My Fair Lady: Study Guide
Teacher’s notes
PENGUIN READERS
Teacher Support Programme
LEVEL 3
My Fair Lady
Alan Jay Lerner
acquaintance, Colonel Pickering, that after six months of lessons with him, he could teach Eliza to speak with such a pure upper-class accent that no one would be able to tell where she came from.
Chapter 2: Eliza’s father, Alfred Doolittle was thrown out of the pub as he hasn’t got enough money to pay for his drinks. Eliza gives him some money.
About the author
My Fair Lady was originally a stage musical based on the play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw.
Alan Jay Lerner adapted George Bernard Shaw’s play for the musical My Fair Lady. Alan Jay Lerner’s words for the songs use many of the spoken words in Shaw’s play. This was partly because Lerner, by law, had to stay as close as possible to the original.
The Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw (1856 –1950) was born in Dublin, but moved to London when he was twenty, and soon began publishing articles and reviews in
London magazines.
After writing five unsuccessful novels, he turned to play writing in the 1890s, but did not achieve popular success until 1904. His plays surprised theatre audiences of the time because of their serious attention to philosophical ideas, moral questions and current social problems.
Many of them – such as Caesar and Cleopatra, Man and
Superman, and Saint Joan, as well as Pygmalion – are still very popular today, and many have been filmed.
Shaw was a socialist who believed in equality of income and the abolition of private property. He also supported women’s rights. He believed that many of the world’s greatest problems could be solved by rational, scientific thinking. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in
1925.
Summary
My Fair Lady tells the story of Eliza Doolittle, who is a poor girl selling flowers on London streets until she meets
Henry Higgins, a professor of linguistics.
Chapter 1: Higgins hears Eliza shouting in her harsh
PENGUIN READERS
Teacher Support Programme
LEVEL 3
My Fair Lady
Alan Jay Lerner
acquaintance, Colonel Pickering, that after six months of lessons with him, he could teach Eliza to speak with such a pure upper-class accent that no one would be able to tell where she came from.
Chapter 2: Eliza’s father, Alfred Doolittle was thrown out of the pub as he hasn’t got enough money to pay for his drinks. Eliza gives him some money.
About the author
My Fair Lady was originally a stage musical based on the play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw.
Alan Jay Lerner adapted George Bernard Shaw’s play for the musical My Fair Lady. Alan Jay Lerner’s words for the songs use many of the spoken words in Shaw’s play. This was partly because Lerner, by law, had to stay as close as possible to the original.
The Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw (1856 –1950) was born in Dublin, but moved to London when he was twenty, and soon began publishing articles and reviews in
London magazines.
After writing five unsuccessful novels, he turned to play writing in the 1890s, but did not achieve popular success until 1904. His plays surprised theatre audiences of the time because of their serious attention to philosophical ideas, moral questions and current social problems.
Many of them – such as Caesar and Cleopatra, Man and
Superman, and Saint Joan, as well as Pygmalion – are still very popular today, and many have been filmed.
Shaw was a socialist who believed in equality of income and the abolition of private property. He also supported women’s rights. He believed that many of the world’s greatest problems could be solved by rational, scientific thinking. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in
1925.
Summary
My Fair Lady tells the story of Eliza Doolittle, who is a poor girl selling flowers on London streets until she meets
Henry Higgins, a professor of linguistics.
Chapter 1: Higgins hears Eliza shouting in her harsh