ACT 1
Commentary
This act is carefully constructed to portray a representative slice of
society, in which characters from vastly different strata of society who would
normally keep apart are brought together by untoward weather. It is no
coincidence that this happens at the end of a show at the theater, drawing our
attention to the fact that the ensuing plot will be highly theatrical, that its
fantastic quality is gleaned from the illusionary magic of theater. While the
transformation of Eliza in the play focuses on speech, each one of her
subsequent tests is also something highly theatrical, depending on the visual
impact she makes, and how she moves. The highly visual, on top of aural
(therefore, altogether theatrical), way in which the flower girl is made into a
duchess is emphasized right from this opening act. Under these terms, it should
help us to think about the comparison of the artificial makeover of Eliza
Doolittle that the phonetics scientist can achieve, to the genuine increase in
self-esteem that the considerate gentleman can bestow upon her.
The confusion of the thunderstorm foreshadows the social confusion that will
ensue when Higgins decides to play god with the raw material that the
unschooled flower girl presents to him. In this act, everyone is introduced in
very categorized roles. In this scene, Shaw introduces almost all his major
characters, but refers to them by role rather than name in his stage
directions: Note-Taker, The Flower Girl, The Daughter, The Gentleman, etc.
Furthermore, his stage directions describing where characters stand with every
line, particularly in relation to other characters, come across as more than
fastidious in their detail. All this evokes a society whose members have rigid
relations to one another. The odd, seemingly irrelevant episode when The Mother
gives the Flower Girl money to find out how she knew her son's name shows the
Mother's fear that her son might be associating with the wrong sort. The
incident also conflates a real name with a common term that can apply to
anyone; Freddy is for a moment both term and character. By the end of the act,
The Note-Taker, The Gentleman, and The Flower Girl have become Higgins,
Pickering, and Eliza, respectively. This move will continue through the length
of the play, where a less visible blooming of real persons out of mere social
positions occurs. If Higgins is one kind of Pygmalion who makes a flower girl a
duchess, Shaw is a grander, more total Pygmalion who can will transform mere
titles into human names.
Remembering that
Pygmalion is subtitled "A Romance in Five
Acts," this act strikes us as a rather odd, unceremonious way of
introducing the heroes of a romance. For starters, the heroine is described as
being "not at all a romantic figure." The hero calls the heroine a
"squashed cabbage leaf," while she can do no better than
"Ah-ah-ah-ow-ow-ow-oo" back at him. The impression she makes on him
is abstract (as an interesting phonetic subject) while that which he makes on
her is monetary (he throws her some change), so that we get no indication at
all that any feelings of affection will eventually develop between these two.
Indeed, we must see the play as a deliberate attempt by Shaw to undo the myth
of Pygmalion, and, more importantly, the form of the romance itself. Bearing
this in mind, it is possible to approach the rest of the play without a
preconceived idea of how a romantic play should conclude, and to notice, as
Shaw intends, that there are more utilitarian than romantic aspects to the
characters' relationships with one another.
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ACT 2
Commentary
Even though Higgins is immediately obvious as the Pygmalion figure in this
play, what this act reveals is that there is no way his phonetic magic could do
a complete job of changing Eliza on its own. What we see here is that Mrs.
Pearce and Colonel Pickering are also informal Pygmalions, and with much less
braggadocio (the alliteration of Pygmalion, Pearce, and Pickering would support
this notion). Only with Mrs. Pearce working on the girl's appearance and
manners, and with Pickering working, albeit unknowingly, on her self-respect
and dignity, will Eliza Doolittle become a whole duchess package, rather than
just a rough-mannered common flower girl who can parrot the speech of a
duchess. We learn in this scene, quite significantly, that while Higgins may be
a brilliant phonetician, Mrs. Pearce finds fault with his constant swearing,
forgetful manners, quarrelsome nature, and other unpleasant habits. His own
hold on polite respectability is tenuous at best, and it is only his
reputation, and his fundamental lack of malice that keeps him from being
disliked by others. If Higgins cannot be a Pygmalion on his own, and is such an
untidy, mannerless Pygmalion at that, then the obvious question posed to us is
if Pygmalion, the transformer of others, can himself be transformed. Implicit
in this question is another: whether it could be imperviousness to change,
rather than superior knowledge, which differentiates Pygmalion from Galatea.
This act shows Higgins as an incorrigible scientist. He is not only
"violently interested in everything that can be studied as a scientific
subject," but interested in them only as subjects of scientific study. For
that reason, when "quite a common girl" is said to at his door,
Higgins thinks it is a lucky happenstance that will allow him to show
Pickering the way he
works. When he sees it is Eliza, he chases her away, for, having learned all he
can about the Lisson Grove accent, he cannot see how she can be of any more use
to him. Later, his mind seizes upon her as being "no use to anybody but
me." And when Alfred Doolittle is announced, Higgins is not worried about
the trouble, but looks forward instead to listening to this new accent. He
displays such a dogged determination and exaggerated focus on his work that it
is hard to tell if Shaw wants to make fun of this character or put it on a
pedestal. In either case, there is no denying that Higgins makes an absolutely
inept romantic hero. For him, if women do not inform his science in any way,
"they might as well be blocks of wood." Eliza's criticism comes
well-deserved--"Oh, you've no feeling heart in you: you don't care for
nothing but yourself." Even Mrs. Pearce chides him for treating people
like objects--"Well, the matter is, sir, that you can't take a girl up
like that as if you were picking up a pebble on the beach."
Alfred Doolittle is one of those delightful, quintessential characters that
populate all of Shaw's plays. He makes the most iconoclastic, scandalous
statements, but all with such wit and humor that we cannot help but find his
ideas attractive. In this act, Doolittle performs the extra role of inspiring
Higgins break off in the middle of their conversation to analyze Doolittle's
language and comment that "this chap has a certain natural gift of
rhetoric." This unnatural break to the flow of talk forces us to pay a
similar attention to all the rhetoric of the play.
