GEORGE BERNARD SHAW – PYGMALION
Type of book: comedy for playing on stage
Setting: It takes place in the city of London in the first half of 20th century.
What happens?: Professor of phonetics and old bachelor Mr. Higgins makes a bet with his friend Colonel Pickering that he can turn a flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, into a lady. They teach her how to speak with an upper class accent and train her in etiquette. Eliza is really changing and she charms all people on ambassadorial ball. So Higgins won in a bet and he doesn’t care about Eliza now. Eliza can’t work in a street after all these things so Higgins’s mother helps her. The young man called Freddy falls in love with Eliza. Higgins and Pickering realized that they miss her. They offer her to come back and live with them again, but she give precedence to Freddy and decide to marry him. In story, Eliza’s father appears. He doesn’t care about her, but he wants to earn some money from her situation.
Adaptations: Pygmalion is the most popular and the most played comedy, which was made to a film several times and even it was made to a musical with a lot of after adaptations. The first film based on this play was filmed by Shaw in 1938. However, the best adaptation is maybe My fair lady, a film version of the Broadway musical. It stars Audrey Hepburn in the title role of Eliza Doolittle and Rex Harrison in the role of Mr. Higgins. My fair lady is also popular in Czech Republic, maybe someone knows musical My fair lady ze Zelňáku (My fair lady from Zelňák). Some parts of Pygmalion were used even in the serial The Simpsons.
My opinion: I enjoy this book, because there are only dialogues and no long describing of people, rooms or places. What I like best is author’s humour used even in single words.
I can’t find one thing in it, which I don’t like. I would say, that film adaptation My fair lady is perfect as well as a book. Especially, the role of Eliza is played terrific by Audrey Hepburn. Ultimately, I enjoy even the music in spite of I don’t like musicals so much. I recommend the book and the film to everyone, who likes lite and intelligent humour.