Shaw wrote the part of Eliza Doolittle—'an east-end dona with an apron and three orange and red ostrich feathers'—for Mrs Patrick Campbell, with whom he had a passionate but unconsummated affair. From the outset the play was a sensational success, although Shaw, irritated by its popularity at the expense of his artistic intentions, dismissed it as a potboiler. The Pygmalion of legend falls in love with his perfect female statue and persuades Venus to bring her to life so that he can marry her. But Shaw radically reworks Ovid's tale to give it a feminist slant: while Higgins teaches Eliza to speak and act like a duchess, she also asserts her independence, adamantly refusing to be his creation.
ENCOUNTER CANADIAN DRAMA IN FOUR MEDIA
EUGENE BENSON
Methuen
DEATH OF A SALESMAN (PULITZER PRIZE WINNER)
ARTHUR MILLER
PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE GROUP
A Dolls House and Other Plays With Pillars of the Community Ghosts and an Enemy of the People Penguin Black Classics
HENRIK IBSEN
Hedda Gabler and Other Plays Penguin Black Classics
Pygmalion
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
FINGERPRINT/PRAKASH BOOKS INDIA PVT. LTD.
A Dolls House Fingerprint
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