Pygmalion Essay

This Study Guide consists of approximately 80 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Pygmalion.

Pygmalion Essay

This Study Guide consists of approximately 80 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Pygmalion.
This section contains 1,125 words
(approx. 3 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy the Pygmalion Study Guide

In this essay, Matlaw examines Pygmalion's ending and the ways that subsequent adaptations have strayedfrom Shaw's original vision. The critic ultimately affirms the play's original conclusion,

Alan Jay Lerner, probably the most successful adapter of Shaw's Pygmalion, commented: "Shaw explains how Eliza ends not with Higgins but with Freddy and—Shaw and Heaven forgive me!—I am not certain he is right." Many critics would agree with this sentiment. A recent analysis of the play goes so far as to dismiss the Epilogue as a bit of Shavian frivolity and to cite the "happy ending" Shaw himself wrote for Pascal's film as the proper denouement of a play which is persuasively categorized by one critic as a play which follows "the classic pattern of satirical comedy" [Milton Crane mPMLA, vol.66, 1956].

Such an ending has been popular also with audiences and actors ever since the play first appeared...

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This section contains 1,125 words
(approx. 3 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy the Pygmalion Study Guide
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Pygmalion from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.