"the outstanding didactic playВ».
In order to show how radically can be changed a person Shaw chose the method of transition from one extreme measure into another. If such radical change of the person probable in a considerably short time the spectator should tell to itself, that then is possible also any other changes of a human being.
Here is what Professor Higgins thinks:
"But you have no idea how frightfully interesting it is to take a human being and change her into a quite different human being by creating a new speech for her. It's filling up the deepest gulf that separates class from class and soul from soul "
Bernard Shaw gave a lot of attention to language problems. The play had a serious task: Shaw wished to attract the attention of the English public to phonetics. He stood up for creation of the new alphabet which to a greater extent correspond to the sounds of the English language than nowadays existing and which would facilitate a problem of studying of this language to children and foreigners.
To this problem Shaw repeatedly came back throughout his life and according to his will the big sum has been left for the creation of the new English alphabet. p> Shaw, perhaps, the first has realized omnipotence of language in a society, its exclusive social role about which indirectly in the same years psychoanalysis has started talking. Shaw has told about it in placard-instructive but from that is not less ironic-fascinating "Pygmalion". Professor Higgins, let and in the narrow special sphere, but nevertheless has outstripped structuralism and post structuralism which in the second half of the century will make the ideas of "Discourse" and "totalitarian language practices" their central theme.
THE NOTE TAKER (Higgins). You see this creature with her curbstone English: the English that will keep her in the gutter to the end of her days. p> Thus in В«PygmalionВ» Shaw masterfully has connected two themes equally exciting him: a problem of a social inequality and a problem of the classical English language. Act by act, word by word we understand that the set of behaviour, that is the form and the speech maintenance, a manner of judgment and the thoughts, habitual acts and typical reactions of people are adapted for the conditions of their environment. The subjective being and the objective world correspond each other and mutually penetrate each other. p> From the author the big expense of drama means was required to convince of it each spectator. Shaw has found this means in systematical application of alienation effect forcing the characters from time to time to act in another environment that then step by step to return them into their own environment, skillfully creating at the beginning false representation concerning their present essence then this impression gradually and methodically alters. p> Logic, the didactics and following to the concept of determinism so peculiar to Shaw force the reader to ponder upon each word to analyze each action of characters. The iceberg style is felt when deeply complicated social issues and philosophical views of the author are hidden under simple, apparently, displays of characters. Shaw prefers simple and compound sentences to complex ones. At the same time Shaw's works are full of paradoxes, and "Pygmalion" is not exclusion. p> "What is life but a series of inspired follies? "
"Would the world ever have been made if its maker had been afraid of making trouble? Making life means making trouble. "p> "Happy is the man who can make a living by his hobby! "
The Shavian forethought is felt in the whole play. Even the interjections can not be changed by the actors. The interjections and grammatical mistakes is not used by Shaw simply as a comedian colouring but to expose the class distinction and to show how miserable is a person who can not explain his thoughts and resorts to different primitive sound combinations.
1. LIZA [Protesting extremely] Ah - ah - ah - ah - ow - ow - oooo! I ain't dirty: I washed my face and hands afore I come, I did.
2. LIZA [Overwhelmed] Ah - ah - ow - oo! p> HIGGINS. There! That's all you get out of Eliza. Ah - ah - ow - oo! No use explaining. p> Though on a genre В«PygmalionВ» can be considered as a comedy with the elements of narration like in a romance. In calling Pygmalion a romance (its subtitle is "A Romance in Five Acts "), Shaw was referencing a well-established literary form (Not usually employed in theatre), to which Pygmalion does not fully conform. (Shaw was aiming to provoke thought by designating his play thusly.) The term romance does not imply, as it was misinterpreted to mean by many of Shaw's contemporaries, a romantic element between Liza and Higgins. Since the middle ages, romances have been distinguished from more realistic forms by their exotic, exaggerated narratives, and their idealized ...
