Quotation (1)
The Note Taker: A woman who utters such depressing and
Disgusting sounds has no right to be anywhereــــno 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 Shakespeare and Milton and The Bible;-
and don’t
sit there crooning like a bilious pigeon. …
The Flower
Girl: What’s that you say?
The Note Taker: Yes, you
squashed cabbage leaf, you
Disgrace
to the noble architecture of these columns, you
Incarnate
insult to the English language: I could pass you off
As the
Queen of Sheba. (Act 1, p.62)
Comment:
This quotation is taken from Act 1 in G. B.
Shaw’s play,
Pygmalion
(1914). It is a conversation between Henry
Higgins, a professor of phonetics, and Eliza,
a common
Girl selling flowers, near St. Paul’s
Cathedral in London
Where they meet by chance. Higgins is
disgusted about
Eliza’s bad English and considers her an
incarnate insult to the English language’. He says these words in the presence
Of Colonel Pickering, another phonetician
of Indian
dialects.
Eliza’s pronunciation of English is so horrible that Higgins describes
it as ‘depressing and disgusting’ and
Likens it to the ‘crooning of a pigeon. He
denies Eliza the right to live as long as her English is so bad. Moreover,
Higgins reminds Eliza that she, as a human
being, is
Supposed to have the God-given gift of ’articulate
speech’.
Higgins also reproaches Eliza saying that
her native
language is that of the great English poets
Shakespeare
and John Milton. It is the superb English
language of the
Bible.
Higgins keeps piling up his insults on Eliza’s head
When he describes her as a ‘squashed
cabbage leaf ’and a
‘disgrace to the noble architecture’ of St.
Paul’s Cathedral.
However, Higgins suddenly ends his verbal
attack on Eliza
By saying that he can pass her off as ‘the
Queen of Sheba’.
Earlier in the same situation, Higgins says
to Pickering that
he could pass Eliza off as a duchess at an
ambassador’s
garden party, or could even get her a place
as a lady’s maid or
a shop assistant, but all this requires
‘better English’.
This situation is dramatically significant (important) as it
Foreshadows what will happen later in the
first half of the
Play. In Act 2, Eliza goes to Higgins’
apartment to take
lessons in good pronunciation; in Act 3 she
receives her first
test of Mrs. Higgins’ At-Home weekly
meeting; thereafter
Eliza passes off successfully as a duchess
at an ambassador’s
garden party.
………………………………………………………………
Quotation (2)
………………………………………………………………
Mrs. Pearce: Will you 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 teachin? You must look ahead
a little.
Higgins: Well, when Ive done with her, we can throw
her back to the gutter; and then it will be her business again; so that’s all
right.
Liza: Oh, you’ve no feeling heart in you; you
don’t care
for nothing but yourself. [She rises and takes the floor
resolutely]. Here! Ive had enough of this. I’m going
[making for the door]. You ought to be
ashamed of
yourself, you ought. (Act2, pp.75-76)
Comment:
This quotation is taken from Act 2 in G. B. Shaw’s
play. Pygmalion (1914). It is a
conversation between
Henry Higgins, a professor of phonetics,
Mr. Pearce, his
housekeeper, and Eliza, a flower-selling
girl who has come
to Higgins’ apartment to take lessons in
good English pronunciation. This conversation is about what to become
of Eliza when Higgins will have finished
his teaching her.
The entire action of the play is set in
London in 1914.
Mr. Pearce is worried about what is to become of Eliza
after she will have been educated. How will
Eliza earn her
living? How will she live? Higgins says
clearly he will
throw Eliza back to the street after
educating her, ‘and then
it will be her business again’. Eliza
object to Higgins’
answer, accusing him of being unfeeling,
carless and selfish.
Later in Act 3, Mrs. Higgins expresses similar worries
about Eliza’s future life; she says to
Higgins and Pickering,
‘The problem of what is to be done with her
afterwards.’
Higgins answers, ‘She can go her own way.
with all the advantages I have given her.’ (page. 111)
Later in Act 4, after Eliza has passed the test of the
embassy garden party successfully and after
the experiment
of her education is over, she asks Higgins
the same question,
‘What to become of me? Whats to become of
me?’ Higgins’
answer in Act 4 and 5 is not exactly the
same as it was in
Act 2 and 3; Higgins will not throw Eliza
into the street (the
gutter) but will attempt not let her go her
own way. Instead,
Higgins does his best to retain Eliza as he
is now used to her;
however he will not marry her as he is a
confirmed bachelor.
Now Higgins depends on Eliza to remind him
of his
appointments and to get his needs instead
of his house-keeper,
Mrs. Pearce, Finally, Eliza decides to
marry Freddy,
a young man who loves her.
This conversation in Act 2 is dramatically important as
it foreshadows and what happens
later in the second half
of the play in Acts 4 and 5. This
conversation hints at the
problem of what to become of Eliza after
completing her
education.
………………………………………………………………
Quotation (3)
………………………………………………………………
Mrs Eynsford Hill: I’m sure I hope it wont turn cold
There’s so much influenza about. …
Liza: [darkly] My aunt died of influenza’ so
they said. ….
But it’s my belief they done the old
woman in.
Mrs Higgins: [puzzled] Done her in?
Liza: Y ــe-e-es, Lord love you! Why should she die
of
influenza? She come through diphtheria
right enough the
year before. … but my father kept lading
gin down her
throat? Somebody pinched [her new straw
hat], … them as
pinched it done her in.
Mrs Eynsford Hill: What does ‘doing her in’ mean?
Higgins: [hastily] Oh, that’s the new small talk.
To do a
person in means to kill them. (Act 3, pp.
104-105)
Comment:
This quotation is taken from Act 3 in G. B. Shaw’s play,
Pygmalion (1914). It is a conversation
between Eliza and
Mrs. Higgins’ guests, Mrs. Eynsford Hill
and her daughter
lara and son Freddy in the presence of Higgins and
Pickering.
The context of this quotation is Mrs.
Higgins’ weekly At-
Home
meeting to which Higgins invites himself together
with
Pickering with the aim of giving Eliza a primary test
before
introducing her to an ambassador’s garden party.
Eliza has been trained by Higgins to
‘speak English
properly.
She is given strict orders as to her behavior. She’s
to keep to
two subjects: the weather and everybody’s healthــــ
Fine day
and How do you do, and not to let herself go on things in general’.
In this quotation from Act 3 at Mrs.
Higgins’s At-Home
meeting,
Eliza starts well in the beginning according to
Higgins’s strict orders. However later, she
commits
language errors as well as social errors of
etiquette when
She speaks about the weather. Higgins keep observing and
indirectly guiding Eliza’s speech and behavior.
Eliza makes serious language mistakes when she
discusses weather and talks her aunt’s
death because
of influenza. She says that her aunt was ‘done
in’ because
her father kept loading gin (a drink) down
her throat after
her having diphtheria. Here, Eliza speaks
cockney English;
she also uses the forbidden impolite word
‘bloody’ (a swear
word), which Mrs. Eynsford Hill regards as
‘really too
much’. Moreover, Eliza often uses ‘double
negatives’, a
sign of her cockney English.
Eliza also commits errors of etiquette. when she
discusses her family life. She says that
her father is a
drunkard, and that when he is out of work
her mother ‘used
to give him fourpence and tell him to go
out and not to
come back until he’d dunk himself cheerful
and loving-like’. Eliza also says that her somebody pinched her aunt’s new
straw hat that should have come to her. She says, ‘them as pinched it done her
in’.
Higgins finds an explanation for Eliza’s language errors as ‘the new
small talk’, and answers Mrs. Eynsford Hill’s
question saying that ‘To do a person in
mean to kill them’.
Finally, Higgins finds out that Eliza has
not the soul of a duchess and that she requires more training before
introducing her to the embassy garden party. Higgins still
aims to win the bet of passing Eliza off as
a duchess at such a
party.
………………………………………………………………
Quotation (4)
………………………………………………………………
Hostess: Ah, here you are at last Nepommuck. Have
you
found out all about the Doolittle lady?
Nepommuck: I have found all about her. She is a
fraud.
Hostess: A fraud! Oh no.
Nepommuck: Yes, yes. She cannot deceive me. Her name
cannot be Doolittle.
Hostess: Why?
Nepommuck: Because Doolittle is an English name. And
she is not English.
Hostess: Oh, nonsense! She speaks English
perfectly.
Nepommuck: Too perfectly. Can you show me any
English woman who speaks English as it
should be
spoken? Only foreigners who have been
taught to speak it
speak it well.
Hostess: ….. But if she is not English what is she?
Nepommuck: Hungarian … And of royal blood
(Embassy Garden Party p. 116)
Comment:
This quotation is taken from the scene of the embassy
garden party taking place between Acts 3
and 4 in G. B,
Shaw’s play, Pygmalion (1914), It is a
conversation
between the Hostess, supposedly the
ambassador’s wife,
and Nepommuck, an exceptional phonetician
at the
embassy garden party, where Eliza is
introduced as a
duchess.
The Hostess asks Nepommuck if he has found out all
about the Doolittle lady (Eliza). He
answers that he found
that she is ‘a fraud’ because Doolittle is
an English name but she is not English. When the Hostess argues that Eliza
speaks
English perfectly, Nepommuck says that
English women do
not speak English as it should be spoken.
He claims that Eliza is a Hungarian of royal blood.
This situation is full of suspense and expectation for the
phonetician Nepommuck might discover the
reality of Eliza.
He is used by the Hostess (the ambassador’s
wife) to discover
the identity of her party guests. Moreover,
Higgins says that
Nepommuck, one of his students, ‘can learn
a language in a fortnightــــknows dozens of them.’ Earlier Nepomuck
himself claims to have discovered the truth about a Greek diplomat at the party
who pretends he cannot speak nor understand English.
Expectations
are raised that Nepommuck can discover
that Eliza is not a duchess, and that
Higgins is about to lose
his bet with Pickering. When Higgins is
asked about Eliza
by the Hostess, he places her in Drury
Lane, a cockney
area in London where common people live.
However,
Nepommuck rejects Higgins’ view and says to
him, ‘you
are mad on the subject of cockney dialects.
The London
gutter is the whole world for you. ’The
Hostess agrees with
Nepommuck, saying that Eliza ‘must be a
princess at least.”
………………………………………………………………
Quotation (5)
………………………………………………………………
Liza: … Ive won your bet for you, haven’t I?
That’s
enough for you. I don’t matter, I presume.
Higgins: You won my bet! You! Presumptuous
insect! I
won it. What did you throw those slippers
at me for?
Liza: Because I wanted to smash your face. I’d
like to kill
you, you selfish brute. why didn’t you
leave me where you
picked me out ofـــin the gutter? You thank God it’s all
over, and that now you can throw me back
again there, do you? (She crisps her finger frantically).
Comment:
This conversation is taken from the beginning of Act 4 in
G. B. Shaw’s play Pygmalion just after
Eliza’s successful
appearance as a princess at an embassy
garden party.
Having arrived a Higgins’s apartment at Womple street
late at night after the party was over,
Higgins, Pickering and Eliza prepare to sleep. However, Higgins takes all the
credit
for Eliza’s success to himself, and even
Pickering sees Eliza’s
triumph as a reflection of Higgins’s
professional skill.
Higgins’ attitude angers Eliza, who sees
that her own
efforts are undervalued; she says to
Higgins” Ive won your
bet for you, haven’t 1? That’s enough for
you”. Higgins does
not regard her as a human being with real
feelings, “You!
Presumptuous insect! I won it.” Higgins
regards Eliza as something inert (lifeless) which he transformed into a living
woman. He seems scarcely aware of Eliza’s
presence. So
Eliza blames him for not leaving her where
she was before
into the gutter (the street).
General Questions
(1)
Give a brief analysis of the major
characters in Pygmalion.
Henry Higgins:
He is a forceful and authoritative single man
(رجل
أعزب مسلط وقوى)
(الشخصية في سن الأربعينات)in his forties. In his first appearance in
the play
he reveals his single-minded devotion to his career as
a phonetician
(متفرغ لمهنته كعالم صوتيات). During
the course of the play he transforms a common flower girl, Eliza, into a
duchess by teaching her how to speak correctly. However, he is surprised to
learn that his creation
Eliza, has acquired human emotions and has fallen in
love with him.
Colonel Pickering:
Shaw describes Colonel Pickering as “an elderly
gentleman of the amiable military type.” Colonel Pickering is the author of
“Spoken Sanskrit” and an expert on the subject (مؤلف كتاب في اللغة)
(السنسكريتية وخبير في الموضوع). His caution and good
manners serve to
highlight Higgins’ more rough and impulsive
characteristics.
(وحسن سلوكه يسلط الضوء علي خصائص هيجينز
الجافة والمندفعة)
Pickering thus functions as a foil (contrast) to
Higgins. In fact Eliza insists in the last act that it was Pickering’s
courteous’ gentlemanly conduct and kindness of heart that really transformed
her into a lady
(تري اليزا أن سلوك بيكارينج المهذب وطيبة
قلبة كانت السبب الحقيقي في تحولها الي سيدة راقية)
Courteous = polite
Eliza Doolittle:
She is a young, Cockney flower girl
(بائعة زهور من حي شرق لندن وهو حي بلدي)
of about twenty who is transformed in the course of
the play (تحولت أثناء المسرحية) from a
“draggletailed guttersnipe” (من فتاة متشردة في وحل الشارع)
into a duchess. The play shows her growth and
development from helpless being (كائن عاجز مغلوب علي أمره) in Acts 1,
2 and 3 into an independent woman of strength and character (أمرآه مستقلة لها قوة وشخصية) in Acts 4 and 5.
Alfred Doolittle:
Eliza’s father is an elderly but vigorous dustman. He
first appears in Act 2 as an angry father who intends to blackmail
Higgins When Higgins bullies him (يستقوي علية)
he instantly sells his daughter for a worthless sum of merely five pounds. By
his second appearance in Act 5, he has become a gentleman because of a legacy
of several thousand pounds a year left by an American millionaire.
(2)
Give a brief analysis of the minor
characters in G. B. Shaw’s Pygmalion.
Mrs. Higgins:
Mrs. Higgins, Professor Higgins’s mother, is over
sixty years old
She has exquisite elegance and refinement of manners.
Her
intelligence, personal grace and dignity of character
are idealized by her son, Professor Higgins, to such an extent that he is
indifferent to young women (يرى أمه مثال للمرآة مما يصرفه عن النساء
عموما)
She is thus a rival (منافس) to any young woman who
wishes to acquire her son’s love and affection. She also disapproves of her
son’s behavior and manners
(لا توافق علي سلوكيات قيمتها)
Mrs. Eynsford Hill:
She is a well-bred lady who lacks money but clings to
gentility. She lives in the fashionable Earls Court
(في لندن حي راقي في سلوك الفلسفة الراقية)
even though she does not have the financial capacity
to sustain the kind of lifestyle expected of a lady.
Clara Eynsford Hill:
Her daughter who wants to keep up with contemporary
trends in society. By the play’s end she comes under the influence of Wellsian philosophy and goes
to work in an old furniture shop in Docer Street.
Freddy Eynsford Hill:
Her son who is a good-looking man of about twenty. He
comes across as weak and worthless, not having money or an occupation.
Ironically, it is Freddy (and not Higgins)
who captivates
(يأسر بسحر) Eliza because he cares about
her.
Mrs. Pearce:
She is Higgins’s housekeeper and
representative mother figure in his bachelor establishment at the Wimpole
Street laboratory. She is an extremely lovable character who often chides (يوبخ)
Higgins for his incurable swearing (شتيمة), disgusting table manners (سلوكيات سيئة علي مائده الطعام) and general slovenliness.
(3)Pygmalion is not a play about turning
a flower girl into a duchess, but one about turning a woman into a human being,
Do you agree?
After Eliza passes off as a duchess in the embassy garden party, she
acquires an independent personality. She asks him about her future. Thus, she
argues with Higgins and threatens him that she will take his phonetic findings
to his rival in order to support herself, art imitates life.
Higgins shows a lot of sympathy for the
flower girl who wants a higher station in life. Eliza, however, appears as the unloved,
neglected woman who decides to make herself heard once and for all.
In Acts 4 and 5, the author (G. B. Shaw) portrays Eliza grown into a
full human being with her own mind. Shaw does not show the climax (embassy
party) on the stage as it takes in the interval between Act 3 and Act 4. The
embassy party appears in the film version. The play does not stop here after
Eliza’s success in the embassy party. The author carries on the play for a
further two acts (Act 4 & 5) after the climax. In other words, the
superficial climax is not the real climax at all, and Shaw’s aim is deeper than
of a fairy godmother. He aims to develop the character of Eliza as a real human
being.
(4)What is the Pygmalion myth? In what
significant ways, and with effect, has Shaw transformed that myth in his play?
In mythology, Pygmalion is a sculptor who creates a statue of a
beautiful woman so perfectly formed that he falls in love with her. The goddess
Aphrodite is moved by his love and touches the statue to life so that she
becomes Galatea, and Pygmalion can experience happiness with his own creation.
Shaw keeps up the imaginary story in which a gifted male creates a woman
out of lifeless raw material into a worthy partner for himself. However, Shaw
does not allow Higgins to fall in love with his creation (Eliza). Right to the
last act, Higgins is still quarrelsome (مشاجر‘ متشاكس)
and derisive (ساخر) in his interaction with
Eliza, and does not even think of her as an object of romantic interest.
Shaw goes on to change the myth by adding other creative characters like
Mrs. Pearce and Pickering, and to suggest that the primary Pygmalion himself
(Higgins) is, incomplete, and not ideal himself.
In transforming the Pygmalion myth into his play in such a way, Shaw
calls into question the ideal status afforded to the artist (يشكك في الوضع المثالي للفنان). Shaw further exposes the
inadequacies of myths and romances that overlook the ordinary, human aspects of
life.
(ويكشف عن عدم تناسب الاساطير وقصص الحب التي تتغاضي عن الجوانب العادية واللاإنسانية
لحياة البشر)
(5) Give
a character analysis of Henry Higgins.
Higgins is a professor of speech phonetics who, in some ways, acts to
Eliza what Pygmalion does to Galatea. He is the author of Higgins’ Universal
Alphabet, believes in concepts like visible speech, and uses all manner of
recording to document his phonetic subjects, reducing people and their dialects
into what he sees as readily understandable units.
He is an unconventional man, who goes in the opposite direction from the
rest of society in most matters, Indeed, he is impatient with high society,
forgetful in his public graces, and poorly considerate of normal social
niceties. The only reason the world has not turned against him is because he is
at heart a good and harmless man. His biggest fault is that he can be a bully.
(6) Does
Eliza’s character develop in the play? If yes, show how?
Or: Discuss the development of the
character of Eliza in the second half of the play,
Eliza is introduced in Act I as a young
woman who “is not at all a romantic figure”. Everything about Eliza Doolittle
seems against any conventional ideas we might have about the romantic heroine.
When she is transformed from a funny, smart-mouthed flower girl with deplorable
English, to an upper-class figure fit to consort with nobility, it has less to
do with her innate qualities as a heroine than with the fairy-tale aspect of
the transformation myth itself. In other words, the character of Eliza
Doolittle comes across as being much more of appearance than of a reality. The
real (re-)making of Eliza Doolittle happens after the ambassador’s party, when
she decides to make a statement for her own dignity against Higgins’ insensitive
treatment. This is when she becomes, not a duchess, but an independent woman;
and this explains why Higgins begins to see Eliza not as an object of an
experiment but as a creature worthy of his admiration.
(7) Why does Eliza rebel against
Professor Higgins?
Eliza rebel against Professor Higgins because he takes all the credit to
himself; and even Pickering sees Eliza’s triumph as a reflection of Higgins’s
Professional skill. This angers Eliza, who sees that her own efforts are
undervalued and that Higgins does not regard her as a human being with real
feelings, but as something inert, a doll that it has amused him to pass off as
a living woman. He seems scarcely aware of her presence.
Provoked, Eliza ceases to be the obedient
pupil and rebelliously asserts her independence.
(8) Do you thing that Higgins is a
winner or loser?
Professionally, Higgins is a winner. He regards himself as a winner as
he won the bet of passing Eliza off as a duchess in six months. Pickering is of
the same view as he congratulates Higgins for his professional skill.
However, at the personal and emotional
level, Higgins is a loser. He is no more the same confirmed bachelor he was
before meeting Eliza. He is now totally dependent on her, and perhaps attracted
to her. Near the end of Act 5, Higgins asks Eliza to buy him some gloves, ties,
ham, and cheese while she is out. She replies ambivalently and departs “…. What
you are to do without me I , imagine.” We
do not know if she will follow his orders.
When she leaves the house in Wimpole Street
in Act 4, Eliza forces Higgins to realize how much he has come to rely on her.
He traces her to his mother’s apartment where she has taken refuge, and tries
to persuade her to come back.
ليست هناك تعليقات: