Just you wait, 'Enry 'Iggins!

He was a sculptor, living on the island of Cyprus. She was a statue. He must have been one hell of a good sculptor, because -- although claiming to be a "confirmed bachelor" -- he fell in love with his marble creation. He beseeched and prayed to Aphrodite, his prayers were answered, and his statue warmed to his kiss.

They married, and lived happily ever after.

The sculptor's name was Pygmalion; his bride was Galatea. The story was most famously told by Ovid, but was based on much earlier Greek legends.

Last night I saw a local production of George Bernard Shaw's adaptation of the legend. Pygmalion was recast, of course, as famous phoneticist Henry Higgins; his statue became Eliza Doolittle. Eliza didn't start out made literally of stone, but -- as a girl selling flowers on the street -- she was nothing more than a statue in the background so far as Edwardian society was concerned. Higgins sought to bring her to "life," not with a prayer and a kiss, but by teaching her to speak and act like a "lady." He did it on a bet, and he did it in six months, presenting her as a duchess at an Ambassador's garden party -- and getting away with it.

The story is most familiar to us as Lerner and Loewe's 1956 Broadway musical, My Fair Lady. The musical adopted much of Shaw's dialogue verbatim, interspersed with musical numbers that remain well known to the present day. Broadway being Broadway, the musical had a romantic ending -- we watch Higgins suddenly realizing he is smitten with Eliza ("I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face"), Eliza returning to him after leaving earlier in a huff, and Higgins uttering his final words -- spoken stubbornly but with obvious affection -- "Eliza, where the devil are my slippers."

Shaw was not such a romaticist. His Henry Higgins remains stubborn to the end. Only when Eliza stands up to him, before storming out to attend her father's wedding, does a flicker of appreciation cross his face, as he exclaims some Edwardian equivalent of "she's a feisty little filly, ain't she!" His appreciation, it turns out, is most likely for his own finesse in crafting such a delicious work of art. "Galatea!" he exults as the lights dim to black. (Shaw actually wrote several endings for the play, none of which seemed to completely satisfy him, but I'm describing the production I watched last night.)

I've always enjoyed the musical -- as viewed in the 1964 Rex Harrison/Audrey Hepburn, Oscar-winning film -- despite some sniffing by critics at whatever liberties the musical took with the play -- but it was fun to finally hear Shaw's lines in their original context. Shaw was a complex man with many interests -- the play has much to say about the relationship between how one one speaks and one's position in the British class system. But essentially the play -- more so than the musical -- strikes a blow for feminism. To Shaw, the statue comes to life not when her "sculptor" kisses her, but when she learns to stand on her own two feet, unconcerned about her sculptor's approval, and walks out the door, head held high.

Whether "Pygmalion" realizes that his "Galatea" has only then truly become a living human being is left hanging in the air. Whatever his enlightenment, or lack thereof, his "Galatea," at least, will now live happily ever after -- with or without the future companionship of "'Enry 'Iggins."