Pygmalion Essay | Critical Essay #3

Pygmalion Critical Essay #3

In this essay, Matlaw examines Pygmalion's ending and the ways that subsequent adaptations have strayedfrom Shaw's original vision. The critic ultimately affirms the play's original conclusion,

Alan Jay Lerner, probably the most successful adapter of Shaw's Pygmalion, commented: "Shaw explains how Eliza ends not with Higgins but with Freddy and—Shaw and Heaven forgive me!—I am not certain he is right." Many critics would agree with this sentiment. A recent analysis of the play goes so far as to dismiss the Epilogue as a bit of Shavian frivolity and to cite the "happy ending" Shaw himself wrote for Pascal's film as the proper denouement of a play which is persuasively categorized by one critic as a play which follows "the classic pattern of satirical comedy" [Milton Crane mPMLA, vol.66, 1956].

Such an ending has been popular also with audiences and actors ever since the play first appeared in 1913....
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