Pygmalion (Penguin plays & screenplays) (Paperback)

The central theme of Pygmalion is the gift of speech in human
beings. Shaw has tried to depict as to how a person speaks affects their own personality and the people around. As a corollary to this theme, Shaw hoped to popularize the science of phonetics. In the short preface of the play, Shaw also makes a plea for enhancement of the English alphabet (with it's too few vowels and few consonants) to make English reading pronunciation rational. Both his wishes of popularizing phonetics and getting the English alphabet enlarged remain unfulfilled even today, perhaps a measure of how much ahead of the times he was or still is!

The locale is London's Covent Garden vegetable market. The time is late night. It is pouring heavily, everybody is seeking the shelter of a church's portico. Among the shelter seekers is an impoverished, bedraggled flower girl Liza with a terrible cockney accent. Liza is trying to peddle her flowers to the crowd of shelter seekers. A middle- aged gentleman, professor Higgins is taking down her speech (in Bells Visible Speech) in his notebook. Professor Higgins is an eccentric phonetician, expert on London accents and can place a person by their accent to the street they originate from. One other shelter seeker is an ex-military man, Colonel Pickering (also middle aged) with a deep interest in phonetics. As professor Higgins Colonel Pickering get talking, Higgins bemoans the terrible accent of Liza (most depressing and disgusting sounds) and boasts that if given a chance to teach and train her to speak for three months, he could pass her off as a duchess on the basis of her fine way of speaking! It comes about that Colonel Pickering is willing to bear the expense of teaching Liza to speak by Higgins. The rest of the play is about Liza 'the live doll' learning to speak like a Duchess from two confirmed bachelors Higgins and Pickering and whether they are able to pass her off as a duchess.

The woman protagonist character of the play Liza like all Shaw's woman protagonist character is strong willed and assertive. Having to endure during her learning the overbearing ways, domineering mien, downright bullying from a socially superior Higgins her teacher, she manages to hold her own. In the latter stages of the play, she even manages to get the better of him and Higgins has to tamely acknowledge that he has made a 'woman' of her after all. (a lame defence) Although there is a romantic angle, (Liza and Freddy) the relationship between Liza vis-à-vis Higgins and Pickering are pivotal, focal relationships of the play. The Liza, Freddy romance is a relegated affair. I feel only Shaw could do this i.e. make a non-romantic relationship so interesting over the other. But then Shaw loved debunking popular notions. All in all a much readable play.