Pygmalion

• Source: University of Bristol Theatre Collection
• Last modified by Michael Hope.

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Play description

Pygmalion is a play by George Bernard Shaw, named after a Greek mythological character who fell in love with one of his sculptures which later came to life.

It was first presented on stage to the public in 1913.

Professor of phonetics Henry Higgins makes a bet that he can train a bedraggled Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, to pass for a duchess at a ball by teaching her to assume a veneer of gentility, the most important element of which, he believes, is impeccable speech. The play is a sharp lampoon of the rigid British class system of the day and a commentary on women’s independence.

Shaw mentioned that the character of Professor Henry Higgins was inspired by several British professors of phonetics: Alexander Melville Bell, Alexander J. Ellis, Tito Pagliardini, but above all, the cantankerous Henry Sweet.

Photo credits