the next two years Shaw educated
himself at the British Museum. He began his
literary career by writing music and drama
criticism, and novels, including the semiautobiographical IMMATURITY, without much
success.
Another Identity…
• A man of many causes, Shaw supported
abolition of private property, radical change in
the voting system, campaigned for the
simplification of spelling, and the reform of
the English alphabet. As a public speaker,
Shaw gained the status of one of the most
sought-after orators in England.
The Marriage…
• In 1898 Shaw married the wealthy
Charlotte Payne-Townshend. They
settled in 1906 in the Hertfordshire
village of Ayot St. Lawrence. Shaw
remained with Charlotte until her death,
although he was occasionally linked
with other women.
Eliza…
• He carried on a passionate
correspondence over the years with Mrs.
Patrick Campbell, a widow and actress,
who got the starring role in PYGMALION.
All the other actresses refused to say
the taboo word 'bloody' that the
playwright had put in the mouth of Eliza.
The Ibsen Influence…
• The Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen had a
great influence on Shaw's thinking.
• His 'unpleasant plays', ideological attacks on
the evils of capitalism and explorations of
moral and social problems, were followed
with more entertaining but as principled
productions.
PICKERING: Have you no
morals, man?
DOOLITTLE: Can't afford
them, Governor.
(from Pygmalion)
PYGMALION, THE PLAY…
• Pygmalion was originally written for the
actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell. Later the
play became the basis for two films and
a musical.
The Shaw Effect…
• In his plays Shaw combined
contemporary moral problems with
ironic tone and paradoxes, "Shavian"
wit, which have produced such phrases
as…
Shaw’s Quotes
• "He who can, does. He who cannot,
teaches.“
• "England and America are two countries
divided by a common language.“
More of Shaw’s Quotes
• "Christianity might be a good thing if
anyone ever tried it"
• "I never resist temptation because I
have found that things are bad for me
do not tempt me."
Shaw’s Drama…
• Discussion and intellectual acrobatics
are the basis of his drama, and before
the emergence of the sound film, his
plays were nearly impossible to adapt
into screen.
Career As Playwright…
• During his long career, Shaw wrote over
50 plays. He continued to write them
even in his 90s.
• George Bernard Shaw died at Ayot St.
Lawrence, Hertfordshire, on November
2, 1950.
The Actor Shaw…
• Since the days of the silent films, Shaw
had been a fan of motion-picture. He
also played in the film Rosy Rapture The Pride of the Beauty (1914).
The Film Adaptations…
• Shaw did not like much of the German
film version of Pygmalion (1935), and
the penniless producer and director
Gabriel Pascal persuaded the author to
give him the rights to make films from
his plays.
The Film Pygmalion…
• Pygmalion, produced by
Pascal and directed by
Anthony Asquith and David
Lean (uncredited), was a
great success.
Pygmalion (1938)
• Pygmalion (1938) is the nonmusical film version of
George Bernard Shaw's 1912
stage play, a socio-economic
drama based on the
Cinderella story, but actually
taken from the Greek myth of
Pygmalion - about a sculptor
who fell in love with a marble
statue of his own making.
My Fair Lady (1964)
• My Fair Lady (1964) was
experienced director
George Cukor's film
musical adaptation of
George Bernard Shaw's
1912 play Pygmalion that
had played successfully on
Broadway from March 15,
1956 to 1962.
The Allusion…
• Shaw's plot was derived from Latin poet
Ovid's story (in the Metamorphoses) about a
character named Pygmalion who fell in love
with a beautiful ivory statue of a woman. In
later Greek tradition, his prayers to Venus that
the beloved statue - Galatea - would come to
life came true so that they could marry.
Pygmalion (play) Review
• Pygmalion is a play by G. Bernard Shaw,
written in 1912 and first staged in
English in 1914.
My Fair Lady
• The play was the basis for the musical
play and film My Fair Lady.
• The play, the stage musical, and the
film musical have different endings.
The Mystery Remains
Unresolved…
• In the stage musical, this is left
unresolved, and the final scene is of a
lonely Higgins. Both the 1938 film and
the filmed version of the musical add a
final scene with both of them
apparently about to reconcile.
What is the Story anyway…
• It is the story of Professor Henry
Higgins, a professor of phonetics, who
wagers that he can turn a Cockney
flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, into the toast
of London society merely by teaching
her how to speak with an upper-class
accent.
The Story Continues…
• In the process, he becomes fond of her
and attempts to direct her future, but
she rejects his domineering ways and
marries a young aristocrat.
Happily Ever After?
• At the end of the play, Eliza leaves
Higgins to marry the aristocrat Freddy
Eynsford-Hill.
No Happily Ever After?
• Shaw, annoyed by the tendency of audiences,
actors, and even directors to seek 'romantic'
re-interpretations of his ending, later wrote an
essay for inclusion with subsequent editions
in which he explained precisely why it was
impossible for the story to end with Higgins
and Eliza getting together.
About the Play…
• The original stage play shocked
audiences by Eliza's use of a swear
word.
• Humor is drawn from her ability to
speak well, but without an
understanding of the conversation
acceptable to polite society.
The Staging…
• Shaw completed Pygmalion and later
that same year it was translated into
German. This is important because the
very first performance was played by
English actors in Vienna, Austria, with
none other than Mrs. Patrick Campbell
as Eliza Doolittle.
The Language…
• For example, when asked whether she
is walking home, Eliza replies, 'Not
bloody likely!' The actress Mrs. Patrick
Campbell, for whom Shaw wrote the
role, was thought to risk her career by
uttering the line.
• My Fair Lady is a
1956 musical
theater production
with lyrics and book
by Alan Jay Lerner
and music by
Frederic Loewe.
Food for Thought…
•Accents
•Language
•Socioeconomic status
Accent
• In linguistics, a method of pronouncing
words common to a certain group of
people, such as inhabitants of a locality
or members of a social class. It can also
refer to the stress on a certain syllable.
Accents vary…
• The regional accents of English
speakers show great variation across
the areas where English is spoken as a
first language.
Local Dialects…
• Local accents are part of local dialects.
Any dialect of English has unique
features in pronunciation, vocabulary,
and grammar. The term "accent"
describes only the first of these, namely,
pronunciation.
Non-native speakers of English
• Non-native speakers of English tend to
carry over the intonation and phonemic
inventory from their mother tongue into
their English speech.
Native English Speakers
• Among native English speakers, many
different accents exist.
• Some regional accents are easily identified by
certain characteristics.
• There is also much room for
misunderstanding between people from
different regions, as the way one word is
pronounced in one accent.
Cockneys
• Cockneys are, in the loosest sense of the
word, working-class inhabitants of Greater
London.
• But according to tradition, the strict definition
is limited to those born within earshot
(generally taken to be three miles) of the Bow
bells, in other words the bells of St Mary-leBow, Cheapside.
Londoners
• Londoners have a very distinctive accent,
quite different from the general accent of
South-Eastern England.
• Londoners speak with a wide variety of
accents from Cockney through to Received
Pronunciation, via Estuary English, as well as
those of the many ethnic groups there.
Citations
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Pag
e
• http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/gbshaw.htm
• http://www.bartleby.com/138/
• http://www.loggia.com/myth/galatea.h
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