Pygmalion / My Fair Lady

My Fair Lady, a musical by Alan Jay Lerner (book and lyrics) and Frederick Loewe (music), opened on Broadway to tremendous critical and popular success in 1956, starring Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews as Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle. Adapted from George Bernard Shaw’s popular play Pygmalion (1914) and inspired by the Greek myth of “Pygmalion and Galatea,” the musical takes place in early-20th-century London, satirizing issues of class hierarchies, gender disparity, and how language plays a part in social othering and perceived respectability. My Fair Lady became one of the most well-loved musicals of the era: It won six Tony Awards, including Best Musical. The 1964 film adaptation also starred Harrison, but it controversially replaced Andrews with Audrey Hepburn, who was a well-known movie star but who didn’t sing and required the dubbing of Marni Nixon for the songs. Nevertheless, it won eight Academy Awards and was the highest-grossing film of 1964.

This guide uses the edition of the My Fair Lady libretto published by Music Theatre International and available for rent with production rights.

Plot Summary

Eliza Doolittle is a young Cockney woman who is selling flowers in Covent Garden when a wealthy man named Freddy Eynsford-Hill crashes into her, causing her to drop and ruin her flowers, and is ushered off by his mother without paying. A scene unfolds, and someone notices that a gentleman nearby is writing down every word Eliza says. Professor Henry Higgins explains that he is a linguistics scholar and can track anyone’s origins by their accents. He brags that Eliza’s accent is the only reason she is poor, and he could pass her off as nobility after six months of speech lessons. Coincidentally, Colonel Pickering, another linguistics scholar, is also present, visiting from India. Higgins invites him to stay at his house and they are fast friends. Higgins tosses a handful of coins in Eliza’s basket, and the two men exit together.

On her way home, Eliza meets her father, Alfred Doolittle, who is being tossed out of a pub for being broke. Later, Eliza shows up at Higgins’s house wanting to pay for lessons so she can get a better job. Higgins treats her terribly, but he and Pickering end up placing a wager on whether Higgins can pull off what he bragged about, with Pickering offering to pay for Eliza’s lessons and setting the stakes of the experiment. The test would be the Embassy Ball at Buckingham Palace. The housekeeper, Mrs. Pearce, whisks Eliza away to be scrubbed and dressed in new clothes (her old ones burned), and then settled in a bedroom.

Eliza’s father finds out that Eliza is staying with a gentleman and didn’t need her clothes, and he heads off to extort five pounds from Higgins. Amused by him, Higgins eventually gives him the money. Higgins works Eliza endlessly, finally having a breakthrough in her pronunciation. He decides to test her skills by bringing her to his mother’s box at the Ascot horse races.

Freddy is also there at Ascot, and he falls hopelessly in love with Eliza, showing up at the Higgins house later and waiting for her to eventually emerge. She does well until she is caught up in the race and shouts and curses. Six months later, the Embassy Ball goes perfectly. She even fools a nosy former student of Higgins, who makes it his business to spot imposters. However, afterward, Eliza feels used and unappreciated, and she decides to leave.

Freddy is still waiting, and he follows her, carrying her suitcase. Eliza goes to Covent Garden, where no one recognizes her, and she is treated like an aristocrat. She sees her father, who is unhappily wealthy thanks to an inheritance resulting from a prank by Higgins. He is being forced to marry his longtime girlfriend. Eliza and Freddy leave.

Higgins wakes up and can’t find his slippers or Eliza; he is confounded as to why Eliza would have left. He finds her having tea at his mother’s house, and Eliza refuses to go back with him and let him continue treating her badly. Higgins realizes that he misses her, even if he doesn’t have the emotional capacity to admit it. He goes home and listens to recordings of Eliza, and she appears. He asks her where his slippers are.