Resumen
Resumen de Pygmalion
Para quién es
For readers who love sharp comedy about class, speech and manners, and anyone curious about how a change of voice transforms the way a person is treated.
De qué trata este libro
Pygmalion is a play in five acts by George Bernard Shaw. It was first staged in Vienna in 1913 and reached London in 1914. Shaw was an Irish playwright and a loud critic of his age, and he wrote it to make an audience laugh while it learned something uncomfortable. The play asks how much of a person is made by the way that person speaks.
The story begins on a rainy night in London. A professor of speech wagers that he can take a street flower seller and pass her off as a duchess, simply by changing her voice. What follows is a comedy of lessons, mistakes and social tests. It is also an argument about class, manners, money and respect. In the next fifteen minutes you will meet the main people, follow the bet as far as the play's last stretch, and see how Shaw builds his ideas into the scenes. We start under the portico of a church in Covent Garden, where the rain has trapped a crowd of strangers.
En este resumen
- 1Rain in Covent Garden starts the betFree
- 2A flower girl comes for lessons
- 3Doolittle and the price of a daughter
- 4Learning to speak is learning to be seen
- 5The test at Mrs Higgins's at-home
- 6What the play argues and how it is built
Idea clave 1 de 6
Rain in Covent Garden starts the bet
The play opens on a wet night outside St Paul's church in Covent Garden. Theatregoers shelter from the storm beside market people and passersby. Among them is a young flower girl named Eliza Doolittle, who speaks in a thick London accent and sells small bunches of violets. Her voice is loud, her vowels are crushed, and the well dressed people nearby hear in them nothing but poverty.
A stranger in the crowd is writing in a notebook. He is taking down, in special symbols, every sound the people around him make. This is Henry Higgins, a professor of phonetics, who can tell where a person was born, often within a street or two, just by listening. Eliza fears he is a police informer and cries out in alarm. The crowd, amused, watches him name the home district of one bystander after another.
Another man in the shelter is Colonel Pickering, a scholar of Indian dialects who has come to London hoping to meet Higgins. The two men are delighted with one another. Over a short talk they agree to dine together. Higgins boasts that in three months he could pass this flower girl off as a duchess at an ambassador's garden party.
Eliza hears all this, and the remark sticks in her mind. Higgins tosses coins into her basket, more than she has seen in a long time, and goes off with Pickering. The scene sets up everything. It shows a man who treats speech as a science, a girl whose future is limited by her sounds, and a challenge made half in jest. Shaw also makes clear that nobody here, least of all Higgins, has thought about what the bet might do to a living person.
That’s 1 of 6 key points.
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Who’s who
- Eliza Doolittle
- A proud Cockney flower seller who asks Higgins for speech lessons so she can work in a shop.
- Henry Higgins
- A brilliant but rude professor of phonetics who wagers with Pickering that he can transform Eliza's speech.
- Colonel Pickering
- A courteous scholar of Indian dialects who supports Higgins's experiment while treating Eliza with respect.
- Alfred Doolittle
- Eliza's outspoken father, a dustman, approaches Higgins hoping to profit from his daughter's new circumstances.
- Mrs Higgins
- Henry's sensible mother recognises the human problems that her son's experiment with Eliza creates.
- Mrs Pearce
- Higgins's practical housekeeper tries to maintain household order and protect Eliza from his thoughtlessness.
- Freddy Eynsford Hill
- A young gentleman with little money becomes charmed by Eliza when they meet at Mrs Higgins's home.
About this edition
Every format is free to start, and print and large print are at cost.
- LengthAbout 35,000 words
- Reading timeAbout 2 h 20 min
- FormatseBook, large-print eBook, audiobook, 15-minute summary; paperback, hardcover and large print at cost
- LanguagesEnglish and 13 other languages
Questions about Pygmalion
What is Pygmalion about?
It tells of a phonetics professor, Henry Higgins, who bets that he can teach a Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, to speak so well that she passes as a duchess. It looks at class, language and respect.
Why is the play called Pygmalion?
The title comes from a Greek myth, retold by Ovid, in which a sculptor loves a statue he has made and it comes to life. Shaw uses the idea of a creator shaping a person.
When was Pygmalion written and first performed?
Shaw wrote it in 1912 and early 1913. It was first staged in Vienna in 1913 and reached London in 1914. It is fiction, though it draws on real phonetics and English class habits.
What is the main message of Pygmalion?
Shaw argues that class depends largely on speech and manners rather than on inborn worth, and that people should be treated with respect, not as experiments or possessions.
Is Pygmalion hard to read?
No. It is a play with sharp, quick dialogue and plain scenes.