George Bernard Shaw

PYGMALION By George Bernard Shaw A Penn State Electronic Classics Series Publication Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw is a publication of the Pennsylvania State University. This Portable Document file is furnished free and without any charge of any kind. Any person using this document file, for any purpose, and in any way does so at his or her own risk. Neither the Pennsylvania State University nor Jim Manis, Faculty Editor, nor anyone associated with the Pennsylvania State University assumes any responsibility for the material contained within the document or for the file as an electronic transmission, in any way. Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw, the Pennsylvania State University, Electronic Classics Series, Jim Manis, Faculty Editor, Hazleton, PA 18202-1291 is a Portable Document File produced as part of an ongoing student publication project to bring classical works of literature, in English, to free and easy access of those wishing to make use of them. Cover Design: Jim Manis Copyright © 2004 The Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University is an equal opportunity university. Shaw even to Englishmen. The reformer England needs PYGMALION today is an energetic phonetic enthusiast: that is why I have made such a one the hero of a popular play. By There have been heroes of that kind crying in the wilderness for many years past. When I became in- terested in the subject towards the end of the eigh- George Bernard Shaw teen-seventies, Melville Bell was dead; but Alexander J. Ellis was still a living patriarch, with an impressive 1912 head always covered by a velvet skull cap, for which PREFACE TO PYGMALION he would apologize to public meetings in a very courtly manner. He and Tito Pagliardini, another phonetic A Professor of Phonetics veteran, were men whom it was impossible to dis- like. Henry Sweet, then a young man, lacked their AS WILL BE SEEN LATER ON , Pygmalion needs, not a pref- sweetness of character: he was about as concilia- ace, but a sequel, which I have supplied in its due tory to conventional mortals as Ibsen or Samuel But- place. The English have no respect for their language, ler. His great ability as a phonetician (he was, I think, and will not teach their children to speak it. They spell the best of them all at his job) would have entitled it so abominably that no man can teach himself what him to high official recognition, and perhaps enabled it sounds like. It is impossible for an Englishman to him to popularize his subject, but for his Satanic con- open his mouth without making some other English- tempt for all academic dignitaries and persons in man hate or despise him. German and Spanish are general who thought more of Greek than of phonet- accessible to foreigners: English is not accessible 3 Pygmalion ics. Once, in the days when the Imperial Institute rose the man himself into any sort of compliance with the in South Kensington, and Joseph Chamberlain was university, to which he nevertheless clung by divine booming the Empire, I induced the editor of a lead- right in an intensely Oxonian way. I daresay his pa- ing monthly review to commission an article from pers, if he has left any, include some satires that may Sweet on the imperial importance of his subject. be published without too destructive results fifty years When it arrived, it contained nothing but a savagely hence. He was, I believe, not in the least an ill-na- derisive attack on a professor of language and litera- tured man: very much the opposite, I should say; but ture whose chair Sweet regarded as proper to a pho- he would not suffer fools gladly. netic expert only. The article, being libelous, had to Those who knew him will recognize in my third act be returned as impossible; and I had to renounce my the allusion to the patent Shorthand in which he used dream of dragging its author into the limelight. When to write postcards, and which may be acquired from I met him afterwards, for the first time for many years, a four and six-penny manual published by the I found to my astonishment that he, who had been a Clarendon Press. The postcards which Mrs. Higgins quite tolerably presentable young man, had actually describes are such as I have received from Sweet. I managed by sheer scorn to alter his personal ap- would decipher a sound which a cockney would rep- pearance until he had become a sort of walking re- resent by zerr, and a Frenchman by seu, and then pudiation of Oxford and all its traditions. It must have write demanding with some heat what on earth it been largely in his own despite that he was squeezed meant. Sweet, with boundless contempt for my stu- into something called a Readership of phonetics pidity, would reply that it not only meant but obvi- there. The future of phonetics rests probably with his ously was the word Result, as no other Word con- pupils, who all swore by him; but nothing could bring taining that sound, and capable of making sense with 4 Shaw the context, existed in any language spoken on earth. copy, and schools where experienced teachers That less expert mortals should require fuller indica- coached you up to the necessary proficiency. Sweet tions was beyond Sweet’s patience. Therefore, could not organize his market in that fashion. He might though the whole point of his “Current Shorthand” is as well have been the Sybil who tore up the leaves that it can express every sound in the language per- of prophecy that nobody would attend to. The four fectly, vowels as well as consonants, and that your and six-penny manual, mostly in his lithographed hand has to make no stroke except the easy and handwriting, that was never vulgarly advertized, may current ones with which you write m, n, and u, l, p, perhaps some day be taken up by a syndicate and and q, scribbling them at whatever angle comes easi- pushed upon the public as The Times pushed the est to you, his unfortunate determination to make this Encyclopaedia Britannica; but until then it will cer- remarkable and quite legible script serve also as a tainly not prevail against Pitman. I have bought three Shorthand reduced it in his own practice to the most copies of it during my lifetime; and I am informed by inscrutable of cryptograms. His true objective was the publishers that its cloistered existence is still a the provision of a full, accurate, legible script for our steady and healthy one. I actually learned the sys- noble but ill-dressed language; but he was led past tem two several times; and yet the shorthand in which that by his contempt for the popular Pitman system I am writing these lines is Pitman’s. And the reason of Shorthand, which he called the Pitfall system. The is, that my secretary cannot transcribe Sweet, hav- triumph of Pitman was a triumph of business organi- ing been perforce taught in the schools of Pitman. zation: there was a weekly paper to persuade you to Therefore, Sweet railed at Pitman as vainly as learn Pitman: there were cheap textbooks and exer- Thersites railed at Ajax: his raillery, however it may cise books and transcripts of speeches for you to have eased his soul, gave no popular vogue to Cur- 5 Pygmalion rent Shorthand. Pygmalion Higgins is not a portrait Of the later generations of phoneticians I know little. of Sweet, to whom the adventure of Eliza Doolittle Among them towers the Poet Laureate, to whom per- would have been impossible; still, as will be seen, haps Higgins may owe his Miltonic sympathies, there are touches of Sweet in the play. With Higgins’s though here again I must disclaim all portraiture. But physique and temperament Sweet might have set if the play makes the public aware that there are such the Thames on fire. As it was, he impressed himself people as phoneticians, and that they are among the professionally on Europe to an extent that made his most important people in England at present, it will comparative personal obscurity, and the failure of serve its turn. Oxford to do justice to his eminence, a puzzle to for- I wish to boast that Pygmalion has been an ex- eign specialists in his subject. I do not blame Oxford, tremely successful play all over Europe and North because I think Oxford is quite right in demanding a America as well as at home. It is so intensely and certain social amenity from its nurslings (heaven deliberately didactic, and its subject is esteemed so knows it is not exorbitant in its requirements!); for dry, that I delight in throwing it at the heads of the although I well know how hard it is for a man of ge- wiseacres who repeat the parrot cry that art should nius with a seriously underrated subject to maintain never be didactic. It goes to prove my contention that serene and kindly relations with the men who under- art should never be anything else. rate it, and who keep all the best places for less im- Finally, and for the encouragement of people portant subjects which they profess without original- troubled with accents that cut them off from all high ity and sometimes without much capacity for them, employment, I may add that the change wrought by still, if he overwhelms them with wrath and disdain, Professor Higgins in the flower girl is neither impos- he cannot expect them to heap honors on him.

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