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Pygmalion Adoring His Statue by Jean Raoux, 1717. In Greek mythology, Pygmalion (/ pɪɡˈmeɪliən /; Ancient Greek: Πυγμαλίων Pugmalíōn, gen.: Πυγμαλίωνος) was a legendary figure of Cyprus. He is most familiar from Ovid 's narrative poem Metamorphoses, in which Pygmalion was a sculptor who fell in love with a statue he ...
Pygmalion derives its name from the famous story in Ovid's Metamorphoses, in which Pygmalion, disgusted by the loose and shameful lives of the women of his era, decides to live alone and unmarried. With wondrous art, he creates a beautiful statue more perfect than any living woman. The more he looks upon her, the more deeply he falls in love ...
Shaw’s play Pygmalion (1913) obviously takes its title from the myth, but Shaw inverts this love story: in Shaw’s Pygmalion a real woman is turned into a statue, a ‘mechanical doll who resembles a duchess’ in the words of the theatre critic Michael Billington. As Shaw makes clear in the epilogue to the play, Eliza makes a carefully considered decision not to marry Professor Higgins ...
Pygmalion. Full Play Summary. Two old gentlemen meet in the rain one night at Covent Garden. Professor Higgins is a scientist of phonetics, and Colonel Pickering is a linguist of Indian dialects. The first bets the other that he can, with his knowledge of phonetics, convince high London society that, in a matter of months, he will be able to ...
- Bernard Shaw
- 1912
Shaw's play takes its title from the myth of Pygmalion, which is told in Ovid's epic Latin poem of mythological transformations, the Metamorphoses. In the myth, Pygmalion makes a sculpture of his ideal woman, named Galatea. He falls in love with his beautiful statue, which then comes to life.
The title of Shaw’s play alludes to the classical myth of Pygmalion, a Cretan king who fell in love with his own sculpture. She was transformed into a woman, Galatea, by Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love. But here again, as Billington observes, Shaw inverts this love story: in Pygmalion a woman is turned into a statue, a ‘mechanical doll ...
Sep 25, 2024 · Pygmalion, romance in five acts by George Bernard Shaw, produced in German in 1913 in Vienna. It was performed in England in 1914, with Mrs. Patrick Campbell as Eliza Doolittle. The play is a humane comedy about love and the English class system. Learn more about the play in this article.
