“The difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she’s treated.”
—George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion
“What is life but a series of inspired follies? The difficulty is to find them to do. Never lose a chance: it doesn’t come every day.”
—George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion
“The greatest British dramatist since Shakespeare.”
—The Guardian
A chance meeting between Henry Higgins, a professor of phonetics, and Cockney flower seller Eliza Doolittle leads to a bet that he can teach her how to speak proper English. While Higgins undertakes an effort to train Liza out of her Cockney accent to prove that it is one’s manner of speaking that determines one’s opportunities, Liza’s refreshing candor and generosity of spirit effect a change in Higgins. Beguiling, relatable, and engaging, Pygmalion is an uproariously funny and ultimately touching tale of mutual transformation. All the while, beneath its irresistible charm, it offers a scathing critique of class, entitlement, and social prejudice.
Ever since its wildly popular first production in 1913, Pygmalion has amused and entertained audiences the world over and has become one of the most adapted plays of all time. In 1938 Shaw provided the screenplay for a filmed version of Pygmalion for which he received an Academy Award. In 1956 Pygmalion was adapted into a musical entitled My Fair Lady starring Rex Harrison as Higgins and Julie Andrews as Eliza. The 1964 filmed version starred Audrey Hepburn as Eliza and Rex Harrison as Higgins.
This Warbler Classics edition is an unabridged republication of the text of the play as published by Constable and Company, London, in 1916. The original Preface and Sequel are included. Shaw’s own quirks of spelling and punctuation, about which he felt strongly, have been preserved. Also included is an extensive biographical timeline.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW (1856–1950) was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist, journalist, and political activist. Unrivaled in his lifetime and since as the leading English-language dramatist of the twentieth century, Shaw was a master of prose style. He wrote more than sixty plays, among them Man and Superman (1902), Pygmalion (1913), and Saint Joan (1923). He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925.
