The Denouement of Pygmalion

THE DENOUEMENT OF PYGMALION 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 mel-1 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."2 Such an ending has been popular also with audiences and actors ever since the play first appeared in 1913. Shaw chided both Mrs. Patrick Campbell and Beerbohm Tree for their romantic interpretations in the first productions: "I say, Tree, must you be so treacly?" he asked during the rehearsals. Tree's stage business before the curtain fell left no doubts in the minds of audiences that Higgins's marriage.to Eliza was imminent. Justifying it, Tree wrote Shaw: "My ending makes money; You ought to be grateful." Shaw replied: "Your ending is damnable: You ought to be shot'" And he continued fulminatillg against romantic portrayals of an ending which caters to what, in the Epilogue written for Pyg1TUllion later, he called "imaginations . .. so enfeebled by their lazy dependence on the ready-mades and reach-med ,owns of the ragshop in which Romance keeps its stock of 'happy endings ' to misfit all stories." Nonetheless, the recurrent arousing of inappropriate audience expectations and the apparent inability of the play to arouse the appropriate expectations (or those which Shaw considered appropriate) raise a question about Pyg1TUllion's success on the playwright's terms. Perhaps even more important, they call for a re-examination of these terms; for I think that the ending is signll'icant and dramatically inevitable, and that it is the ending Shaw himself rewrote for the film (thereby confusing the matter further )-rather than his Epilogue-which is frivolous . . What, then, are the terms of Pyg1TUllion? The title of the play underlines the parallel of Shaw's story and the myth of the artist-llie-giver. At the same time, however, there are differences between the two, the most obvious one being ill .the endings. 1. Mv. Fair Lady (New York, 1956), Prefat~ Note. 2. Milton Crane, "Pygmalion: Bernard Shaw s Dramatic Theory and Practice," PMLA, 66 (1951 ) 882-3. 3. Hesketh Pearson, Beerbohm Tree, His Life and Laughter (LondoD, 1956), pp. 179, 182. 29 30 MYRON MATLAW May Pygmalion's ardent wish, as is well known, is miraculously granted, The romance, in the erotic sense, is consummated, presumahly in the time-worn fashion of the rag shop. It is relevant here only to note that this consummation is anticipated throughout the myth: Pygmalion ardently yearns for it all along. A second difference between the play and the myth is perhaps less obvious. While the heroes of both are artists, Higgins, in the framework of Shaw's philosophy, is the greater one. "Artist-philosophers are the only sort of artists I take quite seriously," Shaw remarked in the Epistle Dedicatory to Man and Superman, and he frequently voiced his belief that art must be didactic, that in fact art by its very nature is didactic and can never be anything else. (Significantly, he makes the point again in the Preface to Pygmalion.) Pygmalion's artistry, the creation of a beautiful statue, evokes, in the artist himself, a passion of the senses. Higgins's artistry and passion, on the other hand, are cerebral: didactic and philosophic, phonetics and Milton. While the comparison of the myth and the play could be pursued further-such matters as the use of a deus ex machina and the complete passivity of Galatea, for example, clearly contrast with Shaw's treatment-it is evident that Shaw's title appears to be almost ironic, for, according to his own standards, his plot (didactic and philosophic rather than erotic and sentimental) is artistically superior. In writing Pygmalion, however, Shaw was not primarily concerned with demonstrating his superiority as a myth-maker...