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George Bernard Shaw - Pygmalion - Episode 3 - The Ending - It's A Breakup Not A Wedding!
Hi, I’m Christy Shriver and we’re here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us.
And I’m Garry Shriver and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast. This episode we are wrapping up our three-part series on George Bernard Shaw otherwise known as GBS and his phenomenally successful play, Pygmalion. In week 1, we introduced Shaw, some of his political ideologies, the Greek myth Pygmalion from where Shaw took his inspiration, as well as ACT 1. Last week, we discussed Acts 2 and 3. We talked about Rosenthal’s revolutionary psychological discovery named the Pygmalion Effect. We spoke to the symbolism of language, of clothes, of the gramophone, and mirrors. We highlighted the parallels between Alfred Doolittle and Professor Higgins. We allowed Shaw to preach at us as he humorously characterized the “undeserving poor”, and “middle class morality”, all Shavian terms, and finally we got to Eliza, the flower girl transformed into a duchess crashing through that point of no return otherwise known as the climax. She fools all of good society into thinking she’s genteel getting away with declaring that it was “not bloody likely” she’d be walking home but would be taking a taxi.
And of course, all of this is very didactic, a word he uses to mean moralizing, but it’s also very very funny. We smile when Alfred Doolittle justifies begging for money to buy liquor by claiming that it couldn’t possibly ruin him. It would all be gone by the end of the weekend. He further claims (and of course this is Shaw’s voice moral judgement toward us theater attenders) that anyone would be as immoral as he, if we were also the undeserving poor. He’s simply too poor to afford morals; morals are luxuries of the middle class. Shaw’s wit is on full display when he’s sermonizing which brings us to the final two acts of the play. Of course, they sermonize the most, but also are arguably the most entertaining for the same reason. We referenced the end of the play and that Shaw would never have endorsed the thematic license My Fair Lady took with the ending, but today we will make Shaw’s case for him as to why. For a good long time, I was with the rest of the world and was highly irritated at Shaw’s anti-climatic ending. Having said that, after reading his sequel, hearing his commentary, and understanding better Shaw’s purposes for having it end the way it does, I now completely agree with Shaw, there is no other way to end the play but for Higgins and Eliza to part ways.
Well, there went that, I hope it’s okay we’re going spoil the ending at this point. Well, let me put it this way, if you’ve watched My Fair Lady, or Pygmalion, you may think that Shaw think that Shaw spoiled his own ending because there is not a happily ever after ending to this romantic comedy. People feel deceived when they get to the end because romantic comedies are not supposed to end in angst but especially one with the word romance in the title. We haven’t brough it out yet, but there is a subtitle to this play, and many have claimed Shaw has misled us with what he’s attempting to do in the play through the subtitle. The full title of the play is Pygmalion, a Romance in Five Acts. He labels it a romantic comedy, and most people reading that reasonably assume certain characteristics that are usual to comedies, at least classically modeled ones. For one, there should be a wedding at the end, and secondly, the lead man should end up with the lead woman, a love story gone right. Everyone knows, comedies end in marriage; tragedies end in death.
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