# Pygmalion *A play by George Bernard Shaw.* > I read the full Project Gutenberg text of the play (preface, five acts and Shaw's sequel), Wikipedia's articles on the play and on Shaw, the LibriVox catalogue page, and the vault note for the video. I did not read other editions. Plot and quotations are from the Gutenberg text; I have not compared it with later authorised versions. ## 1. Book facts | | | |---|---| | Title | *Pygmalion* | | Author | George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) | | Form | Play in five acts, with a preface and a prose sequel, "what happened afterwards" | | Written / first staged | Written 1912; first staged in German translation at the Hofburg Theatre, Vienna, on 16 October 1913; English-language premiere at His Majesty's Theatre, London, in April 1914 (Wikipedia) | | Published | Wikipedia dates the earlier print version to 1914 and says the sequel was added in the 1916 print edition. LibriVox gives 1913 | | Editions | Two main texts circulate: an early one (1914) and a later one with revisions Shaw added, first published 1941 (Wikipedia). The Gutenberg text comes from the early version | | Publisher / ISBN / pages | Not applicable: many editions, so left blank | | Language | English | **Where it came up.** - Video: [Is Anyone Home Inside an AI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lLz5EROz_8), *Count Grey Matter*. - Mention: [13:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lLz5EROz_8&t=790s), the closing section. The Count explains that ELIZA was named for Eliza Doolittle in Shaw's *Pygmalion*, quotes her line about how a lady is treated, and names his "lodger" Eliza. - Vault note: [[Video Summaries/Count Grey Matter/Is Anyone Home Inside an AI]]. See also [[Book Summaries/Weizenbaum, Joseph/Computer Power and Human Reason - Joseph Weizenbaum|Computer Power and Human Reason]]. ## 2. Book resources **Reference pages** - [Wikipedia: Pygmalion (play)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_(play)) - [Wikipedia: George Bernard Shaw](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bernard_Shaw) **Where to get it (legal, free)** - [Project Gutenberg #3825](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3825) (text read for this note). It is free in the United States under the Project Gutenberg licence, and Shaw died in 1950. It is transcribed from an early version and lacks passages added later (Wikipedia names several, such as the scene with Nepommuck). - [Wikisource: Pygmalion](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Pygmalion) (page loads; text not read; I have not checked which edition it uses). - [Standard Ebooks: Pygmalion](https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/george-bernard-shaw/pygmalion) (page exists; I could not open its details; edition not checked). - **Audiobook, free:** [LibriVox, Pygmalion](https://librivox.org/pygmalion-by-george-bernard-shaw/) (2:54:03; read by LibriVox volunteers). ## 3. Author biography Source: Wikipedia, George Bernard Shaw. - Irish playwright, critic and political activist, born in Dublin in 1856; moved to London in 1876. Died on 2 November 1950, aged 94. - Theatre and music critic in the 1880s; joined the Fabian Society. First public success *Arms and the Man* (1894); more than sixty plays, including *Man and Superman*, *Pygmalion* and *Saint Joan* (1923). - Nobel Prize in Literature, 1925. Won an Academy Award for the 1938 film screenplay of *Pygmalion*. - Wikipedia notes controversial views: he promoted eugenics and alphabet reform, opposed vaccination and organised religion, and in the late 1920s wrote favourably of dictatorships of the right and left, including admiration for Mussolini and Stalin. ## 4. Author interviews and talks None verified. I did not find reliable links to interviews with Shaw, so none are listed. ## 5. Summary **Thesis.** Language and manners mark class. The play asks whether a person can be remade by teaching her to speak differently, and shows that what changes is chiefly how others treat her. Shaw sets this against the romantic expectation that the story should end in marriage; his sequel argues against it. **Origin.** In the myth of Pygmalion a sculptor falls in love with his statue, which comes to life. Wikipedia says Henry Higgins drew on phoneticians including Henry Sweet and Alexander Melville Bell, and that Eliza was inspired by a flower seller, Kitty Wilson. Shaw's preface presents phonetic reform as the point of making a phonetician the hero. **Plot, by act (Gutenberg text)** - **Act I.** A rainy night at Covent Garden. Higgins, a phonetician, identifies strangers' origins from their speech. He tells Colonel Pickering that he could pass a flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, off as a duchess. - **Act II.** Eliza turns up at Higgins's house asking for lessons. Pickering bets that Higgins cannot pass her off at an ambassador's garden party. Her father Alfred Doolittle, a dustman, arrives and takes money for her. - **Act III.** At Mrs Higgins's afternoon at-home Eliza passes at first and then slips into Cockney (including "Not bloody likely" on leaving, in the Gutenberg text, Act III). - **Act IV.** After the embassy party and the won bet, Higgins and Pickering ignore her. Eliza hurls Higgins's slippers at him and says she is "nothing" to him "not so much as them slippers" now that the experiment is over. - **Act V.** Mrs Higgins reproves her son. Eliza says she will be independent. Higgins asks her to return as a "consort battleship", and she leaves him with "Buy them yourself." - **Sequel.** Shaw argues in prose that Eliza and Higgins did not marry. **Key idea for the video.** Eliza in Act V: "the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she's treated." The video borrows it to suggest that how we treat an AI shapes what it is to us. **ELIZA.** Wikipedia says Weizenbaum named his chatterbot after Eliza Doolittle. ## 6. Fact-check Overall verdict: **supported**. | Claim (video) | Verdict | Evidence | |---|---|---| | ELIZA was named for Eliza Doolittle in Shaw's *Pygmalion* | Supported | Wikipedia, "Pygmalion (play)", Influence: "Joseph Weizenbaum named his chatterbot computer program ELIZA after the character Eliza Doolittle" | | Eliza says "the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she's treated" | Supported (verbatim) | Gutenberg text, Act V: "...the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she's treated." | | Date of the play as 1913 | Supported with a caveat | Wikipedia: written 1912, premiered 1913 (Vienna), published in 1914 | | Shaw's Pygmalion is a play about a flower girl taught to speak like a lady | Supported | Plot summary above | ## 7. Citations and references - Shaw, George Bernard. *Pygmalion*. [Project Gutenberg #3825](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3825). - Wikipedia: [Pygmalion (play)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_(play)); [George Bernard Shaw](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bernard_Shaw). - LibriVox: [Pygmalion](https://librivox.org/pygmalion-by-george-bernard-shaw/). - Video: [Is Anyone Home Inside an AI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lLz5EROz_8), *Count Grey Matter*.