Pygmalion
Pygmalion Author: George Bernard Shaw
First Performance: 1913, Vienna; 1914, London
Published: 1913 (in German); 1914 (in English); rev. 1941
Genre: Com. in 5 acts
Setting: London, 1912
Cast: 6m, 5f, extras
While sheltering from the rain, Henry Higgins, a brilliant professor of phonetics, encounters a Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle, and sneers at the way she distorts the English language. The following day she comes to ask him to give her speech lessons so that she can become a lady in a flower shop. His friend Colonel Pickering bets with him that he cannot train her to pass muster at the ambassador's party six months later. Eliza's first test comes after a few months at a party given by Higgins's mother. Her enunciation is perfect, but her vocabulary is startling. She shocks everyone by using the word...
[The entire page is 328 words long]
Join eNotes
The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:
eNotes Pass
