Pygmalion, by Bernard Shaw
Bernard Shaw
Pygmalion
A Romance in Five Acts
1. Summary of the Play, page 2
2. Introduction and Short Analysis of the Main Character, page 4
3. Interpretation, page 5
4. Additional Information, page 7
5. Literature and Links, page 8
1. Summary
London at 11.15 a.m., on a rainy summer day.
Everybody’s running for shelter because of the torrential storm. A bunch of people ist gathering in St. Pauls church, looking outside and waiting for the rain to stop.
Among the crowd, there is a young flower girl which grew up in the slums of London and therefore has a terribly bad language, although she is a good-natured, simple and pure being.
She is carrying a basket with flowers. As there is nothing else to do while waiting for the rain to end, she asks a gentleman next to her to buy a flower.
The way she speaks attracts the attention of a bystander, who is constantly scribbling down something in his notebook. The flower girl first thinks that he is a police officer and begins to defend herself that she didn’t do anything wrong, but it soon becomes clear that the bystander isn’t a policeman at all, but a professor of didactics, an analyst of dialects, specialised in London’s suburbal accents. He is so fascinated of the absolutely disgusting slang of the flower girl, that he has taken down all the expressions she used. He explains to the crowd, that he has no bad intention at all. He is just a collector of dialects.
Home again, Eliza (the flower girl) thinks about what this strange man just said, and she takes a decision. She looks around in her miserable room, and it’s clear to her that something has to change.
At the same time in the house of Henry Higgins, the phonetician. He is visited by Pickering, whom he met at St. Paul’s church. While they are talking, the maid is coming in, saying that a girl named Eliza Doolittle is waiting at the door.
Not knowing the name of the flower girl, Higgins invites her in. When he recognizes the
Pygmalion
A Romance in Five Acts
1. Summary of the Play, page 2
2. Introduction and Short Analysis of the Main Character, page 4
3. Interpretation, page 5
4. Additional Information, page 7
5. Literature and Links, page 8
1. Summary
London at 11.15 a.m., on a rainy summer day.
Everybody’s running for shelter because of the torrential storm. A bunch of people ist gathering in St. Pauls church, looking outside and waiting for the rain to stop.
Among the crowd, there is a young flower girl which grew up in the slums of London and therefore has a terribly bad language, although she is a good-natured, simple and pure being.
She is carrying a basket with flowers. As there is nothing else to do while waiting for the rain to end, she asks a gentleman next to her to buy a flower.
The way she speaks attracts the attention of a bystander, who is constantly scribbling down something in his notebook. The flower girl first thinks that he is a police officer and begins to defend herself that she didn’t do anything wrong, but it soon becomes clear that the bystander isn’t a policeman at all, but a professor of didactics, an analyst of dialects, specialised in London’s suburbal accents. He is so fascinated of the absolutely disgusting slang of the flower girl, that he has taken down all the expressions she used. He explains to the crowd, that he has no bad intention at all. He is just a collector of dialects.
Home again, Eliza (the flower girl) thinks about what this strange man just said, and she takes a decision. She looks around in her miserable room, and it’s clear to her that something has to change.
At the same time in the house of Henry Higgins, the phonetician. He is visited by Pickering, whom he met at St. Paul’s church. While they are talking, the maid is coming in, saying that a girl named Eliza Doolittle is waiting at the door.
Not knowing the name of the flower girl, Higgins invites her in. When he recognizes the