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Literature11 Pygmalion: Home

Introduction to the Author: George Bernard Shaw

Pygmalion, by George Bernard Shaw, was produced in German in 1913 in Vienna and was performed in England in 1914. The play is a humane comedy about love and the English class system.

Henry Higgins, a phonetician, accepts a bet that simply by changing the speech of a Cockney flower seller he will be able, in six months, to pass her off as a duchess. Eliza undergoes grueling training. When she successfully “passes” in high society—having in the process become a lovely young woman of sensitivity and taste—Higgins dismisses her abruptly as a successfully completed experiment. Eliza, who now belongs neither to the upper class, whose mannerisms and speech she has learned, nor to the lower class, from which she came, rejects his dehumanizing attitude.

The play became famous as a motion picture in 1938 and later as the stage musical My Fair Lady (1956).  A 1964 film version of the musical featured Audrey Hepburn.

Adapted from Encyclopaedia Britannica https://school.eb.com.au/levels/high/article/Pygmalion/486302 

History of George Bernard Shaw in Timeline [Duration: 4:26 mins]

George Bernard Shaw ( 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from the 1880s to his death and beyond. He wrote more than sixty plays, including major works such as Man and Superman (1902), Pygmalion (1912) and Saint Joan (1923). With a range incorporating both contemporary satire and historical allegory, Shaw became the leading dramatist of his generation, and in 1925 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

SOURCE: Hollywood Stars Biography (2021), posted on YouTube, https://youtu.be/vDfTZ7zRErc

George Bernard Shaw: Biography

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Acknowledgment

St Stephen's School acknowledges the contribution of

Mrs Maranne Purnell

the original creator of this guide.