FREE ESSAY ON PYGMALION ACT 1

PYGMALION ACT 1

In the preface Shaw describes the Oxford phonetician Henry Sweet, on whom
Professor Higgins is modeled, but warns us that Higgins is not a portrait of Sweet. Shaw
says that he wrote the play in order to make the English aware of the importance of
phonetics, and he is grateful that the play has been a great success on the stage. He
complains that the way English is written has little to do with the way it is
pronounced,
and he pleads for a new alphabet and a reform in spelling.
A heavy late-night summer thunderstorm opens the play. Caught in the unexpected
downpour, passersby from distinct strata of the London streets are forced to seek
shelter
together under the portico of St Paul's church in Covent Garden. The hapless Son is
forced by his demanding sister and mother to go out into the rain to find a taxi even
though there is none to be found. In his hurry, he knocks over the basket of a common
Flower Girl, who says to him, Nah then, Freddy: look wh' y' gowin, deah. After Freddy
leaves, the mother gives the Flower Girl money to ask how she knew her son's name, only
to learn that Freddy is a common by-word the Flower Girl would have used to address
anyone.
An elderly military Gentleman enters from the rain, and the Flower Girl tries to sell
him a flower. He gives her some change, but a bystander tells her to be careful, for it
looks
like there is a police informer taking copious notes on her activities. This leads to
hysterical protestations on her part, that she is only a poor girl who has done no
wrong.
The refugees from the rain crowd around her and the Note Taker, with considerable
hostility towards the latter, whom they believe to be an undercover cop. However, each
time someone speaks up, this mysterious man has the amusing ability to determine where
the person came from, simply by listening to that person's speech, which turns him into
something of a sideshow.
The rain clears, leaving few other people than the Flower Girl, the Note Taker, and
the Gentleman. In response to a question from the Gentleman, the Note Taker answers
that his talent comes from simply phonetics...the science of speech. He goes on to brag
that he can use phonetics to make a duchess out of the Flower Girl. Through further
questioning, the Note Taker and the Gentleman reveal that they are Henry Higgins and
Colonel Pickering respectively, both scholars of dialects who have been wanting to visit
with each other. They decide to go for a supper, but not until Higgins has been
convinced
by the Flower Girl to give her some change. He generously throws her a half-crown, some
florins, and a half-sovereign. This allows the delighted girl to take a taxi home, the
same
taxi that Freddy has brought back, only to find that his impatient mother and sister
have
left without him.
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.