Summary Pygmalion J. Bernard Shaw
JB Shaw
Pygmalion
The play takes place in London. In the summer evening, the rain pours like a bucket. Passersby run to the Covent Garden Market and to the portico of the cathedral of St. Pavel, where several people have already taken refuge, including an elderly lady with a daughter, they are in the evening toilets, waiting for Freddie, the son of a lady, to find a taxi and come for them. All except one person with a notebook, eagerly peering into the streams of rain. Freddie appears in the distance, who has not found a taxi, and runs to the portico, but on the way he flies into the street flower girl, hurrying to hide from the rain, and rips out a basket of violets from her hands. That bursts into a scolding. A man with a notebook is writing something hastily. The girl laments that her falochka are gone, and begs the colonel standing right there to buy a bouquet. The one to get rid of, gives her a trifle, but does not take flowers. Someone from the passers-by draws the
Freddie’s mother sends her son back to look for a taxi. Soon, however, the rain stops, and she and her daughter go to the bus stop. The colonel shows interest in the abilities of a person with a notebook. He appears as Henry Higgins, the creator of the “Universal Higgins Alphabet.” Colonel is the author of the book “Conversational Sanskrit”. His name is Pickering. He lived in India for a long time and came to London specifically to get acquainted with Professor Higgins. The professor also always wanted to meet the colonel. They are already going to go to dinner with the colonel at the hotel, when the flower girl again begins to ask her to buy flowers from her. Higgins throws a handful of coins into her basket and leaves with the colonel. The flower girl
The next morning, Higgins at home shows Colonel Pickering his phonographic equipment. Suddenly Higgins’s housekeeper, Mrs. Pearce, reports that some very simple girl wants to talk with the professor. Included yesterday’s flower girl. She is represented by Eliza Doolittle and says she wants to take phonetics from the professor, for with her pronunciation she can not get a job. The day before, she had heard that Higgins was giving such lessons. Eliza is sure that he will gladly agree to work out the money that yesterday, without looking, threw it into her basket. Talk about such amounts to him, of course, funny, but Pickering offers Higgins a bet. He tries to convince him that in a matter of months he can, as he assured the day before, turn a street flower girl into a duchess. Higgins finds this proposal tempting, especially since Pickering is ready, if Higgins wins, to pay the entire cost of Elisa’s training. Mrs. Pearce leads Eliza to the bathroom.
After a while, Elgin’s father comes to Higgins. He’s a scavenger, a simple man, but he impresses the professor with his innate eloquence. Higgins asks Dulittle for permission to leave his daughter with him and gives him five pounds for it. When Eliza appears, already washed, in a Japanese dressing gown, the father at first does not even recognize her daughter. After a couple of months, Higgins leads Eliza into the house to her mother, just on her foster day. He wants to know whether it is already possible to introduce a girl into a secular society. Visiting Mrs. Higgins is Mrs. Ainsford Hill with her daughter and son. These are the same people with whom Higgins stood under the portico of the cathedral on the day when he first saw Eliza. However, they do not recognize the girl. Eliza at first behaves, and talks like a high-society lady, and then goes on to tell her story about her life and uses such street expressions, that all those present are only marveled. Higgins pretends that this is a new secular jargon, thus smoothing the situation. Eliza leaves the crowd, leaving Freddie in utter ecstasy.
After this meeting, he begins to send Eliza letters on ten pages. After the departure of the guests, Higgins and Pickering vied with each other, passionately tell Mrs. Higgins about how they deal with Eliza, how they teach her, take her to the opera, to the exhibitions, and dress. Mrs. Higgins finds that they treat a girl like a living doll. She agrees with Mrs. Pearce, who believes that they “do not think about anything.”
A few months later, both experimenters take Elisa out to a high society reception, where she has a dizzying success, everyone takes her for the Duchess. Higgins wins the bet.
Arriving home, he enjoys the fact that the experiment, from which he already managed to get tired, is finally over. He behaves and talks in his usual rude manner, not paying the slightest attention to Eliza. The girl looks very tired and sad, but at the same time she is dazzlingly beautiful. It is noticeable that irritation accumulates in it.
In the end, she runs into Higgins with his shoes. She wants to die. She does not know what will happen to her, how she should live. After all, she became a completely different person. Higgins says that everything will be formed. She, however, manages to hurt him, to put him out of balance and thereby, at least a little for himself, revenge.
At night Eliza escapes from the house. The next morning Higgins and Pickering lose their heads when they see that Eliza is not there. They even try to track her down with the help of the police. Higgins feels without Eliza as without hands. He does not know where his belongings lie, nor what his appointments are for the day of the matter. Mrs. Higgins is arriving. Then they report on the arrival of Eliza’s father. Doolittle was very changed. Now he looks like a well-to-do bourgeois. He indignantly attacks Higgins for the fact that through his fault he had to change his way of life and now become much less free than he was before. It turns out a few months ago, Higgins wrote to America one millionaire who founded around the world branches of the League for moral reform, that Doolittle, a simple scavenger, is now the most original moralist in all of England. He died, and before his death bequeathed Doolittle to his trust in his trust for three thousand annual income, provided that Doolittle will read up to six lectures a year in his League of Moral Reforms. He laments that today, for example, he even has to officially marry the one with whom he lived for several years without registering the relationship. And all this because he is now forced to look like a respectable bourgeois. Mrs. Higgins is very happy that her father can finally take care of her changed daughter, as she deserves. Higgins, however, does not want to hear about “returning” Doolittle Eliza. And all this because he is now forced to look like a respectable bourgeois. Mrs. Higgins is very happy that her father can finally take care of her changed daughter, as she deserves. Higgins, however, does not want to hear about “returning” Doolittle Eliza. And all this because he is now forced to look like a respectable bourgeois. Mrs. Higgins is very happy that her father can finally take care of her changed daughter, as she deserves. Higgins, however, does not want to hear about “returning” Doolittle Eliza.
Mrs. Higgins says she knows where Eliza is. The girl agrees to return, if Higgins asks her forgiveness. Higgins does not agree to this in any way. Eliza comes in. She expresses gratitude to Pickering for his treatment of her as a noble lady. It was he who helped Eliza to change, despite the fact that she had to live in the house of the rude, untidy and ill-bred Higgins. Higgins amazed. Eliza adds that if he continues to “press” her, she will go to Professor Nepin, a colleague of Higgins, and become his assistant and inform him of all the discoveries made by Higgins. After a surge of indignation, the professor finds that now her behavior is even better and more worthy than when she watched his things and brought him homemade shoes. Now, he is sure,
Eliza goes to her father’s wedding. Apparently, she will still live in Higgins’ house, because she managed to get attached to him, as he does to her, and everything will go as before.
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