PYGMALION BY GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

Date: March 14, 2006

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…

Shaw’s Quotes

• "He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.“

• "England and America are two countries divided by a common language.“

More of Shaw’s 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."

Shaw’s 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.htm

• http://www.bartleby.com/138/• http://www.loggia.com/myth/galatea.html