Pygmalion
Assigned by 1 of the 9 reading lists, catalogue entry only
- Written
- 1912, staged 1913, published 1916
- Form
- Comedy
- Language
- English
- Length
- Short · 140 ppunder 120 pages
- Difficulty
- Approachable1 of 5 for a first-year reader
We recommendPygmalionPenguin Classics, 2003Includes the preface and the prose sequel in which Shaw explains why Eliza does not marry Higgins.
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Henry Higgins, a professor of phonetics, bets Colonel Pickering that in six months he can pass off Eliza Doolittle, a Covent Garden flower girl, as a duchess by teaching her to speak. He succeeds at an ambassador's party, then treats the triumph as his own and Eliza as a finished experiment. She walks out and confronts him with the question of what she is to become now that she is fit for neither her old life nor his. The play ends without the marriage the audience expects, and Shaw wrote a sequel insisting on the point.
No reading guide yet
The catalogue entry above is complete: the dates, the form, the themes and every program that assigns Pygmalion are verified against each program's published list.
What is missing is the part that takes real work: the summary, the key passages, and a recommended translation. The edition named below is the one most programs assign, so the buy links are useful already.
