Pygmalion

Shaw states that they are on the portico of “Wren’s cathedral but Inigo Jones’s church in Covent Garden vegetable market” (Act 1, Page 11). This section predates Wren’s remodeling after damage from a fire a few hundred years prior. In addition, Covent Gardens reflects this mixed demographic. Historically, the area was filled with brothels. At the time of the play, it was filled with marketplaces and flower shops and was in the midst of being revamped into the modern, upscale theater district that it now is. This setting reflects the contrived situation the play opens with to bring various classes of people together. Due to the downpour of rain, the people on the street, the middle class, and the upper class are forced together. In this public place, the characters act as expected of their social class.

The first characters, later identified as Mrs. Eynsford Hill, her daughter, Clara, and her son, Freddy, are genteel theatergoers looking for a taxi to return home. Their interactions reflect the gender expectations of their class: Freddy is expected to retrieve a taxi despite the rain, as his mother and daughter should not be out in the weather. The classes literally collide as Freddy and Eliza bump into each other.

When introducing the phonetic spelling he uses in the text, Shaw uses the stage directions to interject his intentions as the playwright. While his stage directions are novelistic throughout, his stage direction regarding the dialect is an explicit authorial intervention. After attempting to replicate Eliza’s cockney accent, he writes, “[Here, with apologies, this desperate attempt to represent her dialect without a phonetic alphabet must be abandoned as unintelligible outside London]” (Act I, Page 14). Even in his efforts to be authentic, Shaw can only represent the dialect. The written word is a performance not only because it is the text of a play but also because it creates the illusion of different dialects.

Shaw uses this phonetic spelling throughout the play. For Eliza, it establishes her arc throughout the play. At the beginning, her dialogue is spelled phonetically to establish the specifics of her dialect. For example, when Eliza finds out Freddy is Mrs. Eynsford Hill’s son, she exclaims, “Ow, eez yǝ-ooa san, is e?” (Act I, Page 14). By spelling it phonetically, Shaw ensures the actor creates the appropriate sounds and the needed contrast between Eliza and the middle-class characters.

Eliza’s use of the name Freddy illustrates how language is used and interpreted differently by the classes. Mrs. Eynsford Hill interprets this use as an indication of familiarity, prompting her to pay Eliza to determine how she knows her son. Eliza explains that this slang is used “if you was talking to a stranger and wishes to be pleasant” (Act I, Page 14). The taxi driver later confirms this understanding when he refers to Eliza as Judy (Act I, Page 25). In contrast, Mrs. Eynsford Hill sees this as overly familiar. This miscommunication reflects a central concern of the play, as Eliza must learn to use the language of the genteel class in her transformation.

Unlike most of the characters in the play, Eliza understands the inherent performativity of class. When Colonel, later revealed to be Pickering, comes under the portico, Eliza shifts to perform as the deserving poor and “establish friendly relations with him” (Act I, Page 15). She uses a more proper dialect, stating, “So cheer up, Captain; and buy a flower off a poor girl” (Act I, Page 15). In contrast to her interaction with Freddy, she uses a formal title, although she misidentifies his rank. This awareness and ability suggests her linguistic intelligence and draws into question Higgins’s later claims that Eliza could not have transformed without him.

The first appearance of Higgins underscores the importance of clothes in determining a person’s class. Initially, he is mistaken for a police informant, as he is taking copious notes. Even when a bystander notices his shoes and suggests Higgins is of a higher class, Higgins’s actions and speech continue to confound other observers, even Pickering. They all continue to try and protect Eliza from the police until Higgins demonstrates the skills he uses as a phonetics professor. His ability to pinpoint the crowds’ birthplace based on their accents reveals this skill.

Shaw establishes his interest in the connection between manners, class, and language through Eliza’s concerns in the later part of the act. She ensures the crowd that she is a “respectable girl” (Act I, Page 16) and a “good girl” (Act I, Page 18). She perceives Higgin’s actions, both when he is thought to be police and when he is revealed as a phonetics professor, as attempts to “take away [her] character” (Act I, Pages 16, 21). She defiantly states, “My character is the same to me as any lady’s” (Act I, Page 21). Eliza’s overwhelming concern about losing her reputation reflects Shaw’s belief that those of good character can be transformed through their use of language.

The taxi acts as a marker of class. Freddy’s search for a taxi reflects his family’s efforts to ascend to a higher level of gentility. When Eliza gets a large sum of money while waiting in the rain, she decides to take a taxi home. In her current dirty state with a gutter accent, Eliza is not able to pass as genteel, and the taxi driver immediately rejects the illusion she is trying to create.

In a five-act play structure, the first act presents the exposition and hints at the central conflict of the play. In this first meeting of the play’s central characters, Henry Higgins brags to Pickering about his ability to pass off even a flower girl like Eliza as a duchess. This comment acts as an inciting incident that prompts Eliza to approach Higgins for lessons in the next act.