Penguin Classics Pygmalion

كتاب Penguin Classics Pygmalion
المؤلف: Bernard Shaw

" Yes , you squashed cabbage leaf ... you incarnate insult to the English language : I could pass you off as the Queen of Sheba Pygmalion both delighted and scandalized its first audiences in 1914 . A brilliantly witty reworking of the classical tale of the sculptor who falls in love with his perfect female statue , it is also a barbed attack on the British class system and a statement of Shaw's feminist views . In Shaw's hands , the phoneticist Henry Higgins is the Pygmalion figure who believes he can transform Eliza Doolittle , a cockney flower girl , into a duchess at ease in polite society . The one thing he overlooks is that his ' creation ' has a mind of her own . This is the definitive text produced under the editorial supervision of Dan H. Laurence , with an illuminating introduction by Nicholas Grene discussing the language and politics of the play . Also included in this volume is Shaw's preface , as well as his ' sequel ' written for the first publication in 1916 , to rebut public demand for a more convention- ally romantic ending .