Word: pygmalion
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Moonlight's People. By the time Pericles became chairman of Athens' general assembly in 460 B.C., the pallid, inanimate population of the Acropolis might almost have been mistaken, by moonlight, for real people. Sculptures like Aphrodite (see cut) made the Pygmalion myth credible...
...Pygmalion (by George Bernard Shaw; produced by Theatre Inc.) still holds up, after 33 years, as one of Shaw's most actable and entertaining plays. One reason may be that it contains almost nothing to weigh it down. It is Shaw on a holiday. His account of how a phonetics expert transforms a Cockney flower girl into the likes of a duchess is first & foremost good fun. It is a highly satirical, wryly Shavian fairy tale-but a fairy tale for all that...
Shaw having fun means, sooner or later, Shaw having fun at society's expense. Pygmalion rags aristocratic pretensions by showing how easily aristocrats can be manufactured; it whacks away at middle-class morality, which would forbid all pleasure to the poor. But the satire in Pygmalion has worn less well than the comedy. Much the funniest scene in the play is Eliza's first appearance in society: with the purest, pear-shaped tones and impeccable enunciation, she recounts the horrendous yarn of how her gin-swilling aunt was "done...
When Theatre Inc. decided to lead off with Pygmalion, it sent Shaw a long, frilly, "feminine" cable chirping about its high ideals and asking that Shaw waive royalties because Theatre Inc. was waiving profits. Shaw replied: "Am friendly, but please stop cabling and get some businesslike person to negotiate by letter...
...agitating for a reform of the income tax, wants all earned incomes over ?20,000 to be taxexempt. Says he (after having been enormously overpaid for Pygmalion) : "I lately received a further windfall of ?29,000 on account of my film rights. The financial result was that I had to pay ?50,000 to the Chancellor of the Exchequer within two years. And the result of that catastrophe is that I am now using my copyrights not to have my plays filmed and thereby give employment and enjoyment to my fellow citizens, but to forbid and suppress them in order...