Pygmalion, written in 1912 by George Bernard Shaw and first performed two years later, tells the story of Henry Higgins, a professor of phonetics (speech), who bets his friend that he can pass off a poor flower girl with a Cockney accent as a duchess by teaching her to speak with an upper class accent. In addition to being a playwright, Shaw was a theater critic, an essayist, a lifelong socialist and advocate for the working class, and, like Higgins, something of a phonetician. Given the scope of his interests, it should come as no surprise that he had a lot to say about a lot of things. Pygmalion, like most of Shaws plays, is didactic. That is, its meant to teach the audience about something. In this case, Shaw wants us to think about the problems caused by our common language, and how language can separate people from different places and classes, even different parts of the same town. In his preface to the play, entitled, A Professor of Phonetics, he writes, The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it. They spell it so abominably that no man can teach himself what it sounds like (source). Seems like hes about ready to yell, We have a failure to communicate! Well, instead of screaming, he wrote Pygmalion. (He called for the creation of an improved system of spelling English, but, thankfully, it didnt catch on. You can read more about it in Trivia.) Its easy to sympathize with Shaw, though. If youve ever had trouble understanding someone because his accent was different than yours, or had trouble pronouncing an unfamiliar word (why does subtle have a b in it anyway?), you probably know what Shaws talking about: sometimes English doesnt really make much sense, even to native speakers. When you consider that Shaw was writing at a time when the British Empire was still around, when people from all over the globe were expected and sometimes forced to communicate in English, and the situation only becomes more complicated. All this talk about language is only the beginning, though. Shaw uses it as a base to discuss other issues: problems about society, class, and gender. No need to get overwhelmed right off the bat, though. Its best to take it slow and start with words. Thats where all literature begins, right? Given that we can all relate to these problems, however, its no surprise that Pygmalion was and is extremely popular. Most people know the plot from My Fair Lady, the musical film adaptation of Shaws play (sorry to say, theres no rain in Spain falling mainly on the plain in the original), and its been parodied by everyone from The Three Stooges to The Simpsons and Family Guy. Shaw also wrote the Academy Award-winning screenplay for the 1938 film version, making him the only person ever to win both an Oscar and the Nobel Prize in Literature. Pretty good for a play about a grouchy professor and a poor flower girl, no?
Posted on: Fri, 21 Mar 2014 13:10:06 +0000
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