Pygmalion (Annotated)

by George Bernard Shaw

THE FLOWER GIRL. Ow, eez ye-ooa san, is e? Wal, fewd dan y' de-ooty bawmz a mather should, eed now bettern to spawl a pore gel's flahrzn than ran awy atbaht pyin. Will ye-oo py me f'them?

THE GENTLEMAN [returning to his former place on the note taker's left] How do you do it, if I may ask? THE NOTE TAKER. Simply phonetics. The science of speech. That's my profession; also my hobby. Happy is the man who can make a living by his hobby! You can spot an Irishman or a Yorkshireman by his brogue. I can place any man within six miles. I can place him within two miles in London. Sometimes within two streets. THE FLOWER GIRL. Ought to be ashamed of himself, unmanly coward! THE GENTLEMAN. But is there a living in that? THE NOTE TAKER. Oh yes. Quite a fat one. This is an age of upstarts. Men begin in Kentish Town with 80 pounds a year, and end in Park Lane with a hundred thousand. They want to drop Kentish Town; but they give themselves away every time they open their mouths. Now I can teach them— THE FLOWER GIRL. Let him mind his own business and leave a poor girl— THE NOTE TAKER [explosively] Woman: cease this detestable boohooing instantly; or else seek the shelter of some other place of worship. THE FLOWER GIRL [with feeble defiance] I've a right to be here if I like, same as you. THE NOTE TAKER. A woman who utters such depressing and disgusting sounds has no right to be anywhere—no right to live. Remember that you are a human being with a soul and the divine gift of articulate speech: that your native language is the language of Shakespear and Milton and The Bible; and don't sit there crooning like a bilious pigeon. THE FLOWER GIRL [quite overwhelmed, and looking...

THE FLOWER GIRL. I want to be a lady in a flower shop stead of selling at the corner of Tottenham Court Road. But they won't take me unless I can talk more genteel. He said he could teach me. Well, here I am ready to pay him—not asking any favor—and he treats me as if I was dirt. MRS. PEARCE. How can you be such a foolish ignorant girl as to think you could afford to pay Mr. Higgins? THE FLOWER GIRL. Why shouldn't I? I know what lessons cost as well as you do; and I'm ready to pay. HIGGINS. How much? THE FLOWER GIRL [coming back to him, triumphant] Now you're talking! I thought you'd come off it when you saw a chance of getting back a bit of what you chucked at me last night. [Confidentially] You'd had a drop in, hadn't you? HIGGINS [peremptorily] Sit down. THE FLOWER GIRL. Oh, if you're going to make a compliment of it— HIGGINS [thundering at her] Sit down. MRS. PEARCE [severely] Sit down, girl. Do as you're told. [She places the stray chair near the hearthrug between Higgins and Pickering, and stands behind it waiting for the girl to sit down]. THE FLOWER GIRL. Ah—ah—ah—ow—ow—oo! [She stands, half rebellious, half bewildered]. PICKERING [very courteous] Won't you sit down? LIZA [coyly] Don't mind if I do. [She sits down. Pickering returns to the hearthrug]. HIGGINS. What's your name? THE FLOWER GIRL. Liza Doolittle. HIGGINS [declaiming gravely] Eliza, Elizabeth, Betsy and Bess, They went to the woods to get a birds nes': PICKERING. They found a nest with four eggs in it:...

PICKERING [in good-humored remonstrance] Does it occur to you, Higgins, that the girl has some feelings? HIGGINS [looking critically at her] Oh no, I don't think so. Not any feelings that we need bother about. [Cheerily] Have you, Eliza? LIZA. I got my feelings same as anyone else. HIGGINS [to Pickering, reflectively] You see the difficulty? PICKERING. Eh? What difficulty? HIGGINS. To get her to talk grammar. The mere pronunciation is easy enough. LIZA. I don't want to talk grammar. I want to talk like a lady. MRS. PEARCE. Will you please keep to the point, Mr. Higgins. I want to know on what terms the girl is to be here. Is she to have any wages? And what is to become of her when you've finished your teaching? You must look ahead a little. HIGGINS [impatiently] What's to become of her if I leave her in the gutter? Tell me that, Mrs. Pearce. MRS. PEARCE. That's her own business, not yours, Mr. Higgins. HIGGINS. Well, when I've done with her, we can throw her back into the gutter; and then it will be her own business again; so that's all right.

in

MRS. PEARCE. Mr. Higgins: you're tempting the girl. It's not right. She should think of the future. HIGGINS. At her age! Nonsense! Time enough to think of the future when you haven't any future to think of. No, Eliza: do as this lady does: think of other people's futures; but never think of your own. Think of chocolates, and taxis, and gold, and diamonds. LIZA. No: I don't want no gold and no diamonds. I'm a good girl, I am. [She sits down again, with an attempt at dignity]. HIGGINS. You shall remain so, Eliza, under the care of Mrs. Pearce. And you shall marry an officer in the Guards, with a beautiful moustache: the son of a marquis, who will disinherit him for marrying you, but will relent when he sees your beauty and goodness— PICKERING. Excuse me, Higgins; but I really must interfere. Mrs. Pearce is quite right. If this girl is to put herself in your hands for six months for an experiment in teaching, she must understand thoroughly what she's doing. HIGGINS. How can she? She's incapable of understanding anything. Besides, do any of us understand what we are doing? If we did, would we ever do it? PICKERING. Very clever, Higgins; but not sound sense. [To Eliza] Miss Doolittle— LIZA [overwhelmed] Ah—ah—ow—oo! HIGGINS. There! That's all you get out of Eliza. Ah—ah—ow—oo! No use explaining. As a military man you ought to know that. Give her her orders: that's what she wants. Eliza: you are to live here for the next six months, learning how to speak beautifully, like a lady...

HIGGINS [dogmatically, lifting himself on his hands to the level of the piano, and sitting on it with a bounce] Well, I haven't. I find that the moment I let a woman make friends with me, she becomes jealous, exacting, suspicious, and a damned nuisance. I find that the moment I let myself make friends with a woman, I become selfish and tyrannical. Women upset everything. When you let them into your life, you find that the woman is driving at one thing and you're driving at another. PICKERING. At what, for example? HIGGINS [coming off the piano restlessly] Oh, Lord knows! I suppose the woman wants to live her own life; and the man wants to live his; and each tries to drag the other on to the wrong track. One wants to go north and the other south; and the result is that both have to go east, though they both hate the east wind. [He sits down on the bench at the keyboard]. So here I am, a confirmed old bachelor, and likely to remain so.

DOOLITTLE [to Pickering] I thank you, Governor. [To Higgins, who takes refuge on the piano bench, a little overwhelmed by the proximity of his visitor; for Doolittle has a professional flavor of dust about him]. Well, the truth is, I've taken a sort of fancy to you, Governor; and if you want the girl, I'm not so set on having her back home again but what I might be open to an arrangement. Regarded in the light of a young woman, she's a fine handsome girl. As a daughter she's not worth her keep; and so I tell you straight. All I ask is my rights as a father; and you're the last man alive to expect me to let her go for nothing; for I can see you're one of the straight sort, Governor. Well, what's a five pound note to you? And what's Eliza to me? [He returns to his chair and sits down judicially]. PICKERING. I think you ought to know, Doolittle, that Mr. Higgins's intentions are entirely honorable. DOOLITTLE. Course they are, Governor. If I thought they wasn't, I'd ask fifty. HIGGINS [revolted] Do you mean to say, you callous rascal, that you would sell your daughter for 50 pounds? DOOLITTLE. Not in a general way I wouldn't; but to oblige a gentleman like you I'd do a good deal, I do assure you. PICKERING. Have you no morals, man? DOOLITTLE [unabashed] Can't afford them, Governor. Neither could you if you was as poor as me. Not that I mean any harm, you know. But if Liza is going to have a bit out of this, why not me too? HIGGINS [troubled] I don't know what to do, Pickering....

LIZA. Oh, I don't mind; only it sounded so genteel. I should just like to take a taxi to the corner of Tottenham Court Road and get out there and tell it to wait for me, just to put the girls in their place a bit. I wouldn't speak to them, you know. PICKERING. Better wait til we get you something really fashionable. HIGGINS. Besides, you shouldn't cut your old friends now that you have risen in the world. That's what we call snobbery. LIZA. You don't call the like of them my friends now, I should hope. They've took it out of me often enough with their ridicule when they had the chance; and now I mean to get a bit of my own back. But if I'm to have fashionable clothes, I'll wait. I should like to have some. Mrs. Pearce says you're going to give me some to wear in bed at night different to what I wear in the daytime; but it do seem a waste of money when you could get something to show. Besides, I never could fancy changing into cold things on a winter night. MRS. PEARCE [coming back] Now, Eliza. The new things have come for you to try on. LIZA. Ah—ow—oo—ooh! [She rushes out]. MRS. PEARCE [following her] Oh, don't rush about like that, girl [She shuts the door behind her]. HIGGINS. Pickering: we have taken on a stiff job. PICKERING [with conviction] Higgins: we have.

MRS. HIGGINS. You certainly are a pretty pair of babies, playing with your live doll. HIGGINS. Playing! The hardest job I ever tackled: make no mistake about that, mother. But you have no idea how frightfully interesting it is to

take a human being and change her into a quite different human being by creating a new speech for her. It's filling up the deepest gulf that separates class from class and soul from soul. PICKERING [drawing his chair closer to Mrs. Higgins and bending over to her eagerly] Yes: it's enormously interesting. I assure you, Mrs. Higgins, we take Eliza very seriously. Every week—every day almost—there is some new change. [Closer again] We keep records of every stage—dozens of gramophone disks and photographs— HIGGINS [assailing her at the other ear] Yes, by George: it's the most absorbing experiment I ever tackled. She regularly fills our lives up; doesn't she, Pick? PICKERING. We're always talking Eliza. HIGGINS. Teaching Eliza. PICKERING. Dressing Eliza. MRS. HIGGINS. What! HIGGINS. Inventing new Elizas.

MRS. HIGGINS. Be quiet, Henry. Colonel Pickering: don't you realize that when Eliza walked into Wimpole Street, something walked in with her? PICKERING. Her father did. But Henry soon got rid of him. MRS. HIGGINS. It would have been more to the point if her mother had. But as her mother didn't something else did. PICKERING. But what? MRS. HIGGINS [unconsciously dating herself by the word] A problem. PICKERING. Oh, I see. The problem of how to pass her off as a lady. HIGGINS. I'll solve that problem. I've half solved it already. MRS. HIGGINS. No, you two infinitely stupid male creatures: the problem of what is to be done with her afterwards.

HIGGINS. I don't see anything in that. She can go her own way, with all the advantages I have given her. MRS. HIGGINS. The advantages of that poor woman who was here just now! The manners and habits that disqualify a fine lady from earning her own living without giving her a fine lady's income! Is that what you mean? PICKERING [indulgently, being rather bored] Oh, that will be all right, Mrs. Higgins. [He rises to go]. HIGGINS [rising also] We'll find her some light employment. PICKERING. She's happy enough. Don't you worry about her. Good-bye. [He shakes hands as if he were consoling a frightened child, and makes for the door]. HIGGINS. Anyhow, there's no good bothering now. The thing's done. Good-bye, mother. [He kisses her, and follows Pickering]. PICKERING [turning for a final consolation] There are plenty of openings. We'll do what's right. Good-bye. HIGGINS [to Pickering as they go out together] Let's take her to the Shakespear exhibition at Earls Court. PICKERING. Yes: let's. Her remarks will be delicious. HIGGINS. She'll mimic all the people for us when we get home. PICKERING. Ripping. [Both are heard laughing as they go downstairs]. MRS. HIGGINS [rises with an impatient bounce, and returns to her work at the writing-table. She sweeps a litter of disarranged papers out of her way; snatches a sheet of paper from her stationery case; and tries resolutely to write. At the third line she gives it up; flings down her pen; grips the table angrily and exclaims] Oh, men! m...

PICKERING [stretching himself] Well, I feel a bit tired. It's been a long day. The garden party, a dinner party, and the opera! Rather too much of a good thing. But you've won your bet, Higgins. Eliza did the trick, and something to spare, eh? HIGGINS [fervently] Thank God it's over! Eliza flinches violently; but they take no notice of her; and she recovers herself and sits stonily as before. PICKERING. Were you nervous at the garden party? I was. Eliza didn't seem a bit nervous. HIGGINS. Oh, she wasn't nervous. I knew she'd be all right. No, it's the strain of putting the job through all these months that has told on me. It was interesting enough at first, while we were at the phonetics; but after that I got deadly sick of it. If I hadn't backed myself to do it I should have chucked the whole thing up two months ago. It was a silly notion: the whole thing has been a bore. PICKERING. Oh come! the garden party was frightfully exciting. My heart began beating like anything. HIGGINS. Yes, for the first three minutes. But when I saw we were going to win hands down, I felt like a bear in a cage, hanging about doing nothing. The dinner was worse: sitting gorging there for over an hour, with nobody but a damned fool of a fashionable woman to talk to! I tell you, Pickering, never again for me. No more artificial duchesses. The whole thing has been simple purgatory. PICKERING. You've never been broken in properly to the social routine. [Strolling over to the piano] I rather enjoy d...

PICKERING. I think I shall turn in too. Still, it's been a great occasion: a triumph for you. Good-night. [He goes]. HIGGINS [following him] Good-night. [Over his shoulder, at the door] Put out the lights, Eliza; and tell Mrs. Pearce not to make coffee for me in the morning: I'll take tea. [He goes out]. Eliza tries to control herself and feel indifferent as she rises and walks across to the hearth to switch off the lights. By the time she gets there she is on the point of screaming. She sits down in Higgins's chair and holds on hard to the arms. Finally she gives way and flings herself furiously on the floor raging. HIGGINS [in despairing wrath outside] What the devil have I done with my slippers? [He appears at the door]. LIZA [snatching up the slippers, and hurling them at him one after the other with all her force] There are your slippers. And there. Take your slippers; and may you never have a day's luck with them!

LIZA [pulling herself together in desperation] What am I fit for? What have you left me fit for? Where am I to go? What am I to do? What's to become of me? HIGGINS [enlightened, but not at all impressed] Oh, that's what's worrying you, is it? [He thrusts his hands into his pockets, and walks about in his usual manner, rattling the contents of his pockets, as if condescending to a trivial subject out of pure kindness]. I shouldn't bother about it if I were you. I should imagine you won't have much difficulty in settling yourself, somewhere or other, though I hadn't quite realized that you were going away. [She looks quickly at him: he does not look at her, but examines the dessert stand on the piano and decides that he will eat an apple]. You might marry, you know. [He bites a large piece out of the apple, and munches it noisily]. You see, Eliza, all men are not confirmed old bachelors like me and the Colonel. Most men are the marrying sort (poor devils!); and you're not bad-looking; it's quite a pleasure to look at you sometimes—not now, of course, because you're crying and looking as ugly as the very devil; but when you're all right and quite yourself, you're what I should call attractive. That is, to the people in the marrying line, you understand. You go to bed and have a good nice rest; and then get up and look at yourself in the glass; and you won't feel so cheap. Eliza again looks at him, speechless, and does not stir. The look is quite lost on him: he eats his apple...

HIGGINS. Look here, mother: here's a confounded thing! MRS. HIGGINS. Yes, dear. Good-morning. [He checks his impatience and kisses her, whilst the parlor-maid goes out]. What is it? HIGGINS. Eliza's bolted. MRS. HIGGINS [calmly continuing her writing] You must have frightened her. HIGGINS. Frightened her! nonsense! She was left last night, as usual, to turn out the lights and all that; and instead of going to bed she changed her clothes and went right off: her bed wasn't slept in. She came in a cab for her things before seven this morning; and that fool Mrs. Pearce let her have them without telling me a word about it. What am I to do? MRS. HIGGINS. Do without, I'm afraid, Henry. The girl has a perfect right to leave if she chooses. HIGGINS [wandering distractedly across the room] But I can't find anything. I don't know what appointments I've got. I'm—

DOOLITTLE [taken aback as he becomes conscious that he has forgotten his hostess] Asking your pardon, ma'am. [He approaches her and shakes her proffered hand]. Thank you. [He sits down on the ottoman, on Pickering's right]. I am that full of what has happened to me that I can't think of anything else. HIGGINS. What the dickens has happened to you? DOOLITTLE. I shouldn't mind if it had only happened to me: anything might happen to anybody and nobody to blame but Providence, as you might say. But this is something that you done to me: yes, you, Henry Higgins. HIGGINS. Have you found Eliza? That's the point. DOOLITTLE. Have you lost her? HIGGINS. Yes. DOOLITTLE. You have all the luck, you have. I ain't found her; but she'll find me quick enough now after what you done to me. MRS. HIGGINS. But what has my son done to you, Mr. Doolittle? DOOLITTLE. Done to me! Ruined me. Destroyed my happiness. Tied me up and delivered me into the hands of middle class morality.

DOOLITTLE. Oh! Drunk! am I? Mad! am I? Tell me this. Did you or did you not write a letter to an old blighter in America that was giving five millions to found Moral Reform Societies all over the world, and that wanted you to invent a universal language for him? HIGGINS. What! Ezra D. Wannafeller! He's dead. [He sits down again carelessly]. DOOLITTLE. Yes: he's dead; and I'm done for. Now did you or did you not write a letter to him to say that the most original moralist at present in England, to the best of your knowledge, was Alfred Doolittle, a common dustman. HIGGINS. Oh, after your last visit I remember making some silly joke of the kind. DOOLITTLE. Ah! you may well call it a silly joke. It put the lid on me right enough. Just give him the chance he wanted to show that Americans is not like us: that they recognize and respect merit in every class of life, however humble. Them words is in his blooming will, in which, Henry Higgins, thanks to your silly joking, he leaves me a share in his Pre-digested Cheese Trust worth three thousand a year on condition that I lecture for his Wannafeller Moral Reform World League as often as they ask me up to six times a year. HIGGINS. The devil he does! Whew! [Brightening suddenly] What a lark! PICKERING. A safe thing for you, Doolittle. They won't ask you twice. DOOLITTLE. It ain't the lecturing I mind. I'll lecture them blue in the face, I will, and not turn a hair. It's making a gentleman of me that I object to. Who asked him to ma...

What is there for me if I chuck it but the workhouse in my old age? I have to dye my hair already to keep my job as a dustman. If I was one of the deserving poor, and had put by a bit, I could chuck it; but then why should I, acause the deserving poor might as well be millionaires for all the happiness they ever has. They don't know what happiness is. But I, as one of the undeserving poor, have nothing between me and the pauper's uniform but this here blasted three thousand a year that shoves me into the middle class. (Excuse the expression, ma'am: you'd use it yourself if you had my provocation). They've got you every way you turn: it's a choice between the Skilly of the workhouse and the Char Bydis of the middle class; and I haven't the nerve for the workhouse. Intimidated: that's what I am. Broke. Bought up. Happier men than me will call for my dust, and touch me for their tip; and I'll look on helpless, and envy them. And that's what your son has brought me to. [He is overcome by emotion].

You see, really and truly, apart from the things anyone can pick up (the dressing and the proper way of speaking, and so on), the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she's treated. I shall always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins, because he always treats me as a flower girl, and always will; but I know I can be a lady to you, because you always treat me as a lady, and always will.

Last night, when I was wandering about, a girl spoke to me; and I tried to get back into the old way with her; but it was no use. You told me, you know, that when a child is brought to a foreign country, it picks up the language in a few weeks, and forgets its own. Well, I am a child in your country. I have forgotten my own language, and can speak nothing but yours. That's the real break-off with the corner of Tottenham Court Road. Leaving Wimpole Street finishes it.

HIGGINS. About you, not about me. If you come back I shall treat you just as I have always treated you. I can't change my nature; and I don't intend to change my manners. My manners are exactly the same as Colonel Pickering's. LIZA. That's not true. He treats a flower girl as if she was a duchess. HIGGINS. And I treat a duchess as if she was a flower girl. LIZA. I see. [She turns away composedly, and sits on the ottoman, facing the window]. The same to everybody. HIGGINS. Just so. LIZA. Like father. HIGGINS [grinning, a little taken down] Without accepting the comparison at all points, Eliza, it's quite true that your father is not a snob, and that he will be quite at home in any station of life to which his eccentric destiny may call him. [Seriously] The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls: in short, behaving as if you were in Heaven, where there are no third-class carriages, and one soul is as good as another.

LIZA. He has a right to if he likes, poor lad. And he does love me. HIGGINS [getting off the ottoman] You have no right to encourage him. LIZA. Every girl has a right to be loved. HIGGINS. What! By fools like that? LIZA. Freddy's not a fool. And if he's weak and poor and wants me, may be he'd make me happier than my betters that bully me and don't want me. HIGGINS. Can he MAKE anything of you? That's the point. LIZA. Perhaps I could make something of him. But I never thought of us making anything of one another; and you never think of anything else. I only want to be natural. HIGGINS. In short, you want me to be as infatuated about you as Freddy? Is that it? LIZA. No I don't. That's not the sort of feeling I want from you. And don't you be too sure of yourself or of me. I could have been a bad girl if I'd liked. I've seen more of some things than you, for all your learning. Girls like me can drag gentlemen down to make love to them easy enough. And they wish each other dead the next minute. HIGGINS. Of course they do. Then what in thunder are we quarrelling about? LIZA [much troubled] I want a little kindness. I know I'm a common ignorant girl, and you a book-learned gentleman; but I'm not dirt under your feet. What I done [correcting herself] what I did was not for the dresses and the taxis: I did it because we were pleasant together and I come—came—to care for you; not to want you to make love to me, and not forgetting the difference between us, but more friendly like. H...