• Home
  • |
  • Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw

Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw

Pygmalion is a play by George Bernard Shaw, named after a Greek mythological character. It was first presented on stage to the public in 1912. Professor of phonetics Henry Higgins makes a bet that he can train a bedraggled Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, to pass for a duchess at an ambassador’s garden party by teaching her to assume a veneer of gentility, the most important element of which, he believes, is impeccable speech. The play is a sharp lampoon of the rigid British class system of the day and a commentary on women’s independence. In ancient Greek mythology, Pygmalion fell in love with one of his sculptures, which then came to life. The general idea of that myth was a popular subject for Victorian era English playwrights, including one of Shaw’s influences, W. S. Gilbert, who wrote a successful play based on the story called Pygmalion and Galatea first presented in 1871. Shaw also would have been familiar with the burlesque version, Galatea, or Pygmalion Reversed. Shaw’s play has been adapted numerous times, most notably as the musical My Fair Lady and the film of that name.”

 

New Books Playground says: Pygmalion, we love it. “What the dickens.”

Related Posts

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression by Jane Roberts

The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression by Jane Roberts

The Midnight Line: A Jack Reacher Novel by Lee Child

The Midnight Line: A Jack Reacher Novel by Lee Child

The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained Will Buckingham, Douglas Burnham, et al.

The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained Will Buckingham, Douglas Burnham, et al.