My Fair Lady - sources and characters and more ►►
Plot Summary for My Fair Lady (1964) Source: imdb
Henry Higgins is a Professor of languages and a rather snobbish and arrogant man. A visiting colleague, Colonel Pickering, makes him a bet that he can't take a "commoner" and turn her into someone who would not be completely out of place in the social circles of upper-class English society.
Summary written by Murray Chapman {muzzle@cs.uq.oz.au}
Gloriously witty adaptation of the Broadway musical about Professor Henry Higgins, who takes a bet from Colonel Pickering that he can transform unrefined, dirty Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle into a lady, and fool everyone into thinking she really is one, too! He does, and thus young aristocrat Freddy Eynsford-Hill falls madly in love with her. But when Higgins takes all the credit and forgets to acknowledge her efforts, Eliza angrily leaves him for Freddy, and suddenly Higgins realizes he's grown accustomed to her face and can't really live without it.
Summary written by Tommy Peter
My Fair Lady, a musical adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion
First, the myth of Pygmalion….
Pygmalion was a gifted
sculptor from
When he had finished the statue, Pygmalion found it so lovely and the image of his ideal woman that he clothed the figure and adorned her in jewels even though she was an counterfeit creation. He gave the statue a name: Galatea, sleeping love. He found himself obsessed with his ideal woman so he went to the temple of the goddess Aphrodite to ask forgiveness for all the years he had shunned her and beg for a wife who would be as perfect as his statue.
Aphrodite was curious so she visited the studio of the sculptor while he was away and was charmed by his creation. Galatea was the image of Aphrodite, herself. Being flattered, Aphrodite brought the statue to life. When Pygmalion returned to his home, he found Galatea alive, and he humbled himself at her feet. Pygmalion and Galatea were wed, and Pygmalion never forget to thank Aphrodite for the gift she had given him. He and Galatea brought gifts to her temple throughout their life, and Aphrodite blessed them with happiness and love in return. Source
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Characters (Pygmalion ~ My Fair Lady) source Assignment: Elaborate on the role that language plays with some of the main characters of My Fair Lady. Consider both the characterisation and the extract from the script in the process. |
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Henry Higgins is a professor of phonetics who plays Pygmalion to Eliza Doolittle's Galatea. He is the author of Higgins' Universal Alphabet, believes in concepts like visible speech, and uses all manner of recording and photographic material to document his phonetic subjects, reducing people and their dialects into what he sees as readily understandable units. He is an unconventional man, who goes in the opposite direction from the rest of society in most matters. Indeed, he is impatient with high society, forgetful in his public graces, and poorly considerate of normal social niceties--the only reason the world has not turned against him is because he is at heart a good and harmless man. His biggest fault is that he can be a bully. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE GENTLEMAN [returning to his former place on the note taker's left] How do you do it, if I may ask? THE NOTE TAKER. Simply phonetics. The science of speech. Thats my profession: also my hobby. Happy is the man who can make a living by his hobby! Y o u can spot an Irishman or a Yorkshireman by his brogue. I can place any man within six miles. I can place him within two miles in London. Sometimes within two streets. LIZA. Ought to be ashamed of himself, unmanly coward! THE GENTLEMAN. But is there a living in that? THE NOTE TAKER. Oh yes. Quite a fat one. This is an age of upstarts who have to be taught to speak like ladies and gentlemen. Now I can teach them-- LIZA. Let him mind his own business and leave a poor girl-- THE NOTE TAKER [explosively] Woman: cease this detestable boohooing instantly; or else seek the shelter of some other place of worship. LIZA [with feeble defiance] Ive a right to be here if I like, same as you. THE NOTE TAKER. 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 Shakespear and Milton and The Bible; and dont sit there crooning like a bilious pigeon. |
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Eliza Doolittle - "She is not at all a romantic figure." So is she introduced in Act I. Everything about Eliza Doolittle seems to defy any conventional notions we might have about the romantic heroine. When she is transformed from a sassy, smart-mouthed kerbstone flower girl with deplorable English, to a (still sassy) regal figure fit to consort with nobility, it has less to do with her innate qualities as a heroine than with the fairy-tale aspect of the transformation myth itself. In other words, the character of Eliza Doolittle comes across as being much more instrumental than fundamental. The real (re-)making of Eliza Doolittle happens after the ambassador's party, when she decides to make a statement for her own dignity against Higgins' insensitive treatment. This is when she becomes, not a duchess, but an independent woman; and this explains why Higgins begins to see Eliza not as a mill around his neck but as a creature worthy of his admiration. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE MOTHER. You really are very helpless, Freddy. Go again; and dont come back until you have found a cab. FREDDY. Oh, very well: I'll go, I'll go. [He opens his umbrella and dashes off, but comes into collision with Liza, who is hurrying in for shelter, knocking her basket out of her hands. A blinding flash of lightning, followed instantly by a rattling peal of thunder, orchestrates the incident]. LIZA. Nah then, Freddy: look wh' y' gowin, deah. FREDDY. Sorry [he rushes off]. LIZA [picking up her scattered flowers and replacing them in the basket] Theres menners f' yer! Te-oo banches o voylets trod into the mad. [She sits down on the plinth of the column, sorting her flowers, on the lady's right]. |
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Colonel Pickering, the author of Spoken Sanskrit, is a match for Higgins (although somewhat less obsessive) in his passion for phonetics. But where Higgins is a boorish, careless bully, Pickering is always considerate and a genuinely gentleman. He says little of note in the play, and appears most of all to be a civilized foil to Higgins' barefoot, absentminded crazy professor. He helps in the Eliza Doolittle experiment by making a wager of it, saying he will cover the costs of the experiment if Higgins does indeed make a convincing duchess of her. However, while Higgins only manages to teach Eliza pronunciations, it is Pickering's thoughtful treatment towards Eliza that teaches her to respect herself. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE NOTE TAKER. You hear this creature with her kerbstone English: the English that will keep her in the gutter to the end of her days. Well, sir, in three months I could pass that girl off as a duchess at an ambassador's garden party. I could even get her a place as lady's maid or shop assistant, which requires better English. LIZA. What’s that you say? THE NOTE TAKER [turning crushingly on her] Yes, you squashed cabbage leaf, you disgrace to the noble architecture of these columns, you incarnate insult to the English language: I could pass you off as the Queen of Sheba. [To the Gentleman] Can you believe that? THE GENTLEMAN. Of course I can. I am myself a student of Indian dialects; and-- THE NOTE TAKER [eagerly] Are you? Do you know Colonel Pickering, the author of Spoken Sanscrit? THE GENTLEMAN. I a m Colonel Pickering. Who are you? THE NOTE TAKER. Henry Higgins, author of Higgins's Universal Alphabet. |
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Alfred Doolittle is Eliza's father, an elderly but vigorous dustman who has had at least six wives and who "seems equally free from fear and conscience." When he learns that his daughter has entered the home of Henry Higgins, he immediately pursues to see if he can get some money out of the circumstance. His unique brand of rhetoric, an unembarrassed, unhypocritical advocation of drink and pleasure (at other people's expense), is amusing to Higgins. Through Higgins' joking recommendation, Doolittle becomes a richly endowed lecturer to a moral reform society, transforming him from lowly dustman to a picture of middle class morality--he becomes miserable. Throughout, Alfred is a scoundrel who is willing to sell his daughter to make a few pounds, but he is one of the few unaffected characters in the play, unmasked by appearance or language. Though scandalous, his speeches are honest. At points, it even seems that he might be Shaw's voice piece of social criticism (Alfred's proletariat status, given Shaw's socialist leanings, makes the prospect all the more likely). --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DOOLITTLE [to Pickering] I thank you, Governor. [To Higgins, who takes refuge on the piano bench, a little overwhelmed by the proximity of his visitor; for Doolittle has a professional flavor of dust about him]. Well, the truth is, Ive taken a sort of fancy to you, Governor; and if you want the girl, I'm not so set on having her back home again but what I might be open to an arrangement. Regarded in the light of a young woman, shes a fine handsome girl. As a daughter shes not worth her keep; and so I tell you straight. All I ask is my rights as a father; and youre the last man alive to expect me to let her go for nothing; for I can see youre one of the straight sort, Governor. Well, whats a five pound note to you? And whats Eliza to me? [He returns to his chair and sits down judicially]. PICKERING. I think you ought to know, Doolittle, that Mr. Higgins's intentions are entirely honorable. DOOLITTLE. Course they are, Governor. If I thought they wasnt, Id ask fifty. |
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| Mrs. Higgins - Professor Higgins' mother, is a stately lady in her sixties who sees the Eliza Doolittle experiment as idiocy, and Higgins and Pickering as senseless children. She is the first and only character to have any qualms about the whole affair. When her worries prove true, it is to her that all the characters turn. Because no woman can match up to his mother, Higgins claims, he has no interest in dallying with them. To observe the mother of Pygmalion (Higgins), who completely understands all of his failings and inadequacies, is a good contrast to the mythic proportions to which Higgins builds himself in his self-estimations as a scientist of phonetics and a creator of duchesses. |
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All Characters: My Fair Lady (source)
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b) analyze what role language plays with individual characters c) put the findings of a) and b) into a wider context
My Fair Lady (source)
Close(d) Caption Transcript -------------------------------
Sorry, sir, I've already got it there. Over here, sir! Freddy, go and find a cab. - Watch out, ducky! - Get on with it, gov. Don't just stand there, Freddy. Go and find a cab. All right, I'll go. I'll go.
Pygmalion
Screenplay by George Bernard Shaw
First, a sky over chimney pots and church towers, with masses of thundercloud and a black cloud moving toward the sun.
Cut to:
Piccadilly Circus, London. Flower sellers (women in shawls with baskets) seated round the base of the Eros monument. Among them Liza Doolittle, the only young one. The rest are elderly or middle aged. All, including Liza, are too poorly clad and dirty to be attractive. Liza is a pathetic draggle tailed creature. She offers bunches of violets to the passers-by, like the rest; but there is no business, as the sky is darkening, and people are looking up anxiously at the clouds, loosening the bands of their umbrellas, and hurrying on. The flower sellers are still offering their wares; but no words can be distinguished through the traffic noises.
Cut to:
Liza and her next neighbor, an elderly woman. The audience now has a better look at Liza; but her good looks are not yet discoverable: she is dirty and her ill combed hair is dirty. Her shawl and skirt are old and ugly. Her boots are deplorable, her hat, an old black straw with a band of violets, indescribable. The older woman, though also dirty with London grime, and no better dressed, is slightly more disciplined by experience. She is busy packing her basket and covering it. Liza is listless, discouraged, and miserable.
OLD WOMAN. Now then, Liza: wake up. It’s going to rain something chronic. You going to sit there and get soaked? more .....
Sociolinguistics
course at University of Pennsylvania fall 1998
Dialect variation and its evaluation
The way that people talk depends on where they come from and where they belong in their society. Other people notice -- and evaluate -- ways of talking that are different from their own: in the (1916) preface to his play Pygmalion, George Bernard Shaw wrote that "[i]t is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him."
Why? Well, as the phonetician Henry Higgins says in the play's first act, "You can spot an Irishman or a Yorkshireman by his brogue. I can place any man within six miles. I can place him within two miles in London. Sometimes within two streets." In a society as conscious of hierarchy and origin as Shaw's England was, to "spot" someone in this sense is an evaluation -- and usually a negative or even hostile evaluation -- not just an observation. As Higgins puts it,
This is an age of upstarts. Men begin in Kentish Town with £80 a year, and end in Park Lane with a hundred thousand. They want to drop Kentish Town; but they give themselves away every time they open their mouths.
Higgins (along with his creator Shaw) shares his society's evaluation of the relative value of linguistic variants. Speaking to the cockney flower-peddler Eliza Doolittle, he says:
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 Shakespear and Milton and The Bible; and dont sit there crooning like a bilious pigeon.
Unlike many members of his society, Shaw saw class differences (and the speech patterns that mark them) as superficial and modifiable, rather than essential. As he wrote in another context, "[p]eople are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can't find them, make them." His character Higgins earns his living by teaching upwardly-mobile businessmen how to talk like their social "superiors," and asserts that he could do the same with Eliza:
You see this creature with her kerbstone English: the English that will keep her in the gutter to the end of her days. Well, sir, in three months I could pass that girl off as a duchess at an ambassador's garden party. I could even get her a place as lady's maid or shop assistant, which requires better English. Thats the sort of thing I do for commercial millionaires. And on the profits of it I do genuine scientific work in phonetics, and a little as a poet on Miltonic lines.
We think of today's America as a more egalitarian and tolerant place than Shaw's England was. However, it's still probably fair to say that "it is impossible for an American to open his mouth without making some other American hate or despise him."
Listen to these conversational examples of American dialects marked for region, class and race.