Pygmalion

Written by George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion’s roots are in the Greek myth of Pygmalion, the sculptor who carved a statue so beautiful that he fell in love with it. When Pygmalion was first staged in 1914, it starred Shaw’s favored actress Mrs. Patrick (Stella) Campbell, with whom he is said to have had a longstanding affair. Shaw had married ten years earlier, quite late at the age of 42, which does not seem to have curtailed his dalliances. But love in his case was definitely not blind, and he is said to have been highly critical of his beloved actress on stage (perhaps passing on his curmudgeonly ways to Pygmalion’s leading man, Professor Higgins). A challenge is given to Higgins by his friend Colonel Pickering: retrain the speech of a poor Cockney flower seller in just six months so as to pass her off as a duchess.