1. What is the dramatic importance of phonetics in all of the acts? 2. How is phonetics related to manners in all of the acts? 3. What is the dramatic function of the Eynsford-Hill family in the first act? 4. How might Alfred Doolittle be considered extraneous to the play? […]
Read more Study Help Essay QuestionsGeorge Bernard Shaw Biography
It is with good reason that Archibald Henderson, official biographer of his subject, entitled his work George Bernard Shaw: Man of the Century. Well before his death at the age of ninety-four, this famous dramatist and critic had become an institution. Among the literate, no set of initials were more […]
Read more George Bernard Shaw BiographyCharacter Analysis Alfred Doolittle
Doolittle is not so much a character as he is a vehicle which Shaw manipulates for his own dramatic purposes. Through Doolittle, Shaw is able to make many satirical thrusts at middle-class morality and to make additional comments on class distinctions and on class manners. (It is especially witty when […]
Read more Character Analysis Alfred DoolittleCharacter Analysis Eliza Doolittle
Shaw’s story of the flower girl from the slums who was taught to speak so properly that she was able to pass as a duchess at an ambassador’s garden party is perhaps one of the best known works by Shaw, partly because of the popularity of the play which, in […]
Read more Character Analysis Eliza DoolittleCharacter Analysis Professor Henry Higgins
Henry Higgins, forty years old, is a bundle of paradoxes. In spite of his brilliant intellectual achievements, his manners are usually those of the worst sort of petulant, whining child. He is a combination of loveable eccentricities, brilliant achievements, and devoted dedication to improving the human race. Yet he is […]
Read more Character Analysis Professor Henry HigginsSummary and Analysis Sequel
Summary When the play ends, the audience is left to ponder what will happen to the characters later; for the sentimentalist, it is a foregone conclusion that Higgins and Eliza will probably marry, even though there is ample indication in the play that they will not. Thus, in the prose […]
Read more Summary and Analysis SequelSummary and Analysis Act V
Summary This act returns to Mrs. Higgins’ drawing room as the parlor maid comes in to tell Mrs. Higgins that the Professor and the Colonel are downstairs telephoning the police and that Mr. Henry is “in a state.” Mrs. Higgins sends word upstairs to Eliza to remain in her room […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Act VSummary and Analysis Act IV
Summary Act IV begins some time later and takes place in Higgins’ laboratory-living room. The scene opens on the night after there has earlier been a great success where Eliza was presented as a duchess at an ambassador’s garden party, as was stipulated in the original wager between Higgins and […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Act IVSummary and Analysis Act III
Summary This act opens in Mrs. Higgins’ drawing room on the day that she is receiving guests. She is frustrated and upset to find that her son has paid a call on her during her “at-home day.” He promised her never to come when she had company because he and […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Act IIISummary and Analysis Act II
Summary The scene shifts to Higgins’ laboratory in his home in Wimpole Street. It is eleven o’clock the next morning, and Higgins has been giving Pickering some demonstrations of the types of equipment that he uses in recording sounds which can then be studied at leisure in a scientific manner. […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Act II