Showing results for title "Pygmalion", by author "George Bernard Shaw" in Ancient, Classical & Medieval Literature

In the Greek legend, a sculptor, Pygmalion, created a statue of a woman so beautiful that he fell in love with it. Later the goddess Aphrodite responded to his earnest prayers and brought the statue, named Galatea, to life. Shaw's Pygmalion is a fussy unmarried professor of phonetics, Henry Higgins, who claims that he could train an uneducated person off the street to speak so that he or she could pass as a member of the aristocracy. His Galatea is Eliza Doolittle, who sells flowers at Covent Garden and whose father is a dissipated but cunning vagrant.

The play begins on a summer evening at Covent Garden in London. Suddenly, pouring torrential rain, takes pedestrians by surprise, forcing them to take refuge under the portal of the Cathedral of St. Paul. Among them are phonetics professor Henry Higgins and a researcher of Indian dialects, Colonel Pickering, who came specially from India to see the professor. The encounter delights them both.

A Cockney flower girl is transformed into a charming woman of the world by a professor of phonetics. This is the play that was later to be adapted as the musical, My Fair Lady.

Pygmalion is a play by George Bernard Shaw, named after the Greek mythological figure. In ancient Greek mythology, Pygmalion fell in love with one of his sculptures, which then came to life. The general idea of that myth was a popular subject for Victorian era British playwrights. Shaw's play has been adapted numerous times, most notably as the 1938 film Pygmalion, the 1956 musical My Fair Lady and its 1964 film version.