UNIT 1 BACKGROUND OF ENGLISH DRAMA

FROM THE RESTORATION PERIOD TO

BERN §HAW
Structure
Objectives
Introduction
English Drama from 1660 to Shaw and its
European Background.
Shaw's Ideological Background
The life and plays of Shaw
Let Us'Sum Up
Questions
Suggested Reading, for the History of Drama

1.0 OBJECTIVES

After reading this unit, you should be able to have an overview of the growth of
English Drama fi-om the Restoration till Shaw's time and also a broad acquaintance
with Bernard Shaw's life and plays, his background, the important events in his life,
the literary and intellectual influences on him and his own development as a
playwright.

1.1 INTRODUCTION

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In England, the comedy of manners reached its zenith in the Restoration period but
1 after the middle of the 18" century it entered a phase of decline. The lesser
achievements of the heroic tragedy were also not sustained. After a comparatively
barren period, drama in England was revived mainly under the influence of Ibsen.
We shall first trace this process of the development of English drama and
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subsequently focus on Shaw's own career and the formative influences that shaped
his philosophy and dramaturgy.
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i 1.2 ENGLISH DRAMA FROM 1660 TO SHAW AND ITS
I EUROPEAN BACKGROUND

The closing of the English theatre in 1642 ended a glorious phase of English Drama,
and its reopening in 1660 marked a decisive break with the past. However the
Puritan repression of 1642-60 had not fully succeeded in snuffing out the spirit of the
theatre and in some form or the other surreptitious performances and popular forms
of entertainment continued during the interregnum. The dominant influence in the
Restoration theatre came from France where Corneille had already created a grand

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tragedy and Moliere had achieved unrivalled success in comedy, but the pre-1642
tradition also had a revival, and some of the trends from the era continued to
penetrate the spirit of Restoration drama.

The first twenty five years of the period i.e. the reign of Charles II (1660-85) were
clearly marked by the spirit of Reason, Empiricism and license. Influenced by the
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Pygmalion Inductive method of Bacon, the anti-idealistic political theory of Hobbes's Leviathan
and the revolutionary astronomy of Copernicus and Galileo, the new age dispersed
with faith, mystery and intellectual authority. It mistrusted the supernatural and
denigrated Imagination. It discarded the old Ethic and called for a practical and
pragmatic value system which ridiculed the notions of chastity and marital fidelity.

The theatre itself following the French model underwent a perceptible change. In the
French theatre, the auditorium, an enclosed place, was long and narrow with the stage
surrounded on three sides by the audience. Artifical lights, sets and properties were
introduced, and women invaded the stage as actresses. Following the contemporary
French theorists, the plays meticulously observed the unities of time, place and
action. So in England also, in place of the open Elizabethan theatre bereft of light
and sets, there was an enclosed theatre with artificial lights and some sets and
rudiments of properties. Now the actresses played the female roles with no need for
any one to "boy" Cleopatra's "greatness". Women did not have to be given male
disguises as in As You Like It or The Twelfth Night and plays with dominant
female roles could be written and performed.
The main Restoration tragedians were Dryden, Lee and Otway, all associated with
the heroic tragedy. They were inspired by the French neo-classicists, Corneille and
Racine, who in their contrasting manners dramatized the conflict between honour or
reason and passion. Rhymed couplets furnished them with the appropriate format to
adequately handle historical and mythical themes - in the grand manner in Comeille
and with subtle psychological insight in Racine. Dryden, however , opted for blank
verse in All for ~ o v although
e he had employed rime in his other heroic plays like
The Conquest for Granada, All for Love, his adaptation of Shakespeare's Antony
and Cleopatra, which represents the Restoration tragedy at its best, had, like other
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plays of its kind, grand characters Emperors, Kings Generals - who were larger than
life, exaggerated emotions and bombastic speeches. Its great theme was the clash of
honour and passion-dramatizedso effectively earlier in Corneille's Le Cid.
In contrast, Restoration comedy was a more popular and artistically superior genre.
Here, the great French model was Moliere. Although he built his plays around
central characters with marked eccentricities - a miser (The Miser), a misanthrope
(The Misanthrope), a hypocrite (Tartuffe) or a hypochondriac (The Imaginary
Invalid), he also combined the exposure of these characters with probing social
criticism. The Restoration comedy of manners likewise provided a critique of the
manners and morals of the contemporary society and used many comic devices
employed by him such as disguises, intrigues, farcical action. Written primarily for
the urban upper class, it reached its zenith in the plays of Dryden (The Wild Gallant,
Marriage a la Mode), Etherege (The Man of Mode, The Comical Revenge),
Wycherley (The country Wife, The Gentleman Dancing Master, The Plain
Dealer) and Congreve (The Old Bachelor, Double Dealer, Love for Love, The
Way of the World), In the Orange period, Farquhar (Recruiting officer, The
Beaux Stratagem) and Vanbrugh (The Provoked Wife, Relapse) carried on the
tradition with some modifications. These plays had a contemporary setting with a
number of gallants and belles from the London aristocracy, upper class witwouds,
fops and country cousins, jealous and niggardlly middle class traders and several
servants including the clever valets. The plot was built around intrigues and
seductions, often involving disguises and role playing. What made the plays really
lively was the witty and polished dialogues and repartees. The successful lover was
an urbane aristocrat with plenty of wit, grace, tact and shrewdness. The conventional
morality was jettisoned as the ridiculed cuckold rather than the unscrupulous seducer
became the target of satire.

After the Glorious Revolution of 1688, leading to the successful culmination of the
attack on King James and his Royalist supporters who believed in the Divine Rights
of Kings, there emerged the new order under King William, theoretically based on
the idea of governance as a kind of contract between the ruler and the ruled, Locke
became the new political theorist of this order "women's Liberation Movement"
 partly under the influence of the precieux movement in France and partly becase of Background of English
Queen Mary surfaced in a tangible manner. The voice of the "Feminists" against the Drama
casual promiscuity and the depiction of women as sexual objects in the plays was
joined by a resurgent clergy protesting against the "immorality" and "indecency" of
English Drama. Bishop Jeremy Collier's tract entitled Short View of the
profa~ienessand Immorality of the English Stage virtually ended the career of
congreve and led to the demise of Restoration comedy after Vanbrugh and Farquhar.

Georgian England was Whig dominated with Walpole and his ilk rather than the
nnonarchyas the real powers, and with their middle class orientation, the plays also
ulldement a transformation. The "immoral" comedies of intrigue had to give way to
sentimental drama: Addison and Steele represented the new Age. Nevertheless, John
Gay wrote The Beggar's Opera, an immensely popul.,. musical about the
with all its corru~ption,crimes and license-adapted later by Brecht as
Tllree Penny Opera. Henry Field~ngwould have been a worthy successor to Gay
especially in the parodic mode of plays like Tom Thumb, The Great, but his ill
advised and imprudent attacks on Walpole ushered in the Censorship Act and the end
ofa scilltillating career in drama. Althougl~Dr. Johnson thought of himself as a
tragic poet, his Irene was anything but a stage success. After a lean phase of four
decades which was quite a contrast to the rich French theatre of Voltaire and
Beaumarchais, theatre in England flickered for a while in the plays of Goldsmith
(The Good Natured Man and She Stoops to Conquer) and Sheridan (The Rivals,
The Critic and The School for Scandal). The basic format of these plays was
embedded in the Comedy of Manners but the license and the permissiveness of the
Restoration era were missing. Romantic love, which had made a late appearance in '
Congreve in Millamant's attachment to Mirabell was extolled and glorified as the
plays became morally simpler and narrower.

A century of Romantic and Victorian theatre (1790-1890) witnessed no resurgence of

great drama in England. There were, as in the Elighteenth century, nunlerous
Shakespeare revivals and various forms of theatre, but no great dramatists. During
the same period, Germany and surprisingly France gave birth to great Romantic
plays. Although Goethe's magnum opus, Faust is not quite stageable, he did write
stageworthy plays like Eqmont and Goetz von Berlichingen. However, the great
German Romantic playwright was Schiller whose masterpieces William Tell, Mary
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Stuart, The Maid of Orleans and The Robbers presented larger than lifesize
rebels, non-conformists and outcasts, struggling valiantly against authority. I-Iugo,
the pivotal French Romantic playwight followed Schiller in depicting grant
, characters in exotic settings in works like Cromwell and I-lernani. In contrast, all
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the English Romantic poets who tried writing plays - Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron,
Shelley and Keats failed as playwrights. Shelley's The Cenci was the best of these
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plays, closely followed by Byron's pieces like Manfred and Cain. The accent in
i them is on grand characters, rebels against authority, exotic and historical settings,
lofty and poetic dialogues, a declamatory style of acting and a clear separation from
the contemporary reality.

In the Victorian period, romantic drama degenerated into melodramas with black and
white characters and sensational last minute rescues. In them, the divorce from
contemporary life was complete and total. At the other end of the spectrum was the
so-called "well-made play" popularised in France by Scribe, Sardou and Feydeau.
Their intercepted messages, miscarried letters, central misunderstandings and twists
in plot led to a highly contrived and artificial theatre.
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However, the real break through came from Europe in the form of Realistic drama
I that Ibsen ushered in. Realism in a sense went back to the Wordsworthian Romantic
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concept of writing about low and humble characters in the language of common man.
Its dominant concern was, of course the middle class, which it did so much to expose
and satirise. This was partly because the period was clearly dominated by the middle
l class. In England, the First Reform Bill of 1832 had decisively shifted political
 Pygn~alion power to the whigs representing the shopkeepers, traders and industrialists. The
repeal of the Corn laws in 1846 even more unmistakably undermined the economic
base of the landed aristocracy and sealed the middle class control of the economic
and political life ,of the nation. Across the channel, the uprising of 1830 in France
was succeeded by the deposition of King Louis Philippe in 1848 and the revival of
Bonapartism which was drenched in the middle class ethos. Central Europe had gone
further in the overthrow of the old feudal class with violent revolutions in 1848.
To return to the plays, although Ibsen, continued the romantic predicament of the
artist as alien and was often self-reflexive like them, his was primarily a revolt
against romanticism. In his post 1876 plays i.e. in his realistic pieces, he aimed at
verisimilitude, at the creation of the illusion of reality on the stage. Beginning with a
belief in objective reality, he sought to embody its details in his choice of characters,
events, plots, dialogues, imagery, music, lights, sets and the style of acting. Thus in
plays like A Doll's House, Ghosts, The Wild Duck, Rosmersholm and Hedda
Gabler, the characters resemble real people and nothing happens to them which
cannot take place in real life. Following the Greak models of Aeschylus and
Sophocles, Ibsen also aimed at the unities of time, place and action. As the unity of
time required the action to begin at a late point of attack, it posed the problem of
exposition which Ibsen usually solved by beginning the play with a visitor who came
after a long time. In informing him, the residents acquaint the audience with the
background of the past events. Otherwise, the play begins with servants who gossip
about the secrets of the house. Ibsen's characters use prose and try to speak like real
people. The realistic dialogues are matched by realistic imagery and symbolism as
all the images and symbols have some meaning at both the literal and the
metaphorical levels. ~imilarl~'sets, properties and lights are realistic. The plays have
lamps on the stage to indicate the source of illumination, and consequently fisen
builds a rich symbolic pattern of light and darkness in many of his works. Sets also
are photographic and the play has all the properties that the "original" in "real life" is
supposed to have. Likewise the source of music is known to the audience, and it is a
part of the story, Finally, the acting style is natural and subdued. The stage and the
auditorium are like watertight compartments and the actors are supposed to be
completely oblivious of the presence of the audience. In fact, the premis, is that the
actor is not acting at all but just leading a real life.
Anton Chekhov in some ways went beyond Ibsen in modifying his realism. Thus he
dispensed with some of the sensational actions in Ibsen - especially the suicides and
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violent deaths at the end of the plays that are, to use Aristotle's words, "possible" I

but not "probable". In fact, Chekhov progressed through the d r m a of "indirect I

action'' to the drama of "inaction". He also rejected the unity of time on the ground
that too many events happening in a short span of time did not.convey a sense of ,
genuine reality. Chekhov also questioned Ibsen's idea of dialogue. As in real life,
Chekhov's characters, unlike Ibsen's, do not listen to each otlier, and they change the
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topic of conversation frequently, Unlike Ibsen's drama of psychological intensity,
Chekhov aims at the depiction of a social panorama. I

In England (and Ireland), the resurgence of dramatic literahlre began in the late 19"
Century with a few writers of well made plays and comedies including Oscar Wilde.
Wilde's comedies of wit with sparkling dialogues and ingenious paradoxes, revealed
at their best in The Importance of Being Earnest certainly prepared the,way for the
other great Anglo-Irish comic genius and master of paradox, George Bernard Shaw
although Shaw's concept of drama for the sake of social-economic-political
transformation of the world differed radically from Wilde!s.dictum of art for art's .
sake.

1.3 SHAW'S IDEOLOGICAL BACKGROUND

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Shaw had absorbed a variety of philosophical and ideological influences in his early
years. Henry George, the author of Progress and Poverty converted him to the
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leftist cause wit his lecture. Trade unions surfaced then on the scene in a notable
way especially a ter the third refonn bill of 1884. Around this time, the Fabian
society with a so ial Democratic outlook emerged with thinkers and organisers like
William Morris, Sidney and Beatrice Webb and H.M. Hyndman associated with it.
Shaw discovered them by reading their tract, Why are the many poor? They
Bacltground of English
Drama

advocated gradual social-economic reforms within the framework of democracy.

Shaw, however, soon realized that institutional changes alone could not bring
fulfilment,justice and prosperity to mankind. What was needed was a change in the
very nature of man. So he turned to Creative Evolution which could lead to the
emergence of superior human beings or supermen. The idea of evolution was very
much in the air in the 19' century and the intelligentsia was familiar with the theories
of Darwin. Shaw, however, wanted to go beyond Darwin to those who felt that
Evolution could be willed. Lamarch was an important forerunner in this respect.
Another major influence was Samuel Butler who felt that Darwin had "banished mind
from the universe". Butler "identified mind with design" with "intention". A
contemporary of Shaw who developed the concept of Creative Evolution was Henri
Bergson whose book The Creative Evolution appeared in 1907. On the other hand,
the idea of a "will" which guides the growth of animals had been muted by
Schopenhauer, the writer of The World Considered as Will and Idea.
Schopenhauer thought of the Will as blind and the element of chance governing the
movement of the universe. Nietzsche, the German Philosopher had conceived of the
superman in an anti-Christian moral framework. By a rather interesting coincidence,
Dostoievsky, the Russian novelist, had projected in Raskolnikov of Crime and
Punishment, a young man, who following the exploits of Napoleon had decided to
rise above ordinary humanity by killing a frail old woman. Whereas Dostoievsky
resolved the moral conflict in Christian terms, Nietzsche condemned the teachings of
Christ as a gospel of weahess and effeteness. When he envisaged a transcendence
of Christianity he contemplated an ethic that would reject notions of good and evil,
look down upon c h h t y and compassion as indicators of effeminacy. Pronouncing
the death of God, Nietzsche in books like Thus Spake Znrathustra, Beyond Good
and Evil and The Will to Power, conceived of a superman who could be superior to
normal humanity by virtue of his strength. Shaw, however, realized that not brute
strength but intelligence is what the life force is driving at.

Nietzsche found a "consanguine" spirit in Wagner, the great musician, Wagner's

operas similarly celebrated heroes of exceptional strength. Shaw as a great lover and
connoisseur of music - in fact, he was a music critic for quite some time - thought of
himself as a "Perfect Wagnerite" and that further linked him with Nietzsche,

However, Nietzsche's male chauvinism was something that Shaw could not stomach.
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Partly as a result of the influence of Ibsen's New Woman as presented in A Doll's
House and Ghosts - and partly out of his own convictions, Shaw saw a woman as
active and dynamic, a fighter for her rights. Shaw, in fact, emerged as an early
feminist of sorts. Also, in a remarkable study, Whitman points out that the Shavian
ideology ultimately derived from flegel.'

For some of Shaw's ideological roots, we need to go back to his birth and upbringing.

1.4 THE LIFE AND PLAYS OF SHAW

George Bernard Shaw was born in a family of impoverished Irish Protestant gentry in
Dublin on July 26,1856 and he spent his first twenty years there. The monumental
biography by Michael Holroyd suggests what earlier studies by Colin Wilson and
others had not discounted that perhaps George Bernard Shaw was the son not of
George Carr Shaw but of George John Vandeleur Lee, a music teacher and
conductor, who stayed with the family and formed some kind of menage a h i s with
Qgnialion George Carr and Lucinda Elizabeth Shaw ( nee Gurly). George Bernard acquired his
love of music in early childhood - it was a part of the family life with both Lee and
Mrs. Shaw earning their living from it. The drunkenness of Mr. Shaw, which had
disastrous consequences for the family created in the boy a strong revulsion for
alcohol and contributed subsequently to his "Puritanism".

George Bernard Shaw was miserable in Dublin before he moved to London to join
his mother and sister Lucy - the other sister Agnes having died of tuberculosis - and
Lee there. His early years in London were marked by struggle and failure. He wrote
five novels which flopped miserably - I~nrnaturity,The Irrational Knot, Love anlong
the Artists, Cashel Byron's Profession and An Unsocial Socialist. The first two of
these written in 1878 and 1880 had autobiographical elements and along with Sixteen
SelfSketches, written much later, provided insights into his early life. However, his
work as a professional reviewer and critic of music and drama for the Pall Mall
Gazette, The Dramatic Review, Magazine for Music and The Star provided hiin with
economic support, and more important than that, a platform for expressing his ideas.

Shaw's first exercises in dramatic writing resulted in three "unpleasant" plays - The
Widower 's Houses, The Philanderer and Mrs. Warren 's Profession. In each one of
these, he boldly engaged a contemporary issue in the manner of a discussion play -
respectively the exploitation of poor tenants by landlords. Man-woman relationship in
the context of the New Woman and organised prostitution. Even as he finally took
one side, he also gave the "wrongside" its say. Thus Sartorius in Widower's Houses
could justify himself, and Mrs..Warren could deeply move her daugher Vivie. The
Philanderer had the added dimension of autobiography. Charteris was a self-portrait,
Jullia Craven was Mrs. Jenny Patterson, the first woman to "seduce" Shaw and Grace
Tranfield, the actress Florence Farr who was his mistress for several years in the
1890's. Although Mrs. Warren's Profession shows a deep grasp of the issues, these
plays were too grim and bitter to appeal to the English audiences and they were not
critical successes either.

However, the next four plays i.e. the "Plays Pleasant" - You Never can Tell, Candid@,
The Man ofDestiny and above all, Arms and the Man - achieved great successes as in
each of them, Shaw gave full vent to his comic genius along with his serious
engagement with major social-ethical issues. Candida, as Christopher Innes points
out in his book Modern British Drama, 1890-1970~takes off from IbsenlsA Doll's
House, Here the woman, Candida instead of walking out of the house chooses to
remain with her husband Morel1 in preference to the idealistic poet Eugene
Marchbanks. Here, Shaw also introduced the triangle that often recurs in his plays - a
woman who has to make a choice between the rational thinker and reformer and the
sentimental poet, modelled here after Shelley or perhaps Yeats as Colin Wilson
suggests in Bernard Shaw: A ~eassessment.~ Arms and the Man, the famous "anti-
romantic" comedy has a similar triangle involving Raina, Sergius and Bluntschli.
The play attacks both romantic warfare and romantic love. Another important theme
is snobbery an awareness of class - distinction, which remained Shaw's perennial
concern.

Before completing the "Three Plays for Puritans", Shaw got married in 1898 to
Charlotte Payne-Townshend who in many ways resembled his own mother. Rich but
sexually unattractive and puritanical, Charlotte, perhaps never consummated her
marriage with Shaw. Except for his "diversion" with the great actress, Mrs. Patrick
Campbell, Shaw remained :loyal1' to Charlotte inspite of the rather insipid marriage
he had with her.

Among the "Three Plays for Puritans" Captain Brassbound's Conversion was a minor
piece, and although The Devil's Disciple was a considerable commercial success in
the U.S.,it was Caesar and Cleopatra that was the great work of dramatic art,
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Caesar and Cleopatra, Shaw's first major "historical" venture, presents Cleopatra
v i s - h i s Caesar an ti not Antony as in Shakespeare and Dryden. He drew upon
 Background of English
MommsenqsHistory of Rome and Plutarch, but Caesar is also to some extent, a self- Drama
As distinguished from the romantic and superstitious Egyptians he is a hard-
headed, down to earth, practical man who refuses to be swayed by romantic notions
like love, revenge, heroic gestures etc. The play also has several anachronisms which
give it a touch of contemporaneity.

Man and Superman, an ambitious and artistically consummate dramatisation of

Shawls concept of the Life Force recreates his favourite triangle - this time with Ann
Whitefield, the "mother-woman", John Tanner, the "philosopher" - man and Octavius
Robinson, the poet-lover. As is usual in Shaw, the mother-woman heads for the
philosopher-man, Tanner - partly a self-portrait, who tries in vain to &cape from her,
in preference to the languishing and sighing lover-Octavius. Out of this union of Ann
and Jack will emerge the Superman. This theme is supplemented by a medley of
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topics/motifs such as the datedness of the 19'' century liberalism embodied in the
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respectable Roebuck Ramsden socialism and the new working class, represented
differently by Mendoza, the President of the Brigands and Henry Straker, the smart
chauffeur and also parent-child relationship depicted through Whitefields and
Malones, the Irish-American tycoons. The play follows the conventions of comedy,
with variations on stock devices such as the clever valet, verbal deflations and
inversions, father-son conflict over the latter's choice of a bride.

However, this is punctuated by the dream sequence in Act I11 involving John Tanner
(Don Juan), Mendoza (The Devil), Ramsden (The Statue - The Mayor) and Ann
(Dona Ana)a,whichmarks a clear departure from conventions of realism. Shaw also
makes extensive use of classical music in the play, especially that of Mozart.

John Bull's Other Island, which appeared in 1904, was a perceptive study of
theEnglish and the Irish characters through the contrasting portraits of the English
Tom Broadbent and the Irish Larry Doyle -''partners in an engineering business" -
and Peter Keegan the unfrocked priest. Nora Reilly, Lerry's early sweetheart
completes the picture in an extremely humorous work which rejects Irish sentimental
nationalism even as it denounces the business efficiency of the Englishman.

Major Barbara (1905), another "anti-romantic" play of Shaw dramatizes the conflict
between the practical and ostensibly devillish Andrew Undershaft and his idealistic
daughter Barbara (a major in the salvation Army) and her fiance, the Greek scholar
and poet Adolphus Cusins, based to some extent on Gilbert Murray. Barbara's
mother, Lady Britomart, her brother Stephen Undershaft, her sister Sarah and Sarah's
fiance Charles Lomax all living away from Andrew are comparatively insignificant in
the moral conflict. Instead of Barbara converting her father to the cause of the
salvation Army, it is the latter who converts her and Cusins to his cause. Cusins will
take over the Cannon factory from him. The solution to the world's problem is that
the enlightened and sensitive iiltellectual must acquire power through practical
means.

Besides the many minor plays, during the next ten years, he also wrote The Doctor's
Dilemma (1906) The Dark Lady of theSonnets (1910), Androcles and the Lion: A
Fable Play (1912), and, of course, Pygmalion (1912). fie Doctor's Dilemma
encapsulated Shawls almost obsessive attack on the medical profession in the form of
the choice that Dr. Sir Colenso Ridgeon has to make-a choice between the painter -
Louis Dubedat - a scoundrel, though a genius, based upon the unscrupulous socialist
Edward Aveling - and Blenkinsop, a mediocre but honest general practioner The
situation is further complicated by the fact that Ridgeon is in love with Mrs, Dubedat.
Ridgeon with his limited resources can save only one patient and he opts for
Blenkinsop, letting Dubedat die, but ironically Mrs. Dubedat, the widow refuses to
many Ridgeon, What gives life to the play is the liveliness of the dialogues and the
sharp edge of the satire.
Pygm alion The Dark Lady of the Sonnets was Shaw's most sustained engagement with
Shakespeare as a character. Although Shaw is full of allusio~~s to Shakespeare in
many of his plays, it is only in The Dark Lady that he has William Shakespeare and
MaryFitton as characters. The play in one act clearly deflates Shakespeare and his
achievements.

Androcles and the Lion was a reexamination of Christianity in its early years tb.r130ugh
the story of Andnrcles, his wife Megaera, and a bunch of Christian prisoners and
martyrs, victims of "the Roman persecution of the early Christians." However, as he
said again in his postscript to the play, "my matlyrs are martyrs of all time, and my
persecutors the persecutors of all time.l14

Heartbreak House, written over a period of six years (1913-19) dramatises the
of the decadent aristocracy in Enland. The play subtitled a "fantasia in the Russian
manner on English themes" shows Captain Shotover, his elder daughter Hesione and
her husband Hector Hushabye as representing the Heartbreakers - the englightened ,
but effete aristocracy - in contrast to the younger daughter Ariadne, married to Sir
Hastings Utterword, who embodies the Imperialist Class - the ~orsebackers- and
Boss Mangan, a Napoleon of Indusby, a vulgar and crude business "magnate". The
Heartbreakers are worth saving, but drifting and without will, they spend their time in
dilettantism and flirtation, unconcerned with the business of money and management.
Mazzini Dunn, a liberal, and his romantic daughter Ellie who is disillusioned when
she discovers the unreality of Hector's tigers, Mangan's millions, Hesione's beautiful
black hair and Shotover's "seventh degree of concentration" represent another social
set along with the working class people - Nurse Guinness and her villainous
"husband", Billy Dunn, a former boatsman of Shotover and now a "burglar". The
bombers that destroy the rectory and the gravel pit complete Shaw's picture of mass-
destruction, even Apocalypse if the englightened upper class does not wake up to its
responsibility of governing England. The house, built like Captain Shotover's ship
effectively symbolizes England, and in a larger sense, "cultured, leisured Europe
before the war". The distintegration of form in showing major variations on the
comic structure and mode is punctuated by pointed references to Othello, King Lear - ,
and a scattering of quotations from other Shakespeare plays. Thus Ellie is the
romantic Desdemona and Hector (Marcus Darnley) early Othello who captivates her.
In contrast, Randall is the jealous Othello. On the other hand, Shotover is Kiqg Lear
and Hesione and Ariadne, his two worldly daughters - Goneril and Regan. Hector is
like Albany and Ellie, a parallel to Cordelia. The "drumming" in the sky at the end is
like the storm in the heath and Mangan offering to take off all his clothes resembles
Lear stripping himself. The Chekhovian manner is shown in the creation of an
atmosphere through the country house setting with its weekend visitors, all the
characters behaving strangely here like people going off to sleep, women
"fascinating" men, the burglar getting deliberately caught etc. The season of autumn,
the "scene" of the garden and the field beyond, the sound effects such as the
drumming in the sky, Randy's flute and the visual effects of different shades of light
all contribute to the creation of "mood".

Back to Methuselah, a "Metabiological Pentateuch" (1920) which Shaw regarded as

his most ambitious work did not quite achieve the level of artistic success Shaw
aimed at? The five parts are entitled, "In the Beginning", "The Gospel of the Brothers
Barnabas", "The Thing Happens", "Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman" and "As Far as
Thought can Reach," and there is also a "Post script after Twenty Five Years". They
take us from the Garden of Eden to a point in time 30,000 years in the future,
demonstrating and explaining Shaw's idea of Creative Evolution. Here Shaw
reiterates that the Life Force in moving in the direction of superior brains and
envisions a world in which people would live long only in order to transcend the
physical body and lead a life of the mind. In the first part, Adam who finds life
somewhat boring does not want to live very long, but in the second play, the brothers
Barnabas expound their view that man should will to live for three hundred years.
And in "The Thing Happens", Franklin Barnabas's housemaid and his son-in-law do
 Background of English
turn out to be long livers. In the next play, there are numerous long-livers now Drama
inhabiting what was once Ireland. Finally in the last part we observe how intellectual
pursuia have supplemented material comforts and physical enjoyment. A baby is
delivered out of an egg and it is fully grown like a person of twenty and the phase of
pleasures lasts for barely five years before people turn to intellectual
contemplation like thinking on the properties of numbers. Thus the Ancients are also
disembodied minds spending all their time in pure thought. It is aimed at "complete
mastery of matter" and it represents the highest stage of human evolution.

Saint Joan (1923), the most "moving" of Shaw's plays is a "Clronicle" that provides
the mical modem treatment of historical material, highlighting the parallel between
the past and the present, focusing issues of contemporary significance. Thus the
conflict of Joan with the Chucll arid the Feudal order becomes symbolic of the
antagonism between individual genius and centralized authority. The rise of
nationalism in the 1 5 century
~ France parallels that in the 20"' century Ireland; Joan
who dresses up as a man and fights like a soldier represents the modem feminist - the
New Woman. The issue of visions is carefully skirted by never showing Joan with
her voices as she is always viewed in others' company. The play covers the entire
I
military-political career of Joan and adds the epilogue to provide the typical Shavian .
touch. Although Saint Joan is a rare example of a Shavian play with an emotional
appeal, Shaw repeatedly brings in comic elements to puncture the tragic and the
I
emotional build up. The Epilogue makes sure that the play does not end on a
crescendo of feelings, but it also provides a perspective and a corrective. The dream
1 sequence in it pertinently universalizes the predicament of saints in the human world
and it also enacts a confrontation of the past and the present. The "clerical looking
j
/ gentleman in modem dress" enters the play to announce Joan's canonisation, and in
I
the sharp dichotomy between his dress and that of the other characters, we observe
1 the contrast of the 1 5 ' and
~ the 2othcenturies. At the same time, Shaw makes it clear
1 that the world is not yet ready to receive its saints.

The: last plays s f Shaw, on the whole, show a clear decline in his powers and the only
ones worth mentioning are The Apple Cart (1 929), Too True to be Good (1932), On
the Rocks (1 933), The sinlpleton of the U~lexpectedIsles (1 934) In Good Kirtg
Charles's Golden Days (1 939), Buoyant Billions (1947) and finally the "Playlet" (a
debate in dialogue form) - Shakes verszrs Slzav (1949).. The Apple Cart was often
seen as an attack on democracy and a defence of monarchy. However, it contains an
objective scrutiny of the limitations of popular democracy showing how King
Magnus, who is far more cultivated and intelligent then all his ministers including the
Prime Minister, Proteus, can easily beat his opponents at their own game by offering
to abdicate and contest the elections for the parliament. He clearly emerges as the
political victor. The play also has a rather interesting interlude showing the King
with his mistress which distinctly echoes Shaw's relationship with Mrs. Patrick
Campbell but is not of much relevance to the political theme. Too True to be Good
goes back to the Wasterland theme in its attempt to present boredom and despair, but
the treatment is mot unreal and the dreamlike atmosphere is far from convincing. On
the Rocks return to the metaphor of the ship of state to show how the cabinent
government of the parliamentary system is unable to cope with the imminent crises
facing the state. Shaw highlights the contradictions of the political parties and the
system as the labour ministers reject the revolutionary plan of nationalization and the
conservatives welcome it for their own reasons. At the end, however; nothing is
resolved and there is no hope for the state. The Simpletion of the Unexpected Isles
has a lighthearted vision of the Final Judgement but the play is far from artistically
consummate. In Good King Charles's ~ o l d ; ?Days n is set in the period of Charles I1
with Sir Isaac Newton. George Fox, Sir Godfrey Kneller and the King himself as
characters. The play has no plot but the dialogues, which are powerful, carry it
through. Buoyant Billions, although a rambling play, emphatically re-affirms the
Shavian optimism and Idealism. Finally Shaker versus Shav presents a rationale and
a defence of Shaw's dramatic career as measured against the achievements of the
Pygmialiolr Bard of Avon. As expected Shaw glorifies his own works and intersperses curious
judgements such as pointing out that Heartbreak House is superior to King Lear.

A lonely and bored man in his last years, Shaw had a fall on September 10,1950 and
soon after coming back home from the hospital, he died in his sleep on November 21,
1950. f i u s ended a rather uneven career. A man of immence vitality, Shaw became
a great public figure through sheer force of will and intellect. Although he wrote
much that was pedestrian, he had a phase of great creativity starting from mid 1890's
and subsequently there were many isolated perks of excellence such as Heartbreak
House and Saint Joan. If we also recall his great achievements as a writer o'f non-
fictional prose - which we have not rightly considered here - we have to admit that he
deserved to be acknowledged as the Grand Old Man of English literature of the
twentieth century.

-.

31.3 LET US SUM UP

In this unit, we have first surveyed the developments in and influences on English
Drama from 1660 till Shaw's time. The Restoration Age was one of reason,
empiricism and license, and the new theatre following the French model was less
primitive than the earlier one. The heroic tragedy had grand characters, exaggerated
emotions and bombastic speeches. In contrast, Restoration comedy was characterised
by intrigues, disguises and role playing, witty and polished dialogues and stock
characters such as wits and witwouds, cuckolds and gallants, belles and fops and the
clever valets. Things began changing after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and
Collier's tract attacking the profaneness of the English stage. The Eighteenth century
was a barren phase in dramatic literature with the exception of Gay's, Goldsmith's and
Sheridan's comedies. Similarly in the succeeding age, all the Romantic poets failed
as playwrights. The revival of drama began with the influence of Ibsenite realism
which aimed at verisimilitude or the illusion of reality. His drama represented the
details of reality in his choice of events, characters, plot, dialogues, imagery, music,
lights, sets and the style of action. Chekhov modified Ibsenite realism to make it less
"dramatic" and sensational and dispensed with the unity of time and the neatly
structured dialogues. In England the new drama was centred round writers of well
made plays and witty comedies like Oscar Wilde.

Shaw's ideological antecedentsinitially came fkorn Henry George and the Fabian
society. On the other hand, his sustained interest in Life Force emanated from his
encounter with the ideologies of Lamarck, Butler, Schopenhauer, Hegel, Nietzsche
and Wagner.

We have also seen how Shaw's struggles in his early life led to his dramatic career,
beginning with the "Unpleasant" plays, then the "Pleasant" Plays and "Three Plays
for Puritans". Man and Superman with its devastating satire on the conventions,
manners and beliefs of the age embodied Shaw's philosophy of the Life Force
evolving in the direction of superior intelligence. John Bull's Other Island with its
humorous exposition of the Irish character and Major Barbara which showed the
triumph of the Armament manufacturer over his idealistic daughter in the salvation
Ar* registered the zenith of Shaw's achievements in this phase. After The Doctor's
Dilemma, Shaw struggled to regain the earlier artistic heights, but in the process, he
wrote three of his greatest plays: Heartbreak House, Back to Methuselah and Saint
Joan. Back to Methuselah is somewhat dragging even as it contains the quintessence
of his philosophy of the Life Force, but both Heartbreak House and Saint Joan reveal
impressive powers of technical innovation. The last twenty five years of his life
finally indicated a sharp decline in his artistic talents although The Applecart has
. some claims to excellence.
 References Background of English 1
Drama i
1. Robert F. Whitman, Shaw and the Play of Ideas (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1977) 107.

2. Modern British Drama 1890-1970 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1992).

3.

4.
Bernard Shaw: A Reassessment (1969: London: Macmillan, 1981).

George Bernard Shaw, Complete Plays with Prefaces (New Uork: Dodd,
1
mead & Co, 1962), V.472.

1. How did the Eighteenth Century Comedy differ from the Restoration
Comedy?

2. What were the main features of the theatre of Realism?

3.

4.
How did'chekhov go beyond Ibsen's realism?

Trace the major influences'on the Shavian philosophy of the Life Force and
I!
Creative Evolution.

5. Describe the development of Shaw as a dramatist from Widower's Iiouses to

Caesar and Cleopatra.
I
6 Which institutions and beliefs did Shaw satirise in his plays of the middle
I
I
I
phase?
1 7. What are the major technical innovations introduced by Shaw in Heartbreak
House and Saint Joan?

8. How did Shaw's own background contribute to his view of man-woman

relationship?

9. Why was Shaw called an iconoclast?

I

r 10. Mention some of the comic devices used by Shaw in his plays.
I

, 11. What were Shaw's political views as expressed in his plays?

T
I

1
I 1.7 SUGGESTED READING FOR THE HISTORY OE4

1 ~rustein,Robert. The Theatre of Revolt. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1964.

Leech, C,and T.W. Craik, eds. The Revels History of Drama in English London:
I
Mcthuen, 1975.
Nicoll, Allardyce. Histoy o f the English Drama 1660-1900. Cambridge: Cambri
UP,1952.
t . X O ~ COxford University
Williams, Raymond. dlmrnafiom fisen !O R t ~ ~ hNew
Press, 1.969.

(The list of books on Shaw will hc given at the cncl of fflc units 0x1 Pygnzalion)
Pygmalion
Nicoll, Allardyce. History of the English Drama 1660-1900. Cambridge: Cambrid
UP, 1952.

Williams, Raymond. Drarnafioapz dbseaz to Brecbzt. New Xnrk: Oxford [Jniversity

Press, 1969.

(The list of boob 011 Shaw will be given at the end o f the mits rial Pygnzalion)
 Structure
2.0 Objectives
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Pyginulion as a play about phonetics
2.3 Class distinction, snobbery, kinds of manners, middle-class inorality and the
character of Doolittle
I
2.4 Man-woman relationships in the play: Higgins's mother-fixation and Oedipus
I
complex; Higgins-Eliza equation; Eliza, trle fighter and the Feminist
2.5 Let Us Sun1 Up
I
2.6 Questions

This unit will offer you perspectives on the themes in Pj~gvzalionand the salient
features of the inajor characters and their relationships.

Pygmalio~zis primarily a play about speech and phonetics, but related to it are Shawts
social concerns - class distinction, good manners and middle class morality. The
"romance" of Higgins and Eliza does not culminate in matrimony but a complex
network ofmail-woman relationships with Eliza marrying Freddy, and Higgins
unwilling to get out of chronic bachelorhood engendered by his mother-fixation, In
this unit, we shall first explore the theme of English speech and the related cluster of
subjects in the play. Subsequently we shall engage various facets of man-woman
relationship with special reference to the characters of Eliza and Higgins.

2.2 PYGMALION AS A PLAY ABOUT PHONETICS

1 Pyg~nalionis overtly a play about phonetics or English speech. Shaw says in his
I preface to the play. "The English have no respect for their language, and will not
'i teach their children to speak it. They spell it so abominably that no man can teach
himself what it sounds like. It is impossible for an Englishman to open his inouth
without making some other Englishman hate or despise him".' So in the play, he
I

I
emphasizes the need to speak the language properly, and Higgins, the phonetician is
the one who can teach people how to do so. Professor Higgins, as Shaw again points
out in the Preface has "touches of Sweet" (p. 193), a brilliant but unpleasant
phonetician at Oxford. In Act I, Higgins is able to place all the bystanders simply on
the basis of their accents. He tells Colonel Pickering "you can spot an Irish-man or a
Yorkshire mat1 by his brogue. I can place any man within six miles. I can place him
within two miles in London. Sometimes within two streets.'' (p.205). He denounces
Eliza for her speech:" A woman who utters such depressing and disgusting sounds
has no right to be anywhere -no right to live. Remember that you are a human being
with a soul and the divine gift of articulate speech: that your native language is the
language of Shakespeare and Milton and The Bible: and don't sit there crooning like a
. bilious pigeon." (P.206).
 In fact the play is built around the professional life of Higgins as a phonetician, and
its main action consists of the successful attempt of Higgins to convert Eliza, a flower
girl into a duchess by giving her a new speech: "I shall make a duchess of this
draggletailed guttersnipe.2(p.215). and Eliza with her impeccable accent-acquired in
a few months of "learning how to speak beautif~lly"(p.220)- does pass off as a
duchess, affirming Shaw's undeniable view that speech is one way of dividing class
from class and etnphasizing class distinction. Higgil~scan similarly bridge this gulf
in Alfred Doolittle's case: "if we were to take this man inhand for three months, he
could choose a seat in the Cabinet and a popular pulpit in Wales."(p.230). He tells
his mother, "But you have no idea how frightfully interesting it is to take a human
being and change her into a quite different human being by creating a new speech for
her. It's filling up the deepest gulf that separates class form class and soul from soul."
(P.248).

2.3 CLASS DISTWCTION,SNOBBERY,

KJNDS OF
MANNERS, MIDDLE CLASS MOMLITY, AND THE
CHAWCTER OP DOOL,HTTLE

Shaw also attacks snobbery in a more general way. In the opening scene itself, Eliza
protest against social and ecopomic sobbery by refusing to be cowed down by her
social superiors. Her repeated protest "I'm a good girl, I am." Is to assert her dignity
in the face of those, who, she (mistakenly) thinks, are trying to trample upon her.
Nonetheless, she has her own brand of snobbery. When she rides in a taxi, she wants
to show it to everyone. At Higgins's house she wants Mrs. Pearce to tell him that she
came in a taxi. When the arrangements for Eliza's stay there are finalized and she is
initiated in her new life, she says: "I should just like to take a taxi to the comer of
Tottenham Court road and get out there and tell it to wait Ibr me, just to put the girls
in their place a bit. I wouldn't speak to them you know." Higgins rightly reprimands
her: "you shouldn't cut your old friends now that you have risen in the world. That's
what we calls snobbery." (p.234).

Mrs. Pearce is so contemptuous of Eliza and her father because they belong to the
working class. She tells EIiggins about Eliza, "She's quite a common girl, Sir. Very
Comn~onindeed. I should have sent her away,.. ."(p.210). When Eliza says to him,
"don't be silly," Mrs. Pickering rebukes her "you mustn't speak to the gentleman like
that."(p.213). Later, as Doolittle leaves, "He takes off his hat to Mrs. Pearce, who
disdains the salutation and goes out.. ."(p.234). Even the polite man, Pickering asks
him to sit on the floor: "the floor is yours, Mr. Doolittle," (P.228).

It is on account of the conventions of the class system that Eynsford Hills have to
endure a shabby existence in genteel poverty. Mrs. Hill has "the manners and habits
that disqualify a fine lady fiom earning her own living without giving her a fine lady's
income"(p.250). Freddy and Clara cannot have suitable jobs. Clara's situation "had
prevented her fiom getting educated, because the only education she could have
afforded was education with the Earls court green grocer's daughter. It had led her to
seek the society of her mother's class: and that class simply would not have her,
because she was much poorer than the green grocer." (p.228). Certain professions
and jobs are below their social class, and when Clara does take up a position, it is in
defiance of the class system.

Similarly, Eliza also faces the larger problem of education-what to do after it-in a
sense, the problem of the end result of liberal education. She, like them, has not been
provided a vocational education, and once she moves up the social ladder by
successfully winning the bet for Higgins, she cannot go back to her work of selling
flowers on the pavement. What can she do? Mrs. Higgins reiterates the problem that
Mrs. Pearce had noticed earlier: "the problem of what is to be done with her
 Bgmalion: Themes
afterwards" (p.250). Eliza herself asks Higgins after her success: "What am I fit for? and Issues
What have you left me fit for? Where am I to go? What arn I to do? Whats to

After Eliza and Freddy get married and set up a flower shop-after much prevarication,
they are unfit to run it. "Freddy, like all youths educated at cheap, pretentious, and
thoroughly inefficient schools, knew a little Latin"...unfortunately, he knew nothing
else:" (p 291-92). He did not have the slightest knowledge of accounts or business:
"Colonel Pickering had to explain to him what a cheque book and a bank account
meant" (p.292).

The play also highlights the fact that there are certain things that the working class
people are deprived of, which affect the quality of their lives. Thus Higgins
observes: "a woman of that class looks a worn out drudge of fifty a year after she's
married." (p.216). As Eliza points out, working class women do not ''clean"
themselves because bathing is no joy for them: "Now I know why ladies is so clean.
Washing's a treat for them. Wish they saw what it is for the like of me!" (p.232)
When she first comes to his house, Higgins exclaims, "she's so deliciously low-so
horribly dirty"(p.215). Her transformation is paitly one from a dirty slovenly
"baggage" to a clean, well-groomed woman.

Related to class distinction is the question of manners and discrimination in our

behaviour towards people of different classes and stations. Higgins treats Eliza like
dirt. She appropriately tells.him: "Well, if you was a gentleman, you might ask me to
sit down," and Higgins responds by asking Pickering: "shall we ask this baggage to
sit down, or shall we throw her out of the window?" (p.212). In fact, he wants to put
her in the dustbin. Even after her grand success at the party at which people mistake
her for a "Duchess", when he rails at her, he calls her a "guttersnipe." Surprisingly,
he tells Pickering: "Here I am, a shy, diffindent sort of man. Ive never been able to
feel really grown up and tremendous like other chaps." (p.224).

Swearing is also a part of Higgins's bad manners. When he asks Mrs. Pearce "What
the devil do you mean?" she responds: "[stolidly] That's what I mean, sir. You swear
a great deal too much. I don't mind your damning and blasting, and what the devil
and where the devil and who the devil." (p.223). His mother tells her that his
language "would be quite proper - say on a canal barge" and Pickering supports her;
"I haven't heard such language as yours since we used to review the volunteers in
Hyde Park twenty years ago." (p.247).

In contrast the manners of colonel Pickering are uniformly pleasant. Eliza is deeply
touched when he calls her "Miss Doolittle" and extends to her the courtesies normally
I reserved for ladies. She aptly remarks; "it was from you that I learnt really nice
I manners: and that is what makes me a lady, isn't it?" (p.269). She reiterates, "you
\ thought and felt about me as if I were something better than a scullery - maid; though
of course I know you would have been just the same to a scullery-maid if she had
I been let into the drawing room." (p.270).
T'
I The following discussion about manners not only sums up the contrast but also
1
I
I provides another important twist to it.

"HIGGINS.. .My manners are exactly the same as Colonel Pickerings's.

I
LIZA. That's not true. He treats a flower girl as if she was a duchess.

HIGGINS. And I treat a duchess as if she was a flower girl."

He reiterates "the great secret Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or
any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human
I souls." (p.274).
So Shaw extends the discussion to the larger issue of equality and social differences.
Implied in Eliza's transformation is the premise that given the opportunities, anyone
can cross the class barriers.

There is also an assumption that this social climbing is not always desirable as the
working class life style is not invariably inferior to that of the middle class and the
upper class. In fact, Doolittle implies that the "middle class morality" is
inappropriate for the lower class poor: "what is middle class morality? Just an excuse
for never giving me anything."(p,230). When he comes back transformed as a
"respectable' man, he blames Higgins for his miserable plight: "Ruined me.
Destroyed my happiness. Tied me up and delivered me into the hands of middle
class morality."(p.263). He elaborates; I' I was happy. I was free. I touched pretty
nigh everybody for money when I wanted it, same as I touched you, Henry Higgins.
Now I am woiried: tied neck and heels; and everybody touches lne for money."
(p.264). Now he and Eliza's "step mother" are forced to marry each other.
"Intimidated, Governor. Intimidated Middle class morality claims its victim.''
(p.272). He was never married to Eliza's mother because "that aint the natural way,
colonel: it's only the middle class way." (p.272). He has lived with numerous
women without getting married to any of them. None of Eliza's six "step-mothers1
was married to him till he is forced by his new station to many the last one,

He also attacks the so called morality of the affluent thriving on the family savings
without doing any work:. "Don't you be afraid that I'll save it and spare it and live
idle on it. There won't be a penny of it left by Monday: I'll have to go to work same
as if I'd never had it." (p.230-31).

Doolittle as a character is far from a stereotype and in many ways a very "Shavian"
creation. He is the uniquely shavian character who has the capacity to subvert all our
traditional ways of thinking and make all our conventional beliefs-especiallyour
moral ideals-stand on their heads, giving us exactly the opposite of what we expect as
he does with middle class morality. When he first enters the stage, he "seems equally
free from fear and conscience." At the same time, he has a A habit of giving vent to
his feelings without reserve. His present pose is that of wounded honour and stern
resolution."(p.225). when non-plussed by Higgins's response, he shows the full range
of his "natural gift of rhetoric" as he says "I'm willing to tell you. I'm wanting to tell
you. I'm waiting to tell you." (p.226). It is his eloquence that partly accounts for
Higgins's approbation and his enduring popularity with the audience.

His family surname "Doolittle "provides a clue as much to his character as to his
daughter Eliza's. If he does little by way of hard, constructive work, she can do little
by way of earning her living after her transformation.

2.4 MAN-WOMAN RELATIONSHIPS IN THE

PLAY;HIGGINGSfS MOTNER-FIXATION AND I

OEDIPUS COMPLEX: HIGGINS -ELIZA

EQUATION; ELIZA, THE FIGHTER AND THE

The moral issues in the play include Shaw's views on man-woman relationship and
the attitudes of several characters towards the opposite sex. As usual Shaw has his
share of witticisms and paradoxical statements on the matter. When Pickering asks
Higgins, "are you a man of good character where women are concerned?" he replies:
"[moodily} Have you ever met a man of good character where women are
concemed?"(p.221). Higgins is a confirmed bachelor who resists the erotic incursion
of any woman in his life. He comments: "women upset everything. When you let
 Pj,~maCinrr:Tllcrnes I
them into your life, you find that the woman is driving at one thing and you're driving and Iswes
at another.' (p.221). He elaborates, "I suppose the woman wants to live her own life;
and the mail wants to live his; and each tries to drag the other onto the wrong track.''
(p.221-22) In fact, he is totally indifferent to their sexual charm: "I'm seasoned.
They might as well be blocks of wood. I might as well be a block of wood."(p.222).
Shaw in his description states, "But as to Higgins,the only distinction, he makes i
between men and women is that when 11e is neither bullying nor exclaiming to the
heavens against some feather weight cross, he coaxes woinen as a child coaxes its
nurse, when it wants to get anything out of her."(p.2 11).
I

The clue to Higgins's bachelorhood lies in his mother-fixa11l)a. When Mrs. Higgins
says, "Well, you never fall in love with anyone under forty=iive. When will you
discover that there are some rather nice-looking young women about?," her son
replies, "Oh, I can't be bothered with young women. My idea of a lovable women is
something as like you as possible." (p.237). It is this mother-fixation that prevents
him from having a "normal" relationship with a woman. Shaw corroborates this:
"when Higgins excused his indifference to young women on the ground that they had
an irresistible rival in his mother, he gave the clue to his inveterate old-bachelordom,"
(p.282-83). He adds: "If an imaginative boy has a sufficiently rich mother who has
intelligence, personal grace, dignity of character without harshness, and a cultivated
sense of the best art of her time to enable her to make her house beautiful, she sets a
standard for him against which very few women can struggle, besides effecting for
him a disengagement of his affections, his sense of beauty and his idealism fiom his
specifically sexual impulses." (p.283).

This aspect of Higgins which the Freudians would call his "oedipus complex" also
has parallels in Shaw's own life-a fact which Colin Wilson in his book, Benzard
Shaw: A Reassessment~corroborates.It has been well known that George Carr Shaw,
the father of Bernard Shaw, hardly mattered in the family and the children had
centered their lives round their mother Mrs. Lucinda Elizabeth Shaw. Colin Wilson
writes: "Percy smith has argued convincingly that he not only idolised his mother, but
that all the women in his play from Candida on are mother figures."3 His first
mistress was Jenny Patterson, a widow fifteen years his senior and a friend of his
mother. In his wife, to quote Wilson "What Shaw wanted was a mother figure." At
the age of forty one, in July 1897 says in his letter to Ellen Terry that he wants to
marry "a reasonably healthy woman of about sixty" who "must be plain feat~red."~ It
is also widely believed that Shaw's own marriage to charlotte Payne townshend who
very much resembled Lucinda Elizabeth Gurley was never consummated. Whereas
Shaw as a bachelor found sexual release through atleast two women, Jenny Patterson
and the actress Florence Farr (who was the "right age"), Higgins remained a
confirmed bachelor.

/ Higgins's relationship with Eliza has engendered a variety of responses from critics,
i directors, viewers and readers. Maurice Valency, says in The Cart and the Trumpet
that Pygmalion like Caesar arid Cleopatra-and Man and Superman-shows the tension
' . between the man who is devoted to his work and the woman who is interested in
emotional ties. Shaw adds a long afterword to the play to suggest that Eliza, instead
1
i of marrying Higgins, chooses Freddy and lives happily ever after with him. The film
version, on the other hand, ends with Eliza's return to the Professor. Many readers
also feel that Shaw is mistaken in separating her from Higgins. Is our playwright
justified in his conclusion? Are Higgins and Eliza Compatible?

We observe that Higgins is "Careless about himself and other people, including their
feelings." (p.210), and Eliza is too sensitive and selfirespecting to tolerate this
attitude. She insists on being treated with respect. When she encounters Higgins for
the first time and observes him taking notes, she incessantly asserts that she is a good
girl, repeatedly saying "I'm a good girl, I am."In Act 11, whcn she goes to Higgins's
place, she has her'' innocent vanity and consequential air" (p.211). Naturally she
resents the brutal treatment she receives from Higgins and she never allows him to
Pygmalion walk over her. Her protest becomes quite pronounced after she wins his bet, and he
responds to all her efforts by simply expressing his sense of relief that everything is
over. She explodes by throwing her slippers at him and trying to scratch his face with
her nails. She cannot accept the fact that she is merely a common ignorant girl to hinl
and there cannot be any feeling between them.

Higgins cannot understand that she has violently retaliated because she is deeply hurt
by his and colonel Pickering's indifference to her. He tells her: "It is you who have
hit me. You have wounded me to the heart" (p.259). Eliza has a sense of triumph
and the power equation now changes with her acquiring a better status and never
letting go her new position of strength. She is crystal clear: "I won't be passed
over"(p.275). Surprisingly Higgins appeals to her emotions: "I shall miss you, Eliza"
... "I have grown accustomed to your voice and appearance. I like than, rather."
Eliza replies coolly: "Well, you have both of them on your gramophone and in you
book of photographs. When you feel lonely without me, you can turn the machine
on. It's got no feelings to hurt." (p.275).

At the same time, Higgins would not play the sentimental lover and Eliza does not
want him to:-

"HIGGINS. In short, you want me to be as infatuated about you as Freddy? Is that

it?

LIZA. No I don't. That's not the sort of feeling I want fiom you." (p.278).

She goes on to add: "I want a little kindness. I h o w I'm a common ignorant girl,
and you a book-learned gentleman; but I'm not dirt under your feet." She reiterates:
-
"I come-came to care for you: not to want you to make love to me, and not
forgetting the difference between us but more friendly like." (p.278). This, however,
makes no impression on Higgins. He simply says "That's just how I feel. And how
Pickering feels. Eliza: youre a fool." (p.278). They are not after all going to many
each other.

At the same time, Higgins is quite jealous of Freddy. When he objects to Freddy
writing love letter to Eliza three times a day, he is being quite possessive of the girl.
Tracy c. Davis traces another parallel in Shaw's life-his relationship with Mrs.Patick
Campbell: "He functioned as Higgins, the self-styled benef~ctorof CampbelVEliza,
thwarted by her preference for a younger, less intellectual inan, Cornwallis-
wes#Freddy. "'
Shaw is not altogether wrong in his epilogue: "Eliza's instinct tells her not to marry
Higgins. It does not tell her to give him up." (p.282). He goes on to refer to "her
resentment of Higgins's domineering superiority, and her mistrust of his coaxing
cleverness in getting round her and evading her wrath when he had gone too far with
his im*petuousbullying." (284).

Most readers with their conventional ideas of man-woman relationship say that
Freddy is too weak to attract the strong-willed Eliza and she would much rather have
Higgins. Shaw, however feels: "Eliza has no use for the foolish romantic tradition
that all women love to be mastered, if not actually bullied and beaten."(p.284). He
further says: "the man or woman who feels strong enough for two, seeks for every
other quality in partner than strength." (p.285). So Eliza is not thrown overboard by
the strength of Higgins, and yet, Shaw concedes that "she has even secret
mischievous moments in which she wishes she could get him alone, on a desert
island, away fiom all ties and with nobody else in the world to consider, and just drag ,
him off his pedestal and see him making love like any common man. We all have
private imaginations of that sort. But when it comes to business, to the life that she
really leads as distinguished from the life of dreams and fancies, she likes Freddy and
she likes the Colonel; and she does not like Higgins and Mr. Doolittle. Galatea never
 does quite like Pygmaliorz: his relation to her is too godlike to be altoge,ther Pygrtraliorr: Themes
agreeable." (p.295). and Isslaes

~liza-Higginsrelationship also has ovel-tonesof an oedipal situation. When he tries

to bully her on her first arrival at his place, she reacts by pointing out: "One would
think you was my father." Higgins replies. "If I decide to teach you, I'll be worse
than two fathers to you" (p.214). Much later, he tells her: "I'll adopt you as my
daughter and settle money on you if you like. Or would you rather marry Pickering?"
In response, Eliza explodes; "I wouldn't marry you if you asked me; and youre nearer
my age than what he is." (p.277). There is a gap of atleast twenty years between
them and those readers/syectators who want Eliza to many Higgins are aware of the

II possibility of the young girl falling for a father figure.

To an extent, Eliza also represents the Shavian Life Force and moderate kind of
Feminism. We have already seen how assertive she is and how she refuses to be
treated as "dirt under anyone's feet." She asserts: "I won't be called a baggage when
Ive offered to pay like anybody." (p.212). She is also impelled by the driving energy
that leads life upwards. She has the will and the ambition to go up in the world and
she learns things with an astonishing rapidity.

Eliza, moreover is not willing to accept the humble subservient position that a woman
is normally assigned in the human society. As we observed earlier, Shaw denies the
view that women love to be mastered and bullied, even beaten. Eliza prefers the
weaker Freddy, who adores her and whom she can dominate to the masterful Higgins
when it comes to marriage. On that fateful night after the party, once she refuses to
cany Higgins's slippers and act as his persoital secretary, his own attitude towards her
changes. Now he encourages her to play the assertive role He may not sound very
convincing when he says: "I think a woman fetching a man's slippers is a disgusting
sight: ... I think a good deal more of you for throwing them in my face.. . who cares
for a slave?" (p.276). Nevertheless everything changes that night, and Eliza seldom
reverts to the earlier situation. Later "he storms and bullies and derides: but she .
stands up to him so ruthlessly.. ." (p.294). So in a way she represents a feminist who
would not play the subservient role to any man, let alone accept the position of a
doormat.

2.5 LET US SUM UP

In this unit, we initiated our analysis of the themes in Pygmaliolz with a glance at
Shaw's concern with English speech and phonetics, observing Higgins's abilities in
phonetics and his transformation of a flower girl into a Duchess by creating a new
speech for her. As we noticed, one's speech and accent are indicators of one's class,
Subsequently we engaged Shaw's critique of snobbery, and the snobbish variation in
our manners for people of different classes. He also finds faults with other
manifestations of class-consciousness such as non-vocational liberal education for the
upper class and those upper class conventions that prevent one form earning one's
living.

In our study of man-woman relationship, we observed how Higgins's mother fixation,

which comes close to Oedipus complex, prevents him from getting erotically
involved with any young woman and thus accounts for his lack of interest in Eliza.
Moreover, Eliza cannot accept his rough treatment of her and marries Freddic, who is
much nicer. We also saw how Eliza's determination to fight for her rights against
Higgins, the male bully can suggest the feminist angle in her make up.

References

1. George Bernard Shaw, Complete Plays with Prejioces (New York: Dodd,
Mead, 1962), I 191.
 All the quotations from the play are from this edition (Volume I), and
subsequently page numbers are given in parentheses.

2. Colin Wilson writes: "L,eecaused something of a scandal among his upper

class pupils in Lor~donwhen he tried to pass off his l~ousemaidas one of
them- an incident that sounds like the origin of Pygrnaliolz."

See
Bernard Shaw: A Reassessmei~t(1969; London: Macmill~n,1981) 09.

3. Bernard Shaw: A Reas,sessment-28.

4. As quoted in Colin Wilson, Bernard Shaw: A Reassessment 127. The

quotation form Wilson himself is on the same page.

5. George Bernard Shaw and the Socialist Theatre (Westport, Conn: Preager,
1994) 93.

2.6 QUESTIONS

1. What according to Shaw are the social implications of different accents and
modes of English speech?

2. Can Higgins effect a transformation in Doolittle similar to the one he has

brought about in Eliza?

3. How does Shaw denounce social snobbery and class distinctions?

4. What are the views of Shaw on the relevance of liberal education and its
practical utility?

5. How do the Eynsford Hills suffer on account of their superior birth i.e. their
upper class background? Z

6. Do you approve of the manners of Henry Higgins? Do you feel that because
he is exceptionally talented, he has the right to ride roughshod over other
people's feelings

7. Is Doolittle an attractive character? Are you in substantial agreement with

his critique of middle class morality?

8. Give arguments for and against the view that Higgins is a case of Oedipus -
complex.

9. Who in your opinion should marry Eliza? Higgins or Freddy? Justify your
answer.

10. In Eliza- Higgins conflicts, who has your sympathy and why?

11. Is Eliza's assertiveness ridiculous, or does it strike a chord in the reader?

 All the quotations from the play are from this edition (Volume I), and
subsequently page numbers are given in parenfheses.

2. Colin Wilson writes: "Lee caused something of a scandal among his upper
class pupils in London when he tried to pass off his housemaid as one of
them- an incident that sounds like the origin of figrrtalion."

See
Bernard Shaw: A Reassessment (1969; London: Macmillan, 1981) 09.

3. Bernard Shaw: A Reassessment-28.

4. As quoted in Colin Wilson, Bernard Shaw: A Reassessment 127. The

quotation form Wilson himself is on the same page.

5. George Bernard Shaw and the Socialist Theatre (Westport, Conn: Preager,
1994) 93.

1. What according to Shaw are the social implications of different accents and
modes of English speech?

2. Can Higgins effect a transformation in Doolittle similar to the one he has

brought about in Eliza?

3. How does Shaw denounce social snobbery and class distinctions?

4. What are the views of Shaw on the relevance of liberal education and its
practical utility?

5. How do the Eynsford Hills suffer on account of their superior birth i.e. their
. I
upper class background? ->

6. Do you approve of the manners of Henry Higgins? Do you feel that because
he is exceptionally talented, he has the right to ride roughshod over other
people's feelings

7. Is Doolittle an attractive character? Are you in substantial agreement with

his critique of middle class morality?

8. Give arguments for and against the view that Higgins is a case of Oedipus -
complex.

9. Who in your opinion should marry Eliza? Higgins or Freddy? Justify your
answer.

10, In Eliza- Higgins conflicts, who has your sympathy and why?

11. Is Eliza's assertiveness ridiculous, or does it strike a chord in the reader?

 UNIT 3 DWMATIC STRUCTURE AND
MINGLING OF GENRES
Structure
3.0 Objectives
3.1 Introduction
3.2 The Dramatic Structure of Pygmalion
3.3 The genre of the play; Elements of Romance, Comedy and Novel
3.4 Let Us Sum Up
3.5 Questions

3.0 OBJECTIVES

This unit will acquaint you with two crucial aspects of the "forum" of the play: its
dramatic structure and the mingling of the genres of comedy, romance and novel.

3.1
-
INTRODUCTION

Pygmalion, which dramatises a Greek myth has an apparently unconventional form

but certain structural principles can be perceived here such as a "thematic" division of
the play into five acts and their neat sequencing, and comparison and contrast of
parallel characters and events. The preface is more relevant to Pygmalion than the
typical Shavian preface, but the epilogue is to a great extent an imposition on the play
and contrary to the rules of dramatic composition. The play has the framework of a
romance but it is interspersed with unromantic elements. At the same time, it uses
several comic conventions and introduces novelistic element. In this unit, we shall
initially examine the structure of the play and then explore how Shaw combines
features of the conventional romance with certain comic conventions and a few
typically fictional devices.

3.2 THE DRAMATIC STRUCTURE OF PYGMALION

i
I
Pygmalion is a Shavian reworking of the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea. In the
original myth, Pygmalion, the king of Cyprus, also a sculptor created the ivory statue
1
of a lovely woman which was so beautiful that he fell in love with her. At his
i request, aphrodite, the Goddes of love and beauty transformed the statue into an
actual woman, Galatea by breathing life into her. The two got married and lived
happily ever after. Shaw's Pygmalion, Professor Higgins similarly "Creates" his own
I Galatea as he transforms Eliza, a common, ignorant, slovenly flower girl into a
marvellous duchess by creating a new speech for her and with the help of Pickering
and Mrs. Pearce giving her new'manners and a new life style. So she is his creation -
I the new Eliza is the Galatea that Pygmalion has sculpted. However in Shaw's
version, Pygmalion does not fall in love with her and she marries someone else - the
1

1
1
typical Shavian twist. $haw, as we shall see later, has the habit of giving us the
reverse of what we expect. In unit 11, we observed at length Shaw's reasons for
Higgins not marrying Eliza. Nevertheless the parallel with the myth makes the play
more resonant by introducing another frame of reference,
 Shaw has used the five act structure common to English drama from the renaissance
to the Romantic period to dramatize his version of the myth. There are no
subdivisions of the Acts into scenes and each Act marks a stage in Eliza's .
transformation. In Act I, Higgins observes in Eliza's presence that by giving her a
new speech he can convert her into a Duchess and this creates the desire in her to
transfom herself. So with Eliza approaching IIiggins in Act 11, the process is
initiated. He takes Eliza to his mother, Mrs. Higgins in the third act to observe how
she interacts with others in polite society - a test case. The fourth act is the
culmination of the process and its immediate fall out: Eliza is seen with Higgins and
Pickering after the successfid party. Finally in the last act, Eliza, who had "bolted", is
retraced at Mrs. Higgin's place where she works out new terms and conditions with
Higgins and Pickering about her future.

The play has certain structural patterns. Thus the scenery alternates from a location
outside Higgins' house to its interior. We move from Covent Garden to his laboratory
in Wimpole Street to Mrs. Higgins's drawing room in Chelsea, back to the laboratory
and finally again to Mrs. Higgins's room, thus constantly relating the work in
phonetics to the larger world. Again within each Act, there is a pattern of arrivals
and departures except for the fourth act which is set indoors late in the evening and
naturally therefore cannot involve visitors. In each act, usually the characters at the
beginning stay till the end, thus imparting unity and continuity to the scene even as
the others come and go. Shaw also intermingles the two three characters' intense
interactions of Acts I1 and IV set at Higgin's house with the more social group scenes
of Acts I and I11 providing us with the larger picture of society. There is also a
careful time arrangeinent with Acts I and I1 in continuatioil, showing the beginning of
the process of transformation, Act III coming a little later to indicate its middle and
Acts IV and V which sl~owthe end of the process again in continuation.

The characters are also neatly arranged in parallel to highlight their distinctive
features. Thus Higgins and Pickering constitute the central pair of the plot. They are
both phoneticians, both confinned bachelors, both rich gentlemen interested in
-
experimenting on Eliza her possible transformation into a "duchess". However, as
we have seen whereas Higgins is rude and unbearable, Pickering is polite and
g'entlemanly. EIiggins is inconsiderate and rough, whereas Pickering is kind and
generous. Higgins is also, as we have seen a parallel to and contrasted with Freddy.
Between these two possible husbands for Eliza, Higgins, a bully and a tyrant is
contrasted with Freddy, a "softy" and a weakling. Moreover, Higgins's indifference
to her is opposed to Freddy's loving adoration for her. Furthermore, Higgins is at the
pinnacle of his profession, whereas Freddy fails to even earn his living.

Their mothers also are studies in contrast. Mrs. Eynsford Hill is basically a "soft"
person who tolerates her daughter Clara's rude and ungracious behaviour almost as a
helpless onlooker. She appreciates her son Freddy but is unable to do anything for
him. Essentially she is an ineffective mother who cannot give a sense of direction to
her children's lives. Mrs. Higgins, who has an independent life of her own, lives
away from her sons, partly because they are grown up and settled. It is interesting
that although Henry Higgins mentions to Doolittle that he has a brother who is a
clergy man, his name never crops up at his n~other'snor is he ever seen there. Mrs.
Higgins is unfailingly critical of her son Henry's ill manners but she has failed to
impart to him proper manners and to make a real "gentleman" of him. Her
dominating personality and her son's adoration of her has only resulted in his
remaining a bachelor, as we have seen in an earlier unit. Both these mothers also
serve as foils to the third parent in the play i.e. Alfred Doolittle. There is no love lost
between the father and the daughter. To Doolittle, his daughter Eliza is immaterial:
he is utterly indifferent to her, and he only uses his relationshi8to her to "touch"
people for money.

The only siblings presented on the stage are also opposites of each other. Whereas
Clare is rude, unbearable and ill-mannered, Freddy is sofr; polite and pleasant. Clara
 is looking for a matrimonial prospect, but Freddy falls in love with Eliza at first sight Dramatic Structure and
without weighing and considering the pros and cons of marrying her. Mingling of Genres

~ 0 t Higgins
h and Pickering are contrasted with Mrs. Pearce, the other inmate of the
house. The housekeeper, who is prim, proper and snobbish, disapproves of Henry
Higgins's unkempt behaviour and unconventional ways. She is opposed to social
,quality and has a "practical" way of looking at the whole experiment on Eliza,
unlike the dreamers Higgins and Pickering.

Eliza herself is contrasted with her father. She has the ambition to rise socially and to
I
I
improve her economic status unlike Doolittle who resents being catapulted into the
, class of a "gentleman" against his wishes. He enjoys his working class situation,
I habits and mores unlike Eliza who finds them degrading.
I
In fact, in the play, there is a structural parallel between the two transformations and
also the reactions of the persons transformed in the process. 111a larger sense, the
implication is that social climbing is not exceptional as it occurs here in more than
one case-one woman and one man-one young woman and one middle aged man.
However, it may not be desirable in every case.
I
I
The play has a significant absentee character in the form of Eliza's "step-mother" a -
I lady who never appears on the stage but who is mentioned every time Doolittle
comes or every time Eliza talks of her life with her "parents". Making her a character
in the play, would have meant introducing a sub-plot and lengthening the already
long five act play, making it more diffuse. Mrs. Doolittle could also have brought her
1
I own point of view to the play and either increased.or reduced the sympathy for Eliza,
I depending, of course, on the way in which Shaw conceived her character. Her being
~ an absentee character preserves her mystery and the audience's curiosity about it. At
the same time, one cannot do without all the references to Mrs Doolittle, which do
make us aware of the larger world and broaden the social references and range of the
play
Shaw has also deleted scenes from an earlier draft. In one of the editions, there is a
garden party scene where we meet several interesting social lions, pubic figures and
an expert in phonetics. Shaw has omitted this scene from the later edition of the
plays. What has S11aw gained in the process, and what has he lost? Obviously the
gain is, first of all, in economy. Secondly, he shows Eliza in "social" scene may be
unnecessary. Moreover, Eliza's transformation may be difficult to show on the stage
and is better reported. It is also interesting that Shaw does not dramatize the actual
lessons. Perhaps that has been done to prevent tedious scenes which may get quite
dull and technical for an audience of non-specialists.
I
Our play is incomplete without the preface and the epilogue. In general, a preface
explains the meaning of a work of art, or points out the origin and the sources of the
play. Often it comments on the reception of the play by the audience and the critics.
1 It also provides the details needed to appreciate the play fully. However, a Shavian
play frequently pursues a line of argument that is quite tangential to the play.
I Nevertheless, here Shaw is careful enough to take up in the Preface issues which are
1 developed in the play. Thus he begins with comments on English speech, then he
'
I
I
dilates on the career of Henry Sweet, who is partly a model of Higgins.
1 Subsequently, he makes a statement about Pygmalion that leads to his philosophy of
1
playwriting. "It is so intensely and deliberately didactic and its subject is esteemed so
dry, that I delight in throwing it at the head of the wiseacres who repeat the parrot cry
1 that art should never be didactic. It goes to prove my contention that art should never
be anything else".' Finally he points out that transformations like Eliza's are not
impossible in real life. So the preface, which performs the traditional roles expected
a of it and contains Shaw's credo, is carefully related to what happens in the play.

~
I

i .-
The epilogue obviously i s aimed at convincing us that Eliza should not rna?.Ty
Mipgins. In the process, it also narrates what happened stibsequently to not only
Eliza an,d F~ed(3.yhut also Clara. ; l i ~our disanssim o f n~an-womanrelationship in the
p!ny in the earlier unit, we have already obsnvcd lo what an extent, Shaw is justified
w F,liza, s'nrpiiild 1-naP.r-jFretddy rather khan Wiggins. A. pojxzt which
in his ~ e that
sho~ddbe made here is tilat a play ilsun1l-y does not lzavo an epilog~~e of this kind. A
dramatist rnrlst convey ttlsough i;11,edialogues what he has to say. O b ~ ~ o u s lSg 1, . n ~
feels thw~;he has fai1,ed t~ do so thoragh th.e five acts and consequently he has to write
e poir~t.Moreover, the epilog," of an earlia, say all
the epilogue to m ~ k his
eighteenth cerrtm:y English play 1i.k The ,School,forScandal can he spoken to the
audience by an actor or BE).actd'e~s~vhi(:his imp~ssiblt:in Pygmalioiz. So clearly only
the reader and not tlrc ai,~dienceca.il benefit fic~rmthe epilogaee. In this sense, it is a
stmctural flaw in the play.

- ._________n__ __-_
--..- -----...- -
---
-
3.3 THE GENR-E 6 P THE PLAY: ELEMENTS F
ROMANCE,_ COMEDY AND NOVEL- - --- -....-,..,--. l-.
..-

m e fonn of the play is pax-tly governed by Shaw calling it a "romance in five acts'.
Shaw begins his epilogue by saying "The rest of the story need not be shown in
action, and indeed, would hardly need telling if our imaginations were not so
enfeebled by the ready-made and reach-me-downs of the ragshop in which Romance
keeps its stock of 'happy endings' to misfit all stories. Now, the history of Eliza
Doolittle, though called a romance because the transfiguration it record. seems
exceedingly improbable is common enough."(p.281). The statement does not really
negate what we concluded just now that the epilogue is a "structural flaw" in the play,
but it does support the view that several other elements id the play can be better
appreciated in the light of the conventions of Romance, although it does not have he
traditional happy ending. AsColin Wilson wrote, Pygrnalion is perhaps his frankest
use of romanticism - disguised as anti-r~manticism,''~ We naturally have at the heart
of the story the transfiguration of Eliza and the parallel change in her father.
Interestingly each of them reacts with great shock at observing the change in the
appearance of the other. Doolittle mistakes his daughter for a "lady" to whom he
shows deference, and Eliza is completely taken by surprise and utters those sounds
which she thought she had left behind her after her education began. The element of
romance and fairy tale - Eliza's transformation providing a somewhat O ironical parallel
to that of Cinderella imparts to the story elements of coincidence. Thus it is a
coincidence that Eliza. Higgins, Pickering, Mrs. Eynsford Mill and her two children
meet at the Covent Garden under the portico of St. Paul's Church on a summer
evening on which it is raining heavily. It is also a coincidence that Eliza meets Mrs.
Eynsford Hill, Clara and Freddy at Mrs. Higgins's at home. It is another coincidence
that Doolittle visits Eliza and Higgins precisely on the days on which she starts her
"education" and on which she "bolts" after winning the bet for Higgins but being
ignored and neglected by him.

Lightning and thunder orchestrate Freddy's first meeting with Eliza, again in the
manner of a romance. As he collides with her, "A blinding flash of lightning
followed instantly by a rattling peal of thunder, orchestrates the incident." (p.198).

There is a magical element also in Higgins placing everyone in his or her "locality"
and accurately construing the person's background by listening to a few sentences
spoken by him or her. He appears a wizard to these people. In fact, it further
contributes to the very dramatic beginning of the play, created by "." (p.197), thus
torrents of heavy summer rain, cab whistles blowing franctically in all directions.
Pedestrians running for shelter adding to the sensational element of romance, all
reinforcing the view that we get here an ironic parallel to the story of Cinderella - the
poor girl with a vicious "step-mother" and an indifferent father suddenly acquiring
wealth and marrying a Prince.
comic conventions Dramatic Structure and
Mingling of Genres
The miraculous conversions in the play are also related to the use of comic
conventions. As Not-throp Frye mentions in his essay on comedy, 'Wythos of
SpriilgM,imnlfkely conversions miraculous transformatiom and providential assistanr:e
. ~as to bring about the expected happy ending.
are inseparable from ~ o m e d yso
However, there is a twist here as the sudden. cnn;rioh.naentof E1i.z~or her f~.tl,~er
dlses
not bring about the desired. effect. As we have seen in aan1t 2,I-looliltlr: is geav,inely
unhappy about his new social status and the responsibilities it enlt~ils.Sitnilarly Eiiaa
does not acquire the wealth or the social sl:at~~.s
of a duchess or even a rich comxrones.

Sha1r.r also makes use of the convention. o f comic reversal.. Tlixlns Dsolittle is
introduced as fin eminent dustman. I1'01;al.ly amors.lby corrventional standards, l1e is
declnred hy Riggins to a rich An~erican50 b~ 9h.e most original moralist at present in
England' (p-263). People helieve that a mistress fi2el.sjoyow wherr her lover marries
her but Eliza's "Step-mother" i.e. Doa1iii;le's '%ve.,i.nmistxess" is cx.tremely miserable
at the prospect of 1na1:~yi~ig.him. Doo1.ittt.e se3j~.
of her: "'she's been very low, thinking
of the happy ds?y..;that are izo more'"p.273). Earlier, he had canfilmzed this lanusual
power equation by saying: "I'rn a slave tr?that woman governor just because I'm not
her lawful husband" (p.23 1). Similar1.ywl~eiaDool.ittle comes to Higgins to bl.aclua~ail
hiln about Eliza, it is Higgins who bullies him rather than IDoolittle bullying Higgins.
In fact Doolittle, nituch against the conventional. expeckations refbses to take Eliza
back. So there is the typical Shavian comic inversion: we get the reverse of what we
expect. Thus Doolittla, when talking to Higgins, says: "I'll have to learn to speak
iniddle class language from you, instead of speaking proper English." (p.264).
Similarly wlzeil Mrs. Pearce trying to prevent Higgins from doing anything unusual to
Eliza, tells Pickering: "I do hope sir, you wont encourage him to do anything foolish,"
Higgins responds: "What is life but a series of inspired follies? The difficulty is to
find them to do. Never lose a chance: it doesn't come every day" (p.215). Similarly
Elizt, tells Higgins and Pickcring "I don't want to talk grammar. I want to talk like a
lady" (218). Soon Mrs. Pearce says "she should think of the future" and. Higgins
responds: "At her age! Nonsense! Time enough to think of the future when you
haven't any future to think of .I' (219) In the same scene, when Pickering tells
Higgins: "she must understand thoroughly what she's doing," he disagrees and
rhetorically asks: "do any of us understand what we are doing? If we did, would we
ever do it?" (p.220) In a sense, each one of these statements contains a grain of truth,
but essentially all of them fit into the larger pattern of comic rever~als.~ Ironically,
however, Shaw even reverses the typical comic ending- the hero does not marry the
heroine. The Shavian twist to the ending, nevertheless, harks back to another comic
convention that of the triumph of youth. Freddy the young man marries Eliza rather
than Higgins or.an olderman marrying her. In a loose sense, the play also provides a
variation of the theme of the comic foreigner. In a conventional comedy the
foreigner is comic partly because of his strange accent and grammar. Shaw by
carefully recreating different accents and ungrammatical structures in Act I and
showing them in a comic light invites laughter that arises from an insight into the
nature of English speech and grammar.

The comic element in the play is mainly verbal but it also includes the comedy of
situation. Thus in Act I, humour arises from Eliza's misunderstanding that Higgins is
a policeman who is taking notes because he is out to arrest her on charges of making
indecent advances to men to solicit them as customers or clients. Similarly in Act 11,
Eliza's washing rather badly: its mousy color can hardly be natural. She wears a
shoddy black coat that reaches nearly to her h e e s and is shaped to the waist. She has
a brown skirt with a coarse apron. Her boots are much the worse for wear. She is no
doubt as claean as she can afford to be, but compared to the ladies she is very dirty.
Her features are no worse than thiers, but their condition leves something to be
desired; and she needs the services of a dentist] (pp. 198-99). It is true that in the
modern period, many dramatists describe the scene, the setting and the appearance of
Pygttr aliott characters at length, for example Ibsen in plays like The Wild Duck and E?edda
Gaher, However, Shaw probes deeper in his own voice and analyses characters in
the stage descriptions, something quite rare in drama. Thus the following description
of Higgins is unusual for a play, especially an earlier play :
"He is of the energetic, scientific type, heartily even violently interested in
everything that can be studied as a scientific subject, and careless about
himself and other people, including their feelings. He is, in fact, but for his
years and size, rather like a very impetuous baby taking notice eagerly and
loudly and requiring almost as much watching to keep him out of unintended
mischief. His manner varies from genial bullying when he is in a g&d
humour to stormy petulance when anything goes wrong; but he is so entirely
frank and void of malice that he remains likeable even in his least reasonable
moments." (pp. 209-10)

Shaw even examines the thoughts of Higgins: "hearing in it the voice of God,
rebuking him for his pharisaic want of charity to the poor girl" (p.207) Finally we
observe the long epilogue which is not characteristic of a play but closer to a part of a
novel.

Thus Shaw has combined in Pygmalion the elements of comedy, romance andnovel
and naturally created a work whose structure cannot follow the conventional
symmetry and neatnes of a "pure" genre.

3.4 LET US SUM UP

In this unit, we initially took cognisance of how Shawls play has a parallel with the
myth of Pygmalion: Higgins is Pygmalion and Eliza is his creation Galatea though
with an altered ending. The myth is couched here in a five act structure with each act
marking a stage in Eliza's "transformation". One organisational scheme is the
alternation'of scenery. We also observed how time is handled here according to a
plan, and there are certain structural patterns in the play. Moreover, the plot is based
on a cont~astof parallel characters such as Higgins and Pickering, Higgins and
Freddy, Mrs. Eynsford Hill and Mrs. Higgins and Mr. Doolittle, Clara and Freddy,
Higgins and Pickering and Mrs. Pearce, Eliza and her father. The play also has a
significant absentee character in Eliza's step-mother. Shaw wrote more than one draft
of the play, and on the whole, the changes in the last draft were for the better. The
preface to the play, unlike the typical Shavian preface is related to the play, but the
epilogue seems to be imposed on it.

The genre of the play includes the element of romance in Eliza's "magical"
transformation, the parallel to cinderella story, the presence of coincidences and a
form of "pathetic fallacy" - nature orchestrating the human mood. On the other hand,
the comic conventions of comic reversal and the comic foreigner are combined with
the unconventional ending. The verbal comedy is interspersed with the comedy of
situation. Finally the play also introduces novelistic techniques such as extended
descriptions of characters, the absence of a list of dramatis personae, and detailed
narration in the writer's own voice at the end that is in the epilogue.

References
1 George Bernard Shaw Compete Plays with Prefaces (New York: Dodd,
Mead, 1962) Vol I 194. All the other references to the text are from this
edition and page numbers are indicated in parentheses.

2.. Colin Wilson, Bernard Shaw: A Reassessment,(l969; London: Macmillion,

1981).
- I

3. Anato~nyof Criticism: Four Essays (Princeton: prince tot^ Univ. Press, 1957). Dramatic StrWture and
Mingling of Genres
4. Peter Kemp writes in his review of Michael Holroyd's biography Bernard
Shaw Volume I: The Search for Love 1856-1898: "to cope with an
upbringing in which everything seemed topsy-turvy, he adopted paradox as
panacea." See The Listener, 15 September 988, p.29.

3.5 QUESTIONS

1. Does Shaw's use of myth contribute to the enrichment of Pygmalion? Justify

your answer.

2. How do the five acts of the play mark different stages of its plot?

3. What does Shaw achieve through his change of scenery in each act of
Pygmalion?

4, Write an essay on the contrast of characters in the play?

5. Was Shaw justified in dropping scenes like the garden party one fiom
Pygmalion? Would you have liked to see the party on the stage?

6. What impression have you formed of Eliza's "Step mother"? Answer in

detail.

7. Are you.in substantial agreement with what Shaw says in the Epilogue?
Justify your answer. '

8. Do the comic conventions in Pygmalion take away fiom the authenticity of

the characters and the situations?

9. Was haw a romantic? Is the element of romance in the play in harmony

with the "ideology" of Bernard Shaw?

10. Does Shaw's habit of describing and analysing characters and events in his
own words go against the grain of the play by imposing something alien on
.the flow of events?
- _ -_- __-_ .--------- - __I___- ---I

UNIvI' 4 LANGllAGE AND STYLE

---.-----.--.----*-----. "".-.- - ------

Ubjectives
Iritroducfioil
Shaw's Prose style slid dialogues: 'effectiveness of assertion": recreation of
actua, speeches; speech rhythms of characters; literary and ~nusicalallusions;
verbal humour
Critical approaches to Shaw and Screen Responses to Pygmalion
Passages fi*onnihe play for Annotation
Let Us SUIT^ Up
Questions
Suggested Readirig

This unit will f~rsta~~alyse:Shaw's prose style and dialogues in Pygracrlion ii~cluding
individual speecl~rhythms when noticeable of nrajar characters. Subsequenrtly, we
shall look at the reception sf Pygnzalion including film versioiis and significant
criticismi, observing in the process major critical approaches to the play.

4,l INTRODUCTION

Shaw marshals tlie resources of his prose to aim at 'effectiveness of assertion." He

also recreates the actual speeches of his characters by reproducing their granlinar and
pronunciation. Within limits he gives distinct speech rhythms to many of his
dramatist personae, Literary and musical allusions and verbal humour further
contribute towards Shaw's goal.

Shavian criticism has been diverse but a pattern of approaches can be traced there.
With the audience, Pygmalion itself was a modest success, but its "unauthorised"
musical adaptation My Fair Lady was an astonishing box office hit. We would like
you to keep these in mind as you look at Shaw's style and his reception.

4.2 SHAW'S PROSE STYLE AND DIALOGUES:

EFFECTIVENESS OF ASSERTION: RECREATION
OF ACTUAL SPEECHES; SPEECH RHYTHMS OF
CHARACTERS: LITERARY AND MUSICAL
ALLUSIONS; VERBAL HUMOUR

Bernard Shaw in his famous " Epistle Dedicatory to Arthur Bingham Walkley" which
serves as his preface ofMan andsuperman, wrote, "Effectiveness of assertion is the
Alpha and Omega of style. He who has nothing to assert has no style and can have
none: he who hassomething to assert will go as far in power of style as its
momentousness and his conviction will carry him. Disprove his assertion after it is
made, yet its style remains."' Years later, Shaw commented, "I have never aimed at
style in my life: style is a sort of melody that comes into my sentence by itself. If a
writer says what he has to say as accurately and effectively as he can, his style will
 take care of itself, if he has a style."2 Nevertheless, Shaw striyves for this Language and style
ueffectivenuesssf asseriiomn" in a variety of ways. It is smx~cthlethrough a sheer
c ~words;. Thus he describes Clara ila his "epilogue" ("sequel") as
a b u n d a ~ of
follows," she was, in shoit, an utter failwe, an ignosa~lt,incompetent yr~etenitiorns,
unwelcome, pelmiless, useless lit& sslsb" (p289) Sometimes, Shaw shows an
abundance of words of negation. Thus if we look at the first page of the play, we
observe ncgatiorls in the s e e s ~ ~speech
d - the Mother says "Not so longt'- , the third
speech - a bystar~derspeaks, "He won't get no cab not until halfpast elevenw-, , the
fourth speech -the Mother says, "We can't stand h a e until half-past eleven. It's too
bad"-, and the fifth speech -when the bystander retorts, "Well; it aint ilngr fault, missus'
(p.197).

Consider the beginning of Shaw's sequel to the play: "'Fhe rest of the story need not
be shown in action, and indeed, would hardly need telling if our imaginations were
not so enfeebled by their lazy dependence on the ready-mades and reach-me-
downs..."(p.281) Let us look at the beginning of Act 1V:-

HIGGINS [calling down to Pickerind I say, Pick lock up, will you? I shan't be
going out again.

131CKERING. Wight. Can Mrs. Pearce go to bed? We don't want anything more, do .
we7

HIGGINS. Lord, no! Ip.252)

Both the passages are replete with negations.

Ohmann rightly refers to the "pattel-11of negation that gives structuse to Shaw's
arguments". They also contain what Ohmann calls "a number of other forms of
denial and opposition."4 Expressions like "too bad" (p.197) and "so enfeebled" (281)
cited above illustrate these forms of denial.

Sometimes, Shaw reveals a special fascination for certain sounds. An apt example
comes from his description at the very beginning of the play:-

"Covent Garden at 1 1.15 p.m. Torrents of heavy summer rain. Cab whistles blowing
frantically in all directions. Pedestrians running for shelter into the market and under
the portico of St. Paul's Church." (p.197) one can notice here the preponderance of It1
and (dlsounds conveying the harshness of rain, the confusion engendered by it and
the sad plight of those seeking shelter. Another telling illustration occurs at the
beginning of Act 111.

"It is Mrs. Higgins's at-home day. Nobody has yet arrived. Her drawing
room, in a flat on Chelsea Embanlanent, has three windows looking on the
river; and the ceiling is not so lofty as it would be in an older house of thp
same pretension." (p.236)

Here, too, the same sounds are repeated and the effect is one of a prosaic, dry manner.
. Perhaps it even goes with the personality of Mrs. Higgins, a formidable character.

Shaw paid special attention to the printing of his plays, often carefully using different
kind of types and spaces between them for emphasis. Thus, when Higgins asks "The
Gentleman" Do you know Colonel Pickering, the author of spoken Sanscrit7" He
answers "I am Colonel Pickering" (p.206), emphasising his identity. The speech of
Mrs. Pearce categorically telling Higgins not to swear before Eliza and citing
instances of his swearing is printed as follows: "what the devil and where the devil
and who the devil -" (p.223) Later as Higgins meets Freddy at his mother's (Mrs.
Higgins's) at home, he tells him, " I've met you before somewhere", clearly stressing
the word "you" (p.240) After Eliza leaves, Higgins asks his mother, "Do you mean
that my language is improper?" (p.247) He is evidently shocked at the possibility of
anyone regarding his language, unlike more common people's as improper.

Shaw deviated from the standard spellings of several words, justifying his departures
from the conventional "correct" spellings on the ground that he was trying out a more
"logical" and "scientific" spelling of the word by approximating to its actual sound.
Thus he spells "Shakespeare" as "Shakespeare", "Show" as "Shew", till as "Yil". Here
one can see the point of "Shakespeare" but not of "Shew". He replaces "you are"
with "youre". He also omits apostrophes from such expressions as "haven't" "can't,
"wasn't and don't " respectively. Here perhaps Shawls contentions that in real speech
we are not conscious that we are dropping the letter 'lo" from "not".

Although Shaw acknowledged that his characters had the "power of expression". .."
that differentiated me (or Shakespeare) from a gramophone and camera", he in his
own way in Pygrnalion tried in his dialogues to recreate the speeches of people in real
life, thus ignoring the "correct" spellings and instead spelling the words as characters
pronounce them. An example is the flower girl in Act I saying "Will ye-oo py me
fthem?" (p.199) instead of "will you pay me for them?" Shaw goes on to explain.
[Here with apologies, this desperate attempt to represent her dialect without a
phonetic alphabet must be abandoned as unintelligible outside London] (p.199) The
dialogues also contain expressions such as "I knowed" (p.204), "A Copper's nark"
(p.201), "a tec" (p.202), "toff' (203) etc., each one aiming at a recreation of exact
speech.

In his attempt to faithfully reproduce the "actual" speeches of characters, Shaw also
writes dialogues which are replete with the common grammatical mistakes of spoken
English. Thus a bystander tells the Mother at the beginning of the play, "He won't get
no cab not until half past eleven" (p.197). The above sentence contains not only
double but triple negatives. Double negatives can also be found in Eliza's sentence,
"I don't want to have no truck with himU.(203)Later on a bystander tells Eliza "of
course he aint" and asks Higgins: "what call have you to know about people what
never offered to meddle with you?" (203) Eliza also uses the tenses wrongly e.g.
"But I done without them" (p.217). She combines double negative with wrong use of
pronouns when she talks of her father's drunkenness "It never did him no harm what I
could see" (p.244) Her father Doolittle himself uses expressions like "You and me is
men of the world aint we?" (p.228), misusing the numbers.

Although, it cannot be said of Pygrnalion that every character has his own speech
rhythm, one can disceni certain distinguishing features in the speeches of some of the
characters. Thus Higgins - as Mrs. Pearce and his mother coroborate -swears a lot
and use expressions that show his peremptory, impatient manner. One of his
favourite expressions is "By Georgy" which he utters frequently in his dialogues. To
take up a few examples, when he tried to tempt Eliza to learn proper English speech
from him in order to pass off as a Duchess, he tells her, "By George, Eliza, the streets
will be strewn with the bodies of men shooting themselves for your sake before Ive
done with you". (p.217) Later when he runs into Eynsford Hills at his mother's place,
he finds them useful for experimenting with Eliza's social skills and says, "Yes, by
George" We want two or three people. You'll do as well as anybody else." (240)
Soon after this, when he suddenly realizes where he had met Freddy, he says, "By
George, yes: it all comes back to me! (They stare at him). Covent Garden!
[Lamentably1what a damned thing! (p.242) In the very last Act, when his mother
tells him, ''She says she is quite willing to meet you on friendly terms and to let by
gones be by gones," Higgins is indignant and says "Is she, by George? Ho! " (p.267)
Just before the end, when he wonders at the transformation in Eliza's personality, he
says, "By George, Eliza, I said I'd make a woman of you: and I have. I like you like
this." (p.280) In all these five examples, culled out of many, "By George" is an
exclamation indicating Higgins's surprise or excitement or sense of discovery or
anger.
Higgins's expressions are strong, fitful and often exclamatory. Thus after Eliza utters, Language and style
ttAh-ah-ah-ow-ow-ow-oo",he responds with "Heavens! What a sound!" (p.206)
Earlier, he tells Eliza, "Oh, shut up, shut up. Do I look like a policeman?" (p.201) He
is generally quite direct. He tells Mrs. Hill, "Ha! ha! What a devil of a name! Excuse
me. [To the daughter1 you want a cab, do you?" (p.204) once in a while, this
directness turns into picturesque, colourful expressions which describe people vividly
e.g. "I shall make a duchess of this draggletailed guttersnipe" says he to Pickering and
Mrs. Pearce (p.215).

Higgins generally prefers simple and compound sentences to complex oil(,?, He tells
Pickering "simply phonetics. The science of speech. That's my profession: dso my
hobby' (p.205). When Eliza comes up to his house, he simply exclaims, "Be off with
you: I don't want you." 9p.211) He says to his mother,.when his is looking for Eliza,
"Of course. What are the police for? What else could we do?" (p.261) soon afey; as
Doolittle surprises him with his accusation, he retorts, "Youre raving. You'w drunk.
Your mad." (p.263). However, Higgins can be longwinded or complex, when he
wants to be e.g. he tells Eliza, "And you shall marry an officer in the Guards, with a
beautiful moustache: the son of a marquis, who will disinherit him for marrying you,
but will relent - when he sees your beauty and goodness (p.219) His rhetorical
manner can easily include a sentence like "I should imagine you won't have much
difficulty in settling yourself some-where or other, though I hadn't quite realized that
you were going away." (pp. 256-57)

In contrast, Pickering tends to have more indirect and convoluted expressions. e.g to
the notetaker (HIGGINS), "Really, sir, if you are a detective, you need not begin
protecting me against molestation by young women until I ask you" (p.202) The
indirectness usually indicates his courtesy and politeness. Thus he asks Higgins,
"May I ask, sir, do you do this for your living at a music hall?" (p.203) When Eliza
uses the word "bloody", Pickering talks about "something to eliminate the sanguinary
element from her conversation." (p. 247)

Eliza with a different background has another "mode of speech'. Sometimes, her
lingo is extremely colourful e.g. when.talking about the death of her aunt at Mrs.
Higgins's "at-home", she says, "my father he kept ladling gin down her throat till she
came to so sudden that she bit the bowl off the spoon." She continues, "What call
would a woman with that strength in her have to die of influenza? What became of
her new straw hat that should have come to me? Somebody pinched it; and what I
say is, them as pinched it done her in." Immediately Mrs. Eynsford Hill has to ask,
"What does doing her in mean?" (p.243)

As an assertive person, Eliza invariably repeats certain words and phrases for
emphasis e.g. she says to Higgins, "your a great bully, you are .. ..I never asked to go
to Buckham Palace, I didn't. I was never in trouble with the police, not me." (p.221)
she ends this speech with "I'm a good girl-" a statement that she must have repeated
several times in the play. In fact in Act 11, Higgins gets so exasperated with her that
he has to say, "Eliza, if you say again that youre a good girl, your father shall take
you home." (p.233)

Her father, Doolittle, on the other hand, can be quite rhetorical as Higgins points out
by saying "this chap has a natural gift for rhetoric" (p.226) He tells Higgins and
Pickering "What am I, Governors both? I ask you. What am I? I'm one of the
undeserving poor: that's what I am. Think of what that means to a man. It means that
.
he's up agen middle class morality all the time. .. I don't need less than a deserving
man: I need more. I don't eat less hear hearty than him; and I drink a lot more. I
want a bit of amusement, cause I'm a thinking niah. I want cheerfulness and a song
.
and a band when I feel low. .. Will you take advantage of a man's nature to do him
out of the price of his own daughter what he's brought up and fed and clothed by the
sweat of his brow until she's growed big enough to be interesting to you two
gentlemen? Is five pounds unreasonable? I put it to you; and I leave it to you: (pp.
229-30) Andrew Kenney refers to Shaw's "Comic-didactic bravura speech for a
'ventriloquist' like Doolittle.. . .'16 Shaw himself compared Doolittle's oration on
middle class morality to Falsteff s speech on honour.'

However, when Doolittle gets very excited, he uses like Higgins very short sentences
e.g.
... see here! Do you see this? You done this.
HIGGINS. Done What, man?
DOOLIITLE. This, I tell you. Look at it. Look at this hat.
Look at this coat.
PICKERING. Has Eliza been buying you clothes?
DOOLITTLE. Eliza! Not she Not half! .Why would shy buy me clothes?" (p.262)

Ogmalion, like many plays of Shaw, is replete with literary allusions, in fact
references to not only literature but other arts as well. Thus Higgins, who admires
Milton and writes "a little as a poet on Miltonic lines," quotes from Milton when he
tells Pickering about Alfred Doolittle, "observe the rhythm of his native woodnotes
wild" (p.226) In his "epilogue" or "afterward" to the play, Shaw, when referring to
H.G.Wells writes, "Age had not withered him, nor could custom stale his infinite
variety in half an hour" (p.291) The allusionhere to Cleopatra of Shakespeare's
Antony and Cleoptra not only describes Wells but also parodies Shakespeare. A
comparison with the captivating Cleopatra shows how Wells looks by contrast and it
also deflates Cleopatra, the last phrase "in half an hour" clearly adding a touch of
bathos to the entire description and undermining both. Pickering talking of Eliza's
perfect musical ear, alludes to Beethoven and Brahms or Lehar and Lionel Monckton
(p.249) Here he not only refers to Eliza's sensitivity but also enriches the texture by
bringing in the context of musical history. A similar effect is produced when at the
beginning of Act IV, after returning from the successful party, Higgins !begins half
singing, half yawning an air from Le Fanciulla del Goden West1'- ( a piece by
Pucccini) (p.252). A little different is the description of the response of the Director
of the London School of Economics to the appeal of Elizaa and Freddy to
"recommend a course bearing on the flower business." Shaw writes, "He, being a
humorist, explained to them the method of celebrated Dikensian essay on Chinese
Metaphysics by the gentleman who read an article on china and an article on
Metaphysics and combined the information. He suggested that they should combine
the London School with Kew Gardens" (292-93). Here the added dimension from
Dickens, not only enriches the texture but also mildly deflates the Director. The fact
that the original is comic certainly reduces the possibility of parody but it does not
altogether abolish it.

As briefly mentioned in unit 3.3 a great deal of humour in our play is verbal and
Shaw exfiibits great ability to play with language to evoke laughter. To take up a few
examples, when Mrs. Pearce tells Higgins not to "swear before the girl," the dialogue
proceeds as follows:-

HIGGINS [indignantlyJ I swear! [most emphatically] I never swear. I detest the

habit. What the devil do you mean? MRS. PEARCE [stolidly] That's what I mean,
Sir. You swear a great deal too much. I don't mind your damning and blasting, and
what the devil and where the devil and who the devil- HIGGTNS. Mrs. Pearce: this
language from your lips! Really!" (p.223).

Then she indirectly tells him not to continue using the word "bloody."

MRS. PEARCE. Only this morning, Sir, you applied it to your boots, to the butter
and the brown bread.

e, natural to a poet." (223)

 Language and style
In Act 111, when Higgins opens the door violently and enters his mother's drawing
room, Mrs. Higgins scolds him, "what are you doing here to-day: you promised not to
(p. 237) The humour here arises fiom someone being told thatxd isgot
i el come on the at-home day. A little later, when Eliza begins talking of the weather,
she says "The shallow depression in the West of these islands is likely to move
slowly in an easterly direction. There are no indications of any great change in the
barometrical SitUation."

Responds FREDDY "Ha! ~ a How ! awfully humy!" @. 243) %fact, Eliza's

reference to her father pouring gin down her aunt's throat and then her drinking gin
like "mother's a milk" makes the entire conversation extremely humorous. Freddy "is
in convulsions of suppressed laughter" (p. 244) A little later, after Eliza leaves,
Higgins and Pickering talk about her to Mrs. Higgins:-

I
"PICKXRING. We're always talking Eliza.
HIGGMGS. Teaching Eliza.
PICKERING. Dressing Eliza.
Mrs. HIGGMS. What! " (pp. 248-49)

In the last Act, as Doolittle condemns Higgins for writing to Ezra D Wannafeller
about his (Doolittle) being "the most original moralist at present in England" and thus
making a gentleman of him, He says: "And the next one to touch me will be you,
Henry Higgins. I'll have to learn'to speak middle class language from you, instead of
speaking proper English." (261) Higgins, reacting to his mother's view that Doolittle
can now look after Eliza, exclaims, "he can't provide for her. He shant provide for
her. She doesn't belong to him. I paid him five pound for her". (p. 265) He implies
that he could buy an adult female for five pounds! Soon, as Mrs. Higgins tells her
son, "If you promise to behave yourself, Henry, I'll ask her to come down. If not, go
..
home;". He replies, "Oh, all right. Very well. Pick: you behave yourself". (267)
Obviously, Higgins cannot realize that he is the only person whose behaviour is
improper. After Eliza comes down, he tells her "Don't you dare try this game on me.
I taught it to you; and it doesn't take me in. Get up and come home; and don't be a
fool." (p.268) His mother responds, "Very nicely put, indeed, Henry. No woman
could resist such an invitation." (p.269) She of course uses irony. Interestingly the
media personalities, the audiences, the critics have been unable to resist the invitation
to respond to Pygmalion.

4.3 CRITICAL APPROACHES TO SHAW AND SCREEN

RESPONSES TO PYGMALION

There have been phases in the reception of Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion: if we ignore
many theatre reviewers and journalistic critics, much of whose criticism was
E ephemeral, rather than long lasting, we encounter first of all eminent contemporaries:
men of letters, theatre personalities and social, political, ethical thinkers writing on
his plays. They are followed by more "academic" critics. Later, there were two
revivals of Shaw, one after his death and the other at the time of his centenary, The
more recent criticism has been more ideological, embracing Feminist and Post-
colonial approaches as well-much of it following the publication of Halroyd's
monumental biography of Shaw.

The major contemporaries writing on Shaw included G.K. Chesterton (1909) and
Frank Harris (193 1). A detailed account of the early criticism can be found in T.F.
Evans, ed. Shaw: The Critical Heritage (1976), which traces critical responses to
Shaw over a period of time, In the 30s and 40s the notable studies were by H.C.
Duffin, The Quintessence of Bernard Shaw (1920: rev.ed. 1939) Maurice Colbourne,
The real Bernard Shaw (1930) which approaches him from a performer's angle,
P'gmalion S.C.Sen Gupta, The Art of Bernard Shaw (1936) and Edmund Wilson, "Bernard
Shaw at Eighty," Triple Thinkers.(l939). Slightly later appeared Eric Bentley, Shaw:
A Reconsideration (1947), C.E.M.Joad, Shaw (1949), A.C.Ward, Shaw (1950).
A.C.Ward also edited and wrote useful introductions to many Shaw plays.

The significant biographical studies written before Shaw's death were by Archibald
Henderson Shaw: His lfe and Works (1911) and Bernard Shaw: Play boy and
Prophet (1932) and Hesketh Pearson, Bernard Shaw: His Life and Personality
. (1942). William Ervine's The Universe of G.B.S. (1949) is a worthwhile critical
biography.

There was a spate of studies following his death and later his centenary. To begin
with the relevant biographical studies, Archibald Henderson added to his earlier
writings George Bernard Shaw: Man of the Centuly (1956). Hesketh Pearson
brought out the enlarged edition in 1961. St. John Ervine's Bernard Shaw: His Life,
work and Friends (1956) was received as a standard life. These book admirably
supplemented Shaw's autobiographical work Sixteen Self-Sketches-which appeared
only a year before his death. Stanley Weintraub not only came out with Private Shaw
andPublic Shaw: A Dual Portrait of Lawrence ofArabia and GBS-(1956) but also
edited Shaw: An Autobiography 1856-1898 (1969). A fine study of Shaw in his
historical, social, political background was by Ivor Brown Shaw in his own Time
(1965)

Major books on Modern Drama that contained chapter's -oRen perceptive chapters -
on Shaw included Eric Bentley's The Playwright as Thinker (1946), Ronald Peacock,
Poet in the Theatre- (1946) Francis Ferguson. The idea ofa Theater (1949),
Raymond Williams, Dramaporn Ibsen to Eliot (1952) revised as Dramaporn Ibsen
to Brechtin (1968) T.R.Tenn The Harvest of Tragedy (1956), J.L. Styan, the Dark
Comedy (1962) and Robert Brustein, the Theatre ofRevolt-(1964). However, many
of these have not even touched upon Pygmalion, let alone devoted a few pages to the
analysis of our text.

The significant full length studies of Shaw's drama to appear during this period ,

included L.Kronenberger George Bernard Shaw: A Critical Survey (1 953), H.

Nethercot, Men and Supermen: The Shavian Portrait Gallern(1954) - a discussion of
Major Shavian characters, Richard Ohmann, Shaw: The style and the Man-(1962) - an
analysis of his style as the vehicle of his attitudes and goals, Martin Meisel, Shaw and
the Nineteenth Century Theatre-(1963) - a landmark study, Audrey Williamson,
Shaw: Man and Artist-1963, R.M. Roy, Shaw's Philosophy of lfe (1964). Colin
Wilson's Bernard Shaw: A reassessment (1 968), a remarkable study of his life and
works analysed him to an extent from an existential perspective.

The most important critical anthoIogy of the 50s and 60s was R.J. Kaufmann's
G.B.S/taw: A Collection of Critical Essays (1965) in the 201hCentury view series.
Among the contributors, it had the playwright Bertolt Brecht, the psychologist Erik
H. Erickson and distinguished critics like Eric Bentley and G.Wilson Knight.

R. Mander and J.Mitchensonts (edited) Theatrical Compansion to Shaw (1954)

provides perspectives on Shaw on stage. C.B. Purdom's A Guide to the Plays of
Bernard Shaw (1963) performs a similar function, although it is written by only one
author. In addition to describing the life and Time of Shaw, it also surnmarises and
comments on individual plays.

This generation of Shaw criticism ended with Leion Hugo's Bernard Shaw:
Playwright and Preacher (1971) and Maurice Valency's The Cart and the Trumpet:
7he Plays of Bernard Shaw (1973). The new studies that emerged with novel
approaches comprised of Margery Morgan The Shavian Playground: an Enploration
of the Art of Geo,.ge Bernard Shaw (1972). Alfred Turce, Jr; Shaw's Moral Vision :
The Segand Salvation (1 976), Robert F. Whitrnan, Shaw and the Play of Ideas
(19771, C.D. Sidhy, The Pattern of Tragicomedy in Bernard Shaw and J.L.Wisentha1,
the ~ a r r i a g of
e Contraries: Shaw's Middle Plays-(1974). A separate mention must be and me
made of Rodelled Weitsaub, ed. Fabian Feminist: Bernard Shaw and Women (1977).

Later on, the Feminist Approach to Shaw was continued in J.Ellen Gainer's Shaw's
Daughters: Dramatic and Narrative Construction of Gender (199 1 ) and Sally Peters,
-
~ernardShaw: The Accent of the Superman (1996) a biographical study. However,
the monumental biography of Shaw was Michael Holroyd's Bernard Shaw in four
volumes, Bernard Shaw 'The Search for Love' (I), Bernard Shaw 'The Pursuit of
Power' (II), Bernard Shaw 'The Lure of Fantasy'_(III),The Last Laugh which also
forms part of Vols IV and V The Shaw Companion-(I 988-92).

The other major books fiom new perspectives were Arthur Ganz, George Bernard
Shaw (1983) and David J.Gordon, Bernard Shaw and the Comic Sublime (1990).
Among the seminal critical anthologies were Harold Bloom, George Bernard Shaw:
Modern Critical Views (1987), Daniel Leary, ed. Shaw's Plays in Pe$ormance (1983)
and Christopher Innes, ed. The Cambridge Companion to George Bernard Shaw
(1998) - the last one including articles also fiom the perspectives of Feminism and
Post-Colonial Theory. ~ r a C.c Davis
~ George Bernard Shaw and the Socialist
Theatre (1994) locates the plays in the wider social, cultural, historical and
ideological context. The critical response, to Shaw, as we have seen, has remained
alive and vibrant and there may be a spurt as we approach the Fiftieth year of his
death.

Written in 1912, Pygmalion was first staged (in German) on Oct 16,1913 at the
Hoftburg Theatre, Vienna. It was first presented in England on April 11,1914 by
Herbert Beerbohm Tree at His Majesty's Theatre, London. The play had several
revivals in both England and the U.S. The cast at one time included Mr. Patrick
Combell (Stella) as Eliza. In later years, it was produced in 1974 at the Albert
Theatre, directed by John Dexter with Diana Rigg and Alec Mccown in the title roles.
In the early 1980's Peter O'Toole's "theatre of comedy series included Pygmalion. It
has also been produced at the Annual Shaw festival in Niagera on the Lake.

There have also been many film versions of Pygnzalion. It was first screened in
Germany on September 2, 1935 at Berlin with Erich Angel as the Director and
Heinrich Oberlander and Walter Wassermann as the screenplay writers. The first
dutch screening was at Amsterdam in March 1937. Ludwig Berger directed the play
and also wrote the screenplay. Shaw was unhappy with both the versions as they
hinted at Higgins and Eliza romantically coming together at the end. The first
English screening was at London on October 6, 1938 followed by the New York
screening of December 7, 1938. This Gabriel Pascal production was directed by
Anthony Asquith and Leslie Howard and the screen play was by Shaw himself (with
additional dialogues by W.P Liscornb and Cecil Lewis). Arthur Honegger composed
the music, Wendy Hiller played Eliza and Leslie Howard acted Higgins. The film
was a great success and it bagged several Academy awards. Shaw was given the
award for the best screenplay, the film was adjudged the best film of the year. Later
Alan Howard and Frances Barber staged a "complete representation" of Pygmalion
"conflating the theatre and film" at the Oliver.

When Franz Lehar proposed a musical version of Pygmalion to Shaw, he firmly

rehed. As holroyd points out, he rejected all appeals to 'downgrade' Pygmalion into
a musical. In 1948, he wrote "I absolutely forbid any such outrage."g However,
Pygmalion's musical adaptation My Fair Lady (cockney slang for "Mayfair Lady")
opened at the Mark Hellinger Theater on Broadway on Maroh 15, 1956. It contained
fifteen numbers composed by Frederick Loewe with lyrics by Alan 5. Learner, and it
was directed by Moss Hart. Julie Andrews played Eliza, Rex Harison was Higgins
and Stanley Holloway acted as Alfred Doolittle. An astonishing hit with songs like
"Wouldn't it be Lovely," With a Little Bit of Luck" and "I Could Have Danced All
Night," the musical had 2,717 performances on Broadway over six and a half years.
Pygmalion At the Drury Lane Theatre London where it opened in the spring of 1958, it had a run
of six years encompassing 2,281 performances.

First screened in October 1964 at New York by CBS~Warner,the Film Version

retained Rex Harrison as Higgins, but replaced Julie Andrews by Audrey Hepburn as
Eliza. Alan J. Lerner wrote the screenplay. For the film, Oscars were presented to
Andre Prev in for his musical adaptation of the original score by Frederich Lowewe,
to Rex Harrison for the hero's role, to George Cukor for direction and to Cecil Beaton
for costumes. Thus ironically, Bernard Shaw acquired enormous posthumous,~ealth
and popularity through a musical, he did not want to be produced.

4.4 PASSAGES PROM THE PLAY FOR ANNOTATION

ACT I
"THE NOTETAKER. Simply phonetics. The science of speech. That's my
profession: also my hobby. Happy is the eman who can make a living by his bobby!"
(p. 205).

"THE NOTETAKER. A woman who utters such depressing and disgusting sounds
has no right to be anywhere - no right to live. Remember that you are a human being
with a should and the divine gift of articulate speech: that your native language is the
language of Shakespeare and Milton and the Bible: and don't sit there crooning like a
bilious pigeon." (p.206)

ACT I1
"Women upset everything. When you let them into your life, you find that the
woman is driving at one thing and you're driving at another." (p.221)

"Here I am, a shy, diffident sort of man. I've never been able to feel really grown-up
and tremendous like other chaps." (p.224)

"I'm willing to tell you. I'm wanting to tell you. I'm waiting to tell you." (p.226)

"What is middle class morality? Just an excuse for never giving me anything."
(P-230)

"A few good oil paintings from the exhibitions in the Grosvenor Gallery
thirty years ago (the Burne Jones, not the Whistler side of them) are on its
walls. The only landscape Cecil Lawson on the scale of a Rubens. There is a
podrait of Mrs. Higgins as she was when she defied fashion in her youth in
one of the beautiful Rossettian Costumes" (p.236)

"MRS. HIGGINS. Well, you never fall in love with anyone under forty-five. When
will you discover that there are some rather nice-looking young women about?''
(p.237)

"But you have no idea how frightfully interesting it is to take a human being and
change her into a quite different human being by creating a new speech for her. It's
filling up the deepest gulf that separates class from class and soul from soul." (p.248)

ACT IV
"What am I fit for? What have you left me fit for? Where am I to go? What am I to
do? What's to become of me?" (p.256)
C :.
 "I'm only a common ignorant girl: and in my station I have to be carehl. There can't Language and style
be any feelings between the like of you and the like of me." (p.258)

ACT V
TIDOLITTLE. No: that aint the natural way, Colonel: It's only the middle class way.
My way was always the undeserving way," (pp. 271-72)

"The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or nay other
particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls:" (p.274)

THE EPILOGUE (THE SEQUEL)

"If an imaginative boy has a sufficiently rich mother who has intelligence, personal
grace, dignity of character without harshness, and a cultivated sense of the best art of
her time to enable her to make her house beautiful, she sets a standard for him against
which very few women can struggle, besides effecting for him'a disengagement of
his affections, his sense of beauty, and his idealism from his specifically sexual
impulses." (p.283) "Eliza has no use for the foolish romantic tradition that all women
love to be mastered, if not actually bullied and beaten." (p.284).

"But when it comes to business, to the life that she really leads as distinguished from
the life of dreams and fancies, she likes Freddy and she likes the Colonel: and she
does not like Higgins and Mr. Doolittle. Galatea never does quite like Pygmalion: his
relation to her is too godlike to be altogether agreeable." (p. 295)

4,.5 LETUSSUMUP

In this unit, as we analysed facets of Shaw's prose style and dialogues, we noticed his
abundance of words, especially words of negation, use of harsh consonants, leaving
space between letters for emphasising certain words, modifying spellings to make
them more "phonetic" and reproducing faulty grammar and pronunciation of
characters. Higgins, Eliza, her father and even Pickering are given within limits their
,own speech rhythms. Literary and musical allusions enrich the texture of the play by
bringing in another context and sometimes, they serve a parodic purpose. The style is
also embellished by abundant verbal humour.

Shavian criticism had different phases: There was a gradual development from the
somewhat impressionistic reviews of the earlier period to the more theoretical and
ideological approaches of the 1980's and 90's. On the stage, although Pygmalion was
only a modest success, it was screened and after Shawls death, the musical My Fair
Lady proved to be an extraordinary commercial hit.
t

4.6 QUESTIONS

1. Give an example of Shaw's "pattern of negation" in any dialogue or stage

description in Pygmalion (other than the ones cited here)

's "s~acine"of letters in words an effective device for

3, -
Is it justifiable on Shaw's part to reproduce the wrong grammar and
pronunciations of his characters or should he use only "correct" English? Is
his habit especially relevant to a play about phonetics?

4. It has been said that Shaw's characters are mouthpieces, who sound alike.
Can you distinguish Mrs. Higgins's speech rhythms from say Mrs. Pearce's?

5. Do you enjoy literary allusions in Shaw, or do you find them irritating?

JustifL your answer.

6. Is Shawls verbal humour only funny, or is it also instructive? Give reasons

for your answer and provide suitable illustrations fiom the play.

7. How did the critical response to Shaw change over the years (actually
decades)?

8. Why do you think My Fair Lady-has been so popular with the audience when
Pygmalion was never a great commercial success?

9. ow is Pygmalion an early 20" century English play set in England

meaningful to you in India at the end of the millenium?

4.7 SUGGESTED READING

Out of a few hundred books *tten on Shaw, it was difficult to separate the major
ones from the less seminal ones. From our select list, I give below a smaller
bibliography of books especially important for you and I add the names of few
journals.

References

1. George Bernard Shaw, Complete Plays with Prefaces (New York: Dodd,
Mead, 1962) Vol. III514. As mentioned in Unit 3, all the references to the
text of Shaw is from this edition and page numbers are indicated in
parentheses (Pygmalion is included in Volume I).

2. George Bernard Shaw's "Preface" to Immaturity (1921) Prefaces as quoted in

Andrew K.Kennedy, Six dramatists in search of a language: Studies in
dramatic language (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1975) 47-48 note 15.

3. Richard M. Ohmann refers to "one of these Colossal series,.. The syntactical

.
heaping up.. such superabundance.. . the language of
exaggeration...Hyperbole.. . the Shavian catalogue "Shaw's purpose is to '
"smother the audience and confront the opposition" As he M e r says
"Shaw frequently compounds the smcture of a whole piece fiom a set of
negations" See "Born to set It Right: The Roots of Shaw's Style," from Shaw:
The Style and the Man (Middletown, Coon: Wesleyan University Press,
1962) rapt, in R.J. Kaufinann, ed. (G.B.Shaw: A Collection of Critical Essays
(Englewood Cliffs, N.J.;Prentice -Hall, 1965) 33.

4. Ibid - 34-35.

5. Shawls letter to Alexander Bashky (1923) published in The New.

York Times*12 June 127 as quoted in Andrew K Kennedy, Six dramatists in
search of a language 53.
 -i

6, Six drahatists in search of a language. 54. Language and style

7, Shaw on Theatre. ed. E.J.West (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1956) 132 as
cited in Andrew Kennedy, Six dramatists in search of a language 54.

8, Andrew Kennedy says, "In Eliza's mechanical parroting of the cliches and
noises of upper-class speech there was just a suggestion, within the comedy
of manners, that social speech is synthetic, laboratory induced." See Six
dramatists in search of a language 78.

9, Michael Holroyd, The Shaw Companion (London: Chatto & Windus, 1992)
56-57.

Books
Entley, Eric. Shaw: A Reconsideration (1947)
Bloom, Harold. George Bernard Shaw: Modem Critical Views (1987)
Brown, Ivor Shaw in his own Time (1965)
Davis, Tracy George Bernard Shaw and the Socialist Theatre,(1954)
Evans, T.F. Shaw: The Critical Heritage ( 1 976)
Holroyd, Michael Bernard Shaw,,Vols I and I1 ( 1 988-92)
Innes, Christopher The Cambridge Companion to George Bernard Shaw-(1998)
Kaufinann, R.J.ed. G.B.Shaw: A Collection of Critical Essays- ( 1 965)
Meisel, Martin, Shaw and the Nineteenth Century Theatre (1963)
Pundom, C.B. A Guide to the Plays of Bernard Shaw ( 1 963)
Valency, Maurice The Cart and the Trumpet: The Plays of Bernard Shaw (1973)
Weintraub, Rodelle ed. Fabian Feminist: Bernard Shaw and Women-(1977)
Wisenthal, J.L. The Marriage of Contraries: Shaw's Middle Plays (1974)
Wilson, Colin Bernard Shaw: A reassessment (1968)

Journals
The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies,ed. Stanley Weintraub.
-
Modern Drama 2 (Sept 195 9) A Shaw number
The Shavian
The Shaw Review