Pygmalion (Play) by George Bernard Shaw | Full Plot, History & Casts

Plays 1913 stage play, British class system, Eliza Doolittle, George Bernard Shaw, Henry Higgins, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, My Fair Lady, My Fair Lady origin, phonetics in theatre, Pygmalion play

Pygmalion

The Definitive Social Satire by George Bernard Shaw

Phonetics. Class. Transformation.

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The Origin of the Experiment

Written in 1912, Pygmalion was inspired by the Greek myth of a sculptor who falls in love with his ivory statue, Galatea. In Shaw’s modern retelling, the “statue” is Eliza Doolittle, a Cockney flower girl, and the “sculptor” is Henry Higgins, a brilliant but arrogant professor of phonetics.

Shaw wrote the play specifically for the famous actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell. Curiously, the play premiered in 1913 in Vienna (translated into German) before its 1914 London debut. Shaw used the story to argue that the rigid British class system was maintained entirely by superficialities—primarily the way one speaks.

The Plot: From Gutter to Garden

The Bet

On a rainy night in Covent Garden, Professor Henry Higgins meets Colonel Pickering. Higgins boasts that within six months, he could transform the “gutter-snipe” flower girl Eliza Doolittle into a Duchess simply by teaching her to speak proper English. Pickering takes the bet, agreeing to cover the expenses of the experiment.

The Transformation

Eliza undergoes a grueling education in phonetics and social etiquette. Along the way, her father, Alfred Doolittle, arrives to “blackmail” Higgins, only to be charmed by the professor and eventually catapulted into “middle-class morality” himself through an unexpected inheritance. After a disastrous trial run at Mrs. Higgins’ home, Eliza eventually triumphs at an Embassy Ball, where she is mistaken for a foreign princess.

The Aftermath

The play’s climax occurs not at the ball, but in Higgins’ laboratory. After winning the bet, Higgins and Pickering ignore Eliza’s contribution to her own success. Realizing she is no longer fit for the gutter but has no place in the parlor, Eliza confronts Higgins. Unlike the musical My Fair Lady, Shaw’s original play ends with Eliza’s defiant independence—she leaves Higgins, planning to marry the young Freddy Eynsford-Hill.

West End Premiere (1914)

Debuting at His Majesty’s Theatre, the production was an instant sensation, though controversial for Eliza’s use of the word “bloody”—a shocking profanity at the time. It starred Herbert Beerbohm Tree and Mrs. Patrick Campbell.

Broadway Debut (1914)

The play opened in New York at the Park Theatre and later moved to the Liberty and Wallack’s. It established Pygmalion as a global success and proved that Shaw’s wit translated perfectly across the Atlantic.

The Original Architects of Style: Cast History

Character	West End (1914)	Broadway (1914)
Eliza Doolittle	Mrs. Patrick Campbell	Mrs. Patrick Campbell
Henry Higgins	Herbert Beerbohm Tree	Philip Merivale
Colonel Pickering	Philip Merivale	Herbert Ranson
Alfred Doolittle	Edmund Gurney	Edmund Gurney

Cinematic Legacy & The Oscar

The 1938 film adaptation of Pygmalion, starring Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller, made history. George Bernard Shaw wrote the screenplay himself, earning an Academy Award. This achievement made Shaw the first person ever to win both a Nobel Prize in Literature and an Oscar. The film famously softened the play’s ending—a change Shaw reportedly disliked but allowed for the sake of the medium.

The Full cast for the West End Production

Henry Higgins – Herbert Tree
Colonel Pickering – Philip Merivale
Freddy Eynsford-Hill – Algernon Greig
Alfred Doolittle – Edmund Gurney
A Bystander – Roy Byford
Another One – Alexander Sarner
Eliza Doolittle – Mrs Patrick Campbell
Mrs Eynsford-Hill – Carlotta Addison
Miss Eynsford-Hill – Margaret Busse
Mrs Higgins – Rosamond Mayne-Young
Mrs Pearce – Geraldine Oliffe
Parlourmaid – Irene Delisse

Carlotta Addison died in June and was replaced as Mrs Eynsford-Hill by Alma Murray

Full Plot

Act One

A group of people are sheltering from the rain. Among them are the Eynsford-Hills, superficial social climbers eking out a living in “genteel poverty”. First seen are Mrs Eynsford-Hill and her daughter Clara; Clara’s brother Freddy enters having earlier been dispatched to secure them a cab (which they can ill afford) but being rather timid and faint-hearted he has failed to do so. As he goes off once again to find a cab, he bumps into a flower girl, Eliza Doolittle. Her flowers drop into the mud of Covent Garden, the flowers she needs to survive in her poverty-stricken world. They are soon joined by a gentleman, Colonel Pickering. While Eliza tries to sell flowers to the Colonel, a bystander informs her that another man is writing down everything she says. That man is Henry Higgins, a linguist and phonetician. Eliza worries that Higgins is a police officer and will not calm down until Higgins introduces himself. It soon becomes apparent that he and Colonel Pickering have a shared interest in phonetics and an intense mutual admiration; indeed, Pickering has come from India specifically to meet Higgins, and Higgins was planning to go to India to meet Pickering. Higgins tells Pickering that he could pass off the flower girl as a duchess merely by teaching her to speak properly. These words of bravado spark an interest in Eliza, who would love to make changes in her life and become more mannerly, even though to her it only means working in a flower shop. At the end of the act, Freddy returns after finding a taxi, only to find that his mother and sister have gone and left him with the cab. The streetwise Eliza takes the cab from him, using the money that Higgins tossed to her, leaving him on his own soul.

Act Two

Higgin’s House – The Next Day As Higgins demonstrates his phonetics to Pickering, the housekeeper Mrs Pearce tells him that a young girl wants to see him. Eliza has shown up because she wants to talk like a lady in a flower shop. She tells Higgins that she will pay for lessons. He shows no interest, but she reminds him of his boast the previous day: he had claimed that he could pass her off as a duchess. Pickering makes a bet with him on his claim and says that he will pay for her lessons if Higgins succeeds. She is sent off to have a bath. Mrs Pearce tells Higgins that he must behave himself in the young girl’s presence, meaning he must stop swearing and improve his table manners, but he is at a loss to understand why she should find fault with him. Alfred Doolittle, Eliza’s father, appears, with the sole purpose of getting money out of Higgins, having no paternal interest in his daughter’s welfare. He requests and receives five pounds in compensation for the loss of Eliza, although Higgins, much amused by Doolittle’s approach to morality, is tempted to pay ten. Doolittle refuses; he sees himself as a member of the undeserving poor and means to go on being undeserving. With his intelligent mind untamed by education, he has an eccentric view of life. He is also aggressive, and Eliza, on her return, sticks her tongue out at him. He goes to hit her, but Pickering prevents him. The scene ends with Higgins telling Pickering that they really have a difficult job on their hands.

Act Three

Mrs Higgins’s Drawing Room Higgins bursts in and tells his mother he has picked up a “common flower girl” whom he has been teaching. Mrs Higgins is unimpressed with her son’s attempts to win her approval, because it is her ‘at home’ day and she is entertaining visitors. The visitors are the Eynsford-Hills. When they arrive, Higgins is rude to them. Eliza enters and soon falls into talking about the weather and her family. While she is now able to speak in beautifully modulated tones, the substance of what she says remains unchanged from the gutter. She confides her suspicions that her aunt was killed by relatives, mentions that gin had been “mother’s milk” to her aunt, and that Eliza’s own father was “always more agreeable when he had a drop in”. Higgins passes off her remarks as “the new small talk”, and Freddy is enraptured by Eliza. When she is leaving, he asks her if she is going to walk across the park, to which she replies, “Walk? Not bloody likely!” (This is the most famous line from the play and, for many years after the play’s debut, use of the word ‘bloody’ was known as a pygmalion; Mrs Campbell was considered to have risked her career by speaking the line onstage.)^[12] After Eliza and the Eynsford-Hills leave, Higgins asks for his mother’s opinion. She says the girl is not presentable and she is concerned about what will happen to her, but neither Higgins nor Pickering understands her concerns about Eliza’s future. They leave feeling confident and excited about how Eliza will get on. This leaves Mrs Higgins feeling exasperated, and exclaiming, “Men! Men!! Men!!!”

Act Four

Higgins’s House – Midnight Higgins, Pickering, and Eliza have returned from a ball. A tired Eliza sits unnoticed, brooding and silent, while Pickering congratulates Higgins on winning the bet. Higgins scoffs and declares the evening a “silly tomfoolery”, thanking God it’s over, and saying that he had been sick of the whole thing for the last two months. Still barely acknowledging Eliza, beyond asking her to leave a note for Mrs Pearce regarding coffee, the two retire to bed. Higgins soon returns to the room, looking for his slippers, and Eliza throws them at him. Higgins is taken aback and is at first completely unable to understand Eliza’s preoccupation, which, aside from being ignored after her triumph, is the question of what she is to do now. When Higgins finally understands, he makes light of it, saying she could get married, but Eliza interprets this as selling herself like a prostitute. “We were above that at the corner of Tottenham Court Road.” Finally, she returns her jewellery to Higgins, including the ring he had given her, which he throws into the fireplace with a violence that scares Eliza. Furious with himself for losing his temper, he damns Mrs Pearce, the coffee, Eliza, and finally himself, for “lavishing” his knowledge and his “regard and intimacy” on a “heartless guttersnipe” and retires in great dudgeon. Eliza roots around in the fireplace and retrieves the ring.

Act Five

Mrs Higgins’s Drawing Room The next morning Higgins and Pickering, perturbed by discovering that Eliza has walked out on them, call on Mrs Higgins to phone the police. Higgins is particularly distracted, since Eliza had assumed the responsibility of maintaining his diary and keeping track of his possessions, which causes Mrs Higgins to decry their calling the police as though Eliza were “a lost umbrella”. Doolittle is announced; he emerges dressed in splendid wedding attire and is furious with Higgins, who after their previous encounter had been so taken with Doolittle’s unorthodox ethics that he had recommended him as the “most original moralist in England” to a rich American, a founder of Moral Reform Societies; the American had subsequently left Doolittle a pension worth three thousand pounds a year, as a consequence of which Doolittle feels intimidated into joining the middle class and marrying his missus. Mrs Higgins observes that this at least settles the problem of who shall provide for Eliza, to which Higgins objects – after all, he paid Doolittle five pounds for her. Mrs Higgins informs her son that Eliza is upstairs, and explains the circumstances of her arrival, alluding to how marginalized and overlooked Eliza had felt the previous night. Higgins is unable to appreciate this, and sulks when told that he must behave if Eliza is to join them. Doolittle is asked to wait outside. Eliza enters, at ease and self-possessed. Higgins blusters but Eliza is unshaken and speaks exclusively to Pickering. Throwing Higgins’s previous insults back at him (“Oh, I’m only a squashed cabbage leaf”), Eliza remarks that it was only by Pickering’s example that she learned to be a lady, which renders Higgins speechless. Eliza goes on to say that she has completely left behind the flower girl she was, and that she couldn’t utter any of her old sounds if she tried – at which point Doolittle emerges from the balcony, causing Eliza to emit her old sounds. Higgins is jubilant, jumping up and crowing over what he calls his victory. Doolittle explains his situation and asks if Eliza will come with him to his wedding. Pickering and Mrs Higgins also agree to go, and they leave, with Doolittle and Eliza to follow. The scene ends with another confrontation between Higgins and Eliza. Higgins asks if Eliza is satisfied with the revenge she has brought thus far and if she will now come back, but she refuses. Higgins defends himself from Eliza’s earlier accusation by arguing that he treats everyone the same, so she shouldn’t feel singled out. Eliza replies that she just wants a little kindness, and that since he will never stoop to show her this, she will not come back, but will marry Freddy. Higgins scolds her for such low ambitions: he has made her “a consort for a king.” When she threatens to teach phonetics and offer herself as an assistant to Higgins’s academic rival Nepommuck, Higgins again loses his temper and vows to wring her neck if she does so. Eliza realises that this last threat strikes Higgins at the very core and that it gives her power over him. Higgins, for his part, is delighted to see a spark of fight in Eliza, rather than her erstwhile fretting and worrying. He remarks “I like you like this”, and calls her a “pillar of strength”. Mrs Higgins returns and she and Eliza depart for the wedding. As they leave, Higgins incorrigibly gives Eliza a list of errands to run, as though their recent conversation had not taken place. Eliza disdainfully tells him to do the errands himself. Mrs Higgins says that she’ll get the items, but Higgins cheerfully tells her that Eliza will do it after all. Higgins laughs to himself at the idea of Eliza marrying Freddy as the play ends.

Ending

Pygmalion was the most broadly appealing of all Shaw’s plays. But popular audiences, looking for pleasant entertainment with big stars in a West End venue, wanted a “happy ending” for the characters they liked so well, as did some critics. During the 1914 run, Tree sought to sweeten Shaw’s ending to please himself and his record houses. Shaw remained sufficiently irritated to add a postscript essay to the 1916 print edition, “What Happened Afterwards”, for inclusion with subsequent editions, in which he explained precisely why it was impossible for the story to end with Higgins and Eliza getting married. He continued to protect what he saw as the play’s, and Eliza’s, integrity by protecting the last scene. For at least some performances during the 1920 revival, Shaw adjusted the ending in a way that underscored the Shavian message. In an undated note to Mrs Campbell he wrote,

When Eliza emancipates herself – when Galatea comes to life – she must not relapse. She must retain her pride and triumph to the end. When Higgins takes your arm on ‘consort battleship’ you must instantly throw him off with implacable pride; and this is the note until the final ‘Buy them yourself.’ He will go out on the balcony to watch your departure; come back triumphantly into the room; exclaim ‘Galatea!’ (meaning that the statue has come to life at last); and – curtain. Thus he gets the last word; and you get it too.

(This ending, however, is not included in any print version of the play.) Shaw fought against a Higgins–Eliza happy-end pairing as late as 1938. He sent the 1938 film version’s producer, Gabriel Pascal, a concluding sequence that he felt offered a fair compromise: a tender farewell scene between Higgins and Eliza, followed by one showing Freddy and Eliza happy in their greengrocery-cum-flower shop. Only at the sneak preview did he learn that Pascal had finessed the question of Eliza’s future with a slightly ambiguous final scene in which Eliza returns to the house of a sadly musing Higgins and self-mockingly quotes her previous self-announcing, “I washed my face and hands before I come, I did”.

Influence

Pygmalion remains Shaw’s most popular play. The play’s widest audiences know it as the inspiration for the highly romanticized 1956 musical and 1964 film My Fair Lady. Pygmalion has transcended cultural and language barriers since its first production. The British Library contains “images of the Polish production…; a series of shots of a wonderfully Gallicised Higgins and Eliza in the first French production in Paris in 1923; a fascinating set for a Russian production of the 1930s. There was no country which didn’t have its own ‘take’ on the subjects of class division and social mobility, and it’s as enjoyable to view these subtle differences in settings and costumes as it is to imagine translators wracking their brains for their own equivalent of ‘Not bloody likely’.”