A servant or lower-class person posing as a member of the upper class is a stock character in farces, or in contemporary situation comedies. One example is the libretto of Johann Strauss' most famous operetta Die Fledermaus in which a maid, Adele, enacts such a role at a nobleman's ball. Li za Doolittle, a former flower seller, thanks to the expert vocal coaching of Professor Henry Higgins, passes herself off as a great lady at a high society gathering in George Bernard Shaw's Pyg malion (1913) and its musical adaptation, My Fair Lady, 1956. Alice Adams, because she simply wants to escape from an impossible family situation, is a more sympathetic character than most such pretenders.