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 semi-
autobiographical 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
 Shaws Quotes
"He who can, does. He who
cannot, teaches.
"England and America are two
countries divided by a common
language.
 More of Shaws 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."
 Shaws 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
non-musical 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-le-Bow,
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_
Page
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/gbshaw.h
tm
http://www.bartleby.com/138/
http://www.loggia.com/myth/galat
ea.html