
- Publisher:
- ALMA CLASSICS
- Year of publication:
- 2021
- ISBN:
- 978-1-84749-859-5
- Pages:
- 144
PYGMALION: 1941 VERSION WITH VARIANTS FROM THE 1916 EDITION
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
When professor of phonetics Henry Higgins wagers with Colonel Pickering that he could teach even a gutter-mouthed flower seller how to speak like a duchess, little does he expect that his social experiment will be riddled with difficulties, and that behind her cockney parlance the girl in question, Eliza Doolittle, has a mind, ideas and aspirations of her own. Things come to a crux when the creature starts to rebel against her creator - and the scene is set for a play that questions the class system, social appearances and the role of women in society. Universally regarded as Shaw's most successful work, Pygmalion - here presented in its definitive 1941 version, with footnotes indicating the textual variants from the first volume edition of 1916 - has spawned a great number of adaptations, among them the famous 1956 Broadway musical My Fair Lady, and shows ancient myth's undiminished ability to find new incarnations in modern life.