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THE MYTH OF PYGMALION. This story was told by the Roman poet Ovid in a book called Metamorphoses. Pygmalion was a prince of Cyprus, a hater of women, and a very talented sculptor. Resolving that he would never marry, Pygmalion created a marble statue of a woman so beautiful that no living woman approached her allure.
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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.
- Summary: Act 1 Summary
- Summary: Act 2 Summary
- Summary: Act 3 Summary
- Summary: Act 4 Summary
- Summary: Act 5 Summary
- Appearances and Reality
- Beauty
- Change and Transformation
- Identity
- Language and Meaning
- Sex Roles
- Henry Higgins
- Eliza Doolittle
- Colonel Pickering
- Alfred Doolittle
- Mrs. Higgins
- Freddy Eynsford Hill
- Mrs. Eynsford Hill
- Miss Clara Eynsford Hill
- Mrs. Pearce
- Nepommuck
- Alfred Doolittle
- Eliza Doolittle
- Henry Higgins
- Mrs. Higgins
- Frederick Eynsford Hill
- Mrs. Eynsford Hill
- Mrs. Pearce
- Colonel Pickering
- Critical Essays: Critical Evaluation
- Critical Essays: Pygmalion
- Critical Essays: Critical Overview
- Essays and Criticism: Pygmalion and Shaw's Other Great Works
- Essays and Criticism: The Ending of Pygmalion: A Structural View
- *London
- *St. Paul’s Cathedral
- Mrs. Higgins’s home
- World War I
- Plotting with a Purpose
- Intellect vs. Entertainment
- Romance
- Analysis: Topics for Further Study
- Analysis: What Do I Read Next?
- Questions and Answers: What is the significance of Pygmalion's title?
The action begins at 11:15 p.m. in a heavy summer rainstorm. An after-theatre crowd takes shelter in the portico of St. Paul's Church in Covent Garden. A young girl, Clara Eynsford Hill, and her mother are waiting for Clara's brother Freddy, who looks in vain for an available cab. Colliding into flower peddler Liza Doolittle, Freddy scatters her fl...
The next morning at 11 a.m. in Higgins's laboratory, which is full of instruments, Higgins and Pickering receive Liza, who has presented herself at the door. Higgins is taken aback by Liza's request for lessons from him. She wants to learn to "talk more genteel" so she can be employed in a flower shop instead of selling flowers on the street. Liza ...
The setting is the flat of Mrs. Higgins, Henry's mother. Henry bursts in with a flurry of excitement, much to the distress of his mother, who finds him lacking in social graces (she observes that her friends "stop coming whenever they meet you"). Henry explains that he has invited Liza, taking the opportunity for an early test of his progress with ...
Midnight, in Henry's laboratory. Higgins, Pickering, and Liza return from the party. Higgins loudly bemoans the evening: "What a crew! What a silly tomfoolery!" Liza grows more and more frustrated as he continues to complain ("Thank God it's over!"), not paying attention to her or acknowledging her role in his triumph. Complaining about not being a...
Mrs. Higgins's drawing room, the next day. Henry and Pickering arrive, and while they are downstairs phoning the police about Liza's disappearance, Mrs. Higgins asks the chambermaid to warn Liza, taking shelter upstairs, not to come down. Mrs. Higgins scolds Henry and Pickering for their childishness and the careless manner in which they treated an...
Pygmalion examines this theme primarily through the character of Liza, and the issue of personal identity (as perceived by oneself or by others). Social roles in the Victorian era were viewed as natural and largely fixed: there was perceived to be something inherently, fundamentally unique about a noble versus an unskilled laborer and vice versa. L...
In Pygmalion, Shaw interrogates beauty as a subjective value. One's perception of beauty in another person is shown to be a highly complex matter, dependent on a large number of (not always aesthetic) factors. Liza, it could be argued, is the same person from the beginning of the play to the end, but while she is virtually invisible to Freddy as a ...
The transformation of Liza is, of course, central to the plot and theme of Pygmalion. The importance at first appears to rest in the power Higgins expresses by achieving this transformation. "But you have no idea," he says, "how frightfully interesting it is to take a human being and change her into a quite different human being by creating a new s...
The indeterminacy of appearance and reality in Pygmalion reveals the significant examination of identity in the play. Shaw investigates conflicts between differing perceptions of identity and depicts the end result of Higgins's experiment as a crisis of identity for Liza. Liza's transformation is glorious but painful, as it leaves her displaced bet...
In an age of growing standardization of what was known as "the Queen's English," Pygmalion points to a much wider range of varieties of spoken English. Shaw believed characteristics of social identity such as one's refinement of speech were completely subjective ones, as his play suggests. While Shaw himself hated poor speech and the varieties of d...
Sex and gender have a great deal to do with the dynamics between Liza and Higgins, including the sexual tension between them that many audience members would have liked to see fulfilled through a romantic union between them. In Liza's difficult case, what are defined as her options are clearly a limited subset of options available to a woman. As Mr...
Henry Higgins, a linguistic scientist. A robust and handsome forty-year-old bachelor, Higgins is violently enthusiastic about anything scientific, but he is absolutely uncivilized in his relations with people. Although he firmly believes himself to be kindhearted and considerate, he is a bad-tempered and profane bully. Even so, his frankness and la...
Eliza Doolittle, the flower girl. Dirty and ignorant, Eliza comes to Higgins and pathetically begs him to teach her to speak well enough to run a respectable flower shop. He teaches her to speak like a noblewoman. Grown fond of Higgins and grateful to him, Eliza tries to please him and is ignored. Higgins thinks it unnatural for Eliza to have feeli...
Colonel Pickering, a linguist who has traveled to London from India to see Higgins. An elderly, amiable soldier, Pickering is as confirmed a bachelor as Higgins, but he is a gentleman who treats Eliza with respect and helps to moderate Higgins’ mistreatment of her.
Alfred Doolittle, a dustman, Eliza’s father. One of the “undeserving poor,” Doolittle is distinguished by a good voice, an original mind, and a complete absence of conscience. He plans to blackmail Higgins, mistakenly thinking that Higgins has taken Eliza as his mistress. Higgins and Pickering are so delighted by the scoundrel’s straightforwardness...
Mrs. Higgins, Henry’s mother, a woman of taste. She has asked her barbaric son to stay away when she is receiving guests. Her poise and competence help to bring some order into the lives of those around her.
Freddy Eynsford Hill, the uneducated and unintelligent son of an impoverished noble family. He loves Eliza and haunts the street by Higgins’ house to catch a glimpse of her. He marries her at last and submits to her benevolent despotism.
Mrs. Eynsford Hill, Freddy’s mother. Quiet and well-bred, Mrs. Hill is plagued by the anxieties natural to an aristocrat without money. Because of her poverty, her children have neither education nor sophistication.
Miss Clara Eynsford Hill, Freddy’s sister. An ignorant, pretentious, and useless snob, Clara is at length redeemed by reading the works of H. G. Wells and becoming a critic of society. In that role, her gaucheness is an asset.
Mrs. Pearce, Henry Higgins’ housekeeper, a very proper and very middle-class woman. Mrs. Pearce, by sheer force of will, enforces a semblance of order and propriety in Higgins’ house.
Nepommuck, a spectacularly bewhiskered Hungarian. At the embassy reception at which Eliza is passed off as nobility, Nepommuck, a former pupil of Higgins who makes his living as a translator, testifies that Eliza is certainly of royal blood, perhaps a princess.
Alfred is Liza's father, whom Shaw describes as "an elderly but vigorous dustman.... He has well marked and rather interesting features, and seems equally free from fear or conscience. He has a remarkably expressive voice, the result of a habit of giving vent to his feelings without reserve." Doolittle describes himself as the "undeserving poor," w...
A cockney flower girl of around 18 or 20 years of age, Eliza is streetwise and energetic. She is not educated by traditional standards, but she is intelligent and a quick learner. As she presents herself in her "shoddy coat" at Higgins's laboratory, Shaw describes the "pathos of this deplorable figure, with its innocent vanity and consequential air...
Henry Higgins is an expert in phonetics and the author of "Higgins's Universal Alphabet." Shaw describes him as "a robust, vital, appetizing sort of man of forty or thereabouts.... 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 ot...
Henry's mother, a generous and gracious woman. She is frequently exasperated by her son's lack of manners and completely sympathizes with Liza when the girl leaves Higgins and takes shelter with her. She is perceptive and intelligent, and capable of putting Henry in his place. It is indicative of Mrs. Higgins's character that after the conflict bet...
Freddy is an upper-class young man of around 20, somewhat weak although eager and good-natured. Proper and upstanding, he is infatuated with Liza and thoroughly devoted to her both before and after she takes shelter with him in an all-night cab after leaving Higgins. Liza claims to be going back to him at the end of the play, an idea which Higgins ...
In ancient Greek mythology, Pygmalion was a Cyprian sculptor who created a statue of a woman and subsequently fell in love with it. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Pygmalion is shown as an uptight artist who is judgmental about the way women in his town conduct themselves (he blames Aphrodite, the goddess of love). However, he ends up falling in love with...
In ancient Greek mythology, Pygmalion was a Cyprian sculptor who created a statue of a woman and subsequently fell in love with it. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Pygmalion is shown as an uptight artist who is judgmental about the way women in his town conduct themselves (he blames Aphrodite, the goddess of love). However, he ends up falling in love with...
In ancient Greek mythology, Pygmalion was a Cyprian sculptor who created a statue of a woman and subsequently fell in love with it. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Pygmalion is shown as an uptight artist who is judgmental about the way women in his town conduct themselves (he blames Aphrodite, the goddess of love). However, he ends up falling in love with...
In ancient Greek mythology, Pygmalion was a Cyprian sculptor who created a statue of a woman and subsequently fell in love with it. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Pygmalion is shown as an uptight artist who is judgmental about the way women in his town conduct themselves (he blames Aphrodite, the goddess of love). However, he ends up falling in love with...
In ancient Greek mythology, Pygmalion was a Cyprian sculptor who created a statue of a woman and subsequently fell in love with it. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Pygmalion is shown as an uptight artist who is judgmental about the way women in his town conduct themselves (he blames Aphrodite, the goddess of love). However, he ends up falling in love with...
In ancient Greek mythology, Pygmalion was a Cyprian sculptor who created a statue of a woman and subsequently fell in love with it. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Pygmalion is shown as an uptight artist who is judgmental about the way women in his town conduct themselves (he blames Aphrodite, the goddess of love). However, he ends up falling in love with...
In ancient Greek mythology, Pygmalion was a Cyprian sculptor who created a statue of a woman and subsequently fell in love with it. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Pygmalion is shown as an uptight artist who is judgmental about the way women in his town conduct themselves (he blames Aphrodite, the goddess of love). However, he ends up falling in love with...
In ancient Greek mythology, Pygmalion was a Cyprian sculptor who created a statue of a woman and subsequently fell in love with it. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Pygmalion is shown as an uptight artist who is judgmental about the way women in his town conduct themselves (he blames Aphrodite, the goddess of love). However, he ends up falling in love with...
In ancient Greek mythology, Pygmalion was a Cyprian sculptor who created a statue of a woman and subsequently fell in love with it. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Pygmalion is shown as an uptight artist who is judgmental about the way women in his town conduct themselves (he blames Aphrodite, the goddess of love). However, he ends up falling in love with...
In ancient Greek mythology, Pygmalion was a Cyprian sculptor who created a statue of a woman and subsequently fell in love with it. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Pygmalion is shown as an uptight artist who is judgmental about the way women in his town conduct themselves (he blames Aphrodite, the goddess of love). However, he ends up falling in love with...
In ancient Greek mythology, Pygmalion was a Cyprian sculptor who created a statue of a woman and subsequently fell in love with it. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Pygmalion is shown as an uptight artist who is judgmental about the way women in his town conduct themselves (he blames Aphrodite, the goddess of love). However, he ends up falling in love with...
In ancient Greek mythology, Pygmalion was a Cyprian sculptor who created a statue of a woman and subsequently fell in love with it. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Pygmalion is shown as an uptight artist who is judgmental about the way women in his town conduct themselves (he blames Aphrodite, the goddess of love). However, he ends up falling in love with...
In ancient Greek mythology, Pygmalion was a Cyprian sculptor who created a statue of a woman and subsequently fell in love with it. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Pygmalion is shown as an uptight artist who is judgmental about the way women in his town conduct themselves (he blames Aphrodite, the goddess of love). However, he ends up falling in love with...
In ancient Greek mythology, Pygmalion was a Cyprian sculptor who created a statue of a woman and subsequently fell in love with it. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Pygmalion is shown as an uptight artist who is judgmental about the way women in his town conduct themselves (he blames Aphrodite, the goddess of love). However, he ends up falling in love with...
In ancient Greek mythology, Pygmalion was a Cyprian sculptor who created a statue of a woman and subsequently fell in love with it. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Pygmalion is shown as an uptight artist who is judgmental about the way women in his town conduct themselves (he blames Aphrodite, the goddess of love). However, he ends up falling in love with...
In ancient Greek mythology, Pygmalion was a Cyprian sculptor who created a statue of a woman and subsequently fell in love with it. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Pygmalion is shown as an uptight artist who is judgmental about the way women in his town conduct themselves (he blames Aphrodite, the goddess of love). However, he ends up falling in love with...
In ancient Greek mythology, Pygmalion was a Cyprian sculptor who created a statue of a woman and subsequently fell in love with it. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Pygmalion is shown as an uptight artist who is judgmental about the way women in his town conduct themselves (he blames Aphrodite, the goddess of love). However, he ends up falling in love with...
In ancient Greek mythology, Pygmalion was a Cyprian sculptor who created a statue of a woman and subsequently fell in love with it. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Pygmalion is shown as an uptight artist who is judgmental about the way women in his town conduct themselves (he blames Aphrodite, the goddess of love). However, he ends up falling in love with...
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Overview. George Bernard Shaw’ s Pygmalion, first premiered in 1913, is a satirical play that investigates issues of class, identity, and social mobility. The plot centers around Professor Henry Higgins, a phonetics expert, who takes on the challenge of transforming Eliza Doolittle, a Cockney flower girl, into a refined lady.
Aug 7, 2024 · Premium PDF. Download the entire Pygmalion study guide as a printable PDF! Download Related Questions. See all. Significance of the Title "Pygmalion" and Its Mythological and Romantic Elements ...
Pygmalion is a comedy about a phonetics expert who, as a kind of social experiment, attempts to make a lady out of an uneducated Cockney flower-girl. Although not as intellectually complex as some of the other plays in Shaw's "theatre of ideas," Pygmalion nevertheless probes important questions about social class, human
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