Summary: Tuxedoed Pygmalion and Galatea with a basket of flowers

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

For those who are completely unaware of what will be discussed now, let us explain that an attempt will be made to briefly outline the plot of a non-ancient myth about the sculptor Pygmalion, who fell in love with the beautiful statue of Galatea he created and begged the gods to revive it, but the plays of the great English playwright Bernard Shaw.

Let's get started… Act one

The full title of the play is Pygmalion: A Fantasy Novel in Five Acts.

Not everyone can read plays from sight, and there are not so many inveterate theater-goers left. The world is ruled by the Internet and television. Of course, Shaw's works have been filmed more than once, and counting the number of productions is completely hopeless. But watching a movie takes hours, reading the text of a play is also not a quick task, and for those who want to save time and get an education, they came up with a summary.

"Pygmalion" - in the following text we will call this play for brevity - it starts to rain. Yes, the usual summer downpour, under which almost everyone fellacting heroes of the work. They stand under the portico of St. Paul's Cathedral and wait for a taxi. Mobile phones had not yet been invented, taxi services did not work on such a scale as they do today, and in order for everyone to get home more or less dry, someone had to sacrifice himself. Who is this lonely hero? Naturally, the youngest and most trouble-free Freddie. But even when he gets completely wet in the process of searching, he does not find a taxi, for which he receives a reprimand from his mother and sister in full. Hurrying to hide under the portico, Freddy touches a poorly dressed girl with a basket of flowers. She does not remain in the loser, and with the frankness characteristic of commoners she expresses everything that she thinks about clumsy young people in general and Freddie in particular. Hearing such interesting and in some way poetic epithets, the gentleman standing a little aside hurriedly begins to write something into a laptop (a laptop used to be called ordinary notebooks - notepads).

The girl makes a logical marketing move and starts advertising her product. In particular, he begs the colonel standing next to him to purchase several violets and thereby support commerce. The colonel takes out a change and pays off the dexterous tradeswoman, but fundamentally does not take a bouquet of violets. Here someone notices a gentleman enthusiastically stenographing, and suggests that he is composing a denunciation to the KGB (in the UK, of course, there is no KGB, but there is Scotland Yard). A general wave of indignation rises against the policemanarbitrariness. In order not to be lynched on the spot, the gentleman with a notebook very cleverly guesses the birthplace of some of the accusers. He gets away with it, but the people demand the immediate exposure of the session of black magic.

Everything turns out to be quite innocent, and instead of an intelligence agent, the public now sees a harmless linguist in front of them. The unfortunate Freddy is not allowed to watch the performance to the end and is again pushed out into the rain, with an order not to return without a taxi. While Freddie is wandering around London in search of a car, the rain suddenly stops, and his relatives decide that they can do without a taxi. The people are slowly dissolving, and as a result, only three main characters remain:

flower girl Eliza Doolittle, magician linguist Professor Higgins and Colonel Pickering. The last two find out that they have long dreamed of meeting, but it still didn’t work out, and if it weren’t for the blessed downpour, they would have been chasing each other either through India or England. After reprimanding Eliza for not doing well in school, being completely unable to speak like educated white colonialists, and noting that she would do well to attend a course in noble manners, they exchange their addresses, donate a lot of change to the violet seller and leave.

Something the first act turned out to be too long, and similar to anything, but not a summary. "Pygmalion" consists of five acts. And at such a pace, we will not get to the final of the play soon. Moreover, it is completely unclearthan here an antique sculptor. Let's hope this gets cleared up and we'll continue with our summary.

Pygmalion, act two

It starts in Professor Higgins' apartment. Our linguist boasts to the colonel of his sound recording equipment, the latter expresses immoderate admiration for the quality and purity of sound. Their conversation is interrupted by a visit… who do you think? You will never guess - Eliza Doolittle herself! She came to hire Higgins as a tutor in calligraphy and literacy production. She remembered the address yesterday, but the money poured out by her two friends, as she herself believes, will be enough to buy Buckingham Palace and get the Tower in the load.

But the professor categorically states that he is not engaged in tutoring. However, having learned a lot about himself and the colonel from Eliza, he suddenly decides to make her not just anyone, but a real duchess. He even refuses to charge for it. However, he is not so unmercenary, and makes a large bet with the colonel that he will cope with this difficult task in just a few months. No, we are not talking about forgery of documents. In the play "Pygmalion", the summary of which you are now reading, there is no criminality at all. It's not a detective or a thriller. The essence of the bet is that at the end of the training, Eliza is brought to an appointment at the embassy, they are presented not as a flower girl, but as a duchess, and they are waiting to see if their deceit will be revealed. While the professor's housekeepersubjects Miss Doolittle to cruel hygienic procedures, the girl's father comes to Higgins' apartment. It turns out to be a scavenger, battered by life, but having a philosophical mindset and problems in family life. He expresses fear for the safety of the innocence of his only and dearly beloved daughter, but for five pounds he agrees to strangle his paternal feelings.

Pygmalion" Show: a summary of the subsequent third and fourth acts

Professor mercilessly drives the unfortunate girl through the grammar and syntax of the English language, simultaneously teaching her to behave with high-society tact.

After a while, considering Eliza already sufficiently "savvy", Higgins decides to arrange a mini-exam for her and brings her to his own mother for zhurfix. There, by a strange coincidence, is the very mother of the unfortunate Freddie. Naturally, the young man begins to show signs of attention to Eliza, which cannot but please both his own mother and the professor himself. And the professor's mom unexpectedly likes the girl.

The bet period is coming to an end, and Eliza plays the part of the Duchess brilliantly at the reception. The debaters, tired of the hassle, are glad that everything is over, congratulate each other on a job well done, and go to their rooms. It never occurs to them to thank Eliza, because for them she is not a person, but a tool. Eliza, having spent a lot of energy and a bunch of nerve cells at the reception, is deeply offended by such a dismissive attitude towards her, launches a pair of shoes at the smug professor.

Fifth - final action

The girl runs away from these two "chumps in suits". The next morning, not finding their usual toy at the threshold of the bedroom with slippers in their teeth, Pickering and Higgins run to complain to the mother of the latter, indignant at the ungrateful girl. And what is their surprise when, instead of the expected sympathy, they receive a sharp rebuff. It turns out that Eliza came to Mrs. Higgins at night and poured out her insult to the gentlemen for half the night.

The play is rapidly moving towards the finale, and so is our summary. Pygmalion doesn't end with wedding bells, as you might have hoped. Not at all. Both Professor Higgins and Colonel Pickering are not romantic heroes, they are not at all passionately in love with a young violet saleswoman. They just got used to her, and now they don't want to exist separately from Eliza. All this they express both to Eliza herself and to the professor's mother. This is where the play ends, leaving the reader in a slight bewilderment about how the further fate of the characters will develop. Curtain.