Summary: Pygmalion in a tuxedo and Galatea with a basket of flowers

For those who are completely unaware of what will be discussed, we will explain that an attempt will be made to briefly outline the story of the sculptor Pygmalion who did not fall in love with the beautiful statue of Galatea created by him and implored the gods to revive it, and the plays of the great English playwright Bernard Shaw.

Let's proceed ... Action first

The full name of the play is: "Pygmalion: romance-fantasy in five acts". Reading plays from a sheet by force is far from everyone, and there are not so many remaining inveterate theater-goers. The world is ruled by Internet and television. Of course, Shaw's works have not been screened once, and counting the number of productions is a hopeless thing. But watching the movie takes hours, reading the text of the play is also not a quick occupation, and for those who want both time to save and education to get, come up with a short summary.

"Pygmalion" - in the following text, for the sake of brevity, this is what we will call this play - it begins with rain. Yes, the usual summer rainstorm, under which almost all acting characters of the work fell. They stand under the portico of St. Paul's Cathedral and wait for a taxi. Mobile phones have not been invented yet, taxi calling services did not work on such a scale as today, and for everyone to be able to get home in a more or less dry kind, someone had to sacrifice himself. Who is this lonely hero? Naturally, the youngest and the most reliable Freddie. But even completely exhausted in the process of searching for a taxi, he does not find, for which he receives a reprimand from his mother and sister in full. Hurrying to take refuge under the portico, Freddie touches a poorly dressed girl with a basket of flowers. She does not remain in the loser, and with open-hearted frankness she expresses everything she thinks about clumsy young people in general and Freddie in particular. Hearing such interesting and in some way poetic epithets, standing slightly aside, the gentleman hastily begins to write something down in the laptop (a notebook used to be called ordinary notebooks - notebooks).

The girl makes a logical marketing move and begins to advertise her product. In particular, he begs the Colonel standing next to buy a few violets and thereby support commerce. The colonel takes out a trifle and pays off from the deft merchant, but a bunch of violets does not fundamentally take it. Then someone notices the enthusiastically stenographic gentleman, and suggests that he writes a denunciation to the KGB (in the UK, of course, there is no KGB, and there is Scotland Yard). A general wave of indignation against police arbitrariness is rising. In order not to be lynched in place, the gentleman with a notebook very cleverly discovers the birthplace of some prosecutors. He completely gets away with it, but the people demand an immediate exposure of a session of black magic.

Everything turns out to be completely innocent, and instead of an agent of the special services, the public now sees before him an innocuous linguist scientist. Unfortunate Freddie is not allowed to watch the show until the end and again pushed out in the rain, with a punishment without a taxi not to return. While Freddy is wandering around London in search of a car, the rain suddenly ends, and his relatives decide that they can do without a taxi. The people slowly dissipate, and as a result there are only three main characters: Flower girl Eliza Doolittle, linguist-magician Professor Higgins and Colonel Pickering. The last two find out that they have long dreamed to get acquainted, but it still did not work, and if not for the blessed rainstorm, they would chase after one another either in India or in England. Elise reprimanded her for not being able to speak well at school as an educated white colonialist, and noting that she would not be prevented from attending courses of noble manners, they exchanged their addresses, they sacrificed a bunch of trifles to the saleswoman of violets and retired away.

Something the first act turned out to be too long, and similar to anything, just not for a brief summary. Pygmalion consists of five acts. And at this pace, until the final of the play, we will not get there soon. In addition, it is completely incomprehensible, where does the antique sculptor. Let's hope that this will be clarified further and we will continue to present our brief content.

"Pygmalion", the second action

It begins in the apartment of Professor Higgins. Our linguist brags to the colonel with his sound recording equipment, the latter expresses an unmitigated admiration for the quality and purity of the sound. Their conversation is interrupted by a visit ... who would you think? You'll never guess - Eliza Doolittle in person! She came to hire Higgins as a tutor for writing and writing a literate speech. She remembered the address yesterday, poured out by two buddies of money to her, she herself believes, is enough to buy Buckingham Palace and get into the load on the delivery of the Tower.

But the professor categorically asserts that he does not practice tutoring. However, having learned about himself and the Colonel from Eliza, a lot of new and interesting, suddenly decides to make out of it not someone, but the real duchess. And even refuses to charge for it. However, he is not so disinterested, and concludes with the colonel a bet on a large sum that he will cope with this difficult matter in just a few months. No, it's not about forgery. In the play Pygmalion, the brief content of which you are now reading, there is generally no criminal law. This is not a detective story or a thriller. The essence of the bet is that at the end of the training Eliza is taken to the embassy for reception, they are not a flower girl, but a duchess and they are waiting for their deception. While the professor's housekeeper exposes Miss Doolittle with cruel hygiene procedures, the girl's father is the apartment for Higgins. They are tattered by life, but having a philosophical mindset and problems in the family life scavenger. He expresses his apprehension for the safety of the innocence of his only and beloved daughter, but for five pounds he agrees to strangle his paternal feelings.

Pygmalion »Show: summary of the subsequent third and fourth acts

The professor mercilessly drives the unfortunate girl in the grammar and syntax of the English language, along the way teaching her to stick with the lofty tact.

After a while, finding Eliza already sufficiently "savvy", Higgins decides to arrange a mini-exam for her and brings her to the journalist to her own mother. There, by a strange coincidence, it turns out the very mother of the unfortunate Freddie. Naturally, the young man begins to give Eliza signs of attention, which can not help but like his own mother, and the professor himself. And the professor's mother suddenly likes it.

The term of the betting comes to an end, and Eliza brilliantly plays the role of the duchess at the reception. Tired of the hassle of the arguers are pleased that everything is over, congratulating each other on a well-done job and dispersing in their rooms. It does not occur to them to thank Eliza, because for them she is not a man, but an instrument. Eliza, having spent a lot of energy at the reception and a bunch of nerve cells, is deeply offended at this disparaging attitude towards her, launches into a complacent professor a pair of shoes.

Fifth - final action

The girl runs away from these two "chumpens in suits." The next morning, not finding his usual toys at the threshold of the bedroom with slippers in his teeth, Pickering and Higgins flee to complain to the mother of the latter, resenting the ungrateful little girl. And what is their surprise, when instead of the expected sympathy they will receive a sharp rebuke. It turns out that Eliza was at night exactly to Mrs. Higgins, and at midnight she poured out her hurt on the gentlemen.

The play moves swiftly towards the finale, and our brief content also seeks to it. "Pygmalion" does not end with a wedding ringing of bells, as you could hope. Not at all. Both Professor Higgins and Colonel Pickering are not romantic heroes, they are not at all passionately in love with the young saleswoman of violets. They just got used to it, and do not want to exist now separately from Eliza. All this they express both Elise and the mother of the professor. This concludes the play, leaving the reader in a light bewilderment about how the fate of the heroes will develop. A curtain.