The original makeover story from which a thousand imitators were born, this is the tale of how dapper Henry Higgins tries to elevate Eliza Doolittle from the cockney streets to the upper class.
In My Fair Lady, Audrey Hepburn made the character of Eliza Doolittle an instant and beloved classic. Here is the chance to read Pygmalion, George Bernard Shaw's original play that formed the basis for the beloved musical. Two old gentlemen with an interest in linguistics and phonetics make a wager: Professor Higgins bets Colonel Pickering that he can pass off a girl with a thick cockney accent as a well-spoken duchess. The next day, the young girl Eliza Doolittle comes to Higgins' house asking for speech lessons, and Higgins' experiment begins. In addition to speaking lessons, Higgins trains Eliza in upper-class etiquette and dresses her in new clothes, and when she leaves the house for the first time, the dustman does not recognize her. After months of intensive training, Eliza is shown off in society and her transformation appears to be a resounding success. Once Higgins and Pickering have settled the terms of the wager, though, they grow bored with what they have thought of as a mere project. But Eliza has taken her rhetorical and physical transformation much more seriously, and the men fail to realize that their little project may be more than a game after all. Shaw's insightful play explores the nature of change and transformation--and asks how permanent such things can be
