Pygmalion truly exemplifies the genius of Shaw. His work may be considered by many to be too didactic, but it is precisely this quality that appeals so strongly to me personally. It has long been argued that the purpose of art is to instruct and delight. This idea goes back to Aristotle, and is stated more explicitly in the maxims of Horace.
The fact that the Shaw describes this provokes much reflection upon completion of the story. A romance typically concludes with a commercially satisfying ending that would generally be the result of the hero and heroine falling in love. In his epilogue, he describes it as being a romance only due to its improbability, although the story is actually more common than one might think. The idea of romance seems to lean a little more toward the delight end of the instruct and delight dichotomy, and I think Shaw is attempting a valuable criticism of it. Romance has always been the battle cry of freedom in many ways, but Pygmalion seems to do a splendid job of showing just how much of a restraint it actually is. The convention has become so hammered into our minds, that considering an alternative seems almost blasphemous.
The liberation of the individual from formulaic convention was Shaw's great contribution, which was sadly undone in My Fair Lady. Some may react to Pygmalion as if it were a bad romance. This would seem fair and appropriate given the standard nature of a romance, but I believe it entirely misses the point. Shaw is too careful of a person to simply fail at writing a proper romance, rather I believe he drew attention to the idea of it as a romance for the purpose of critically evaluating its function.
After our discussion in class today, I realized I had misread Shaw's subtitle, "A Romance in Five Acts," by thinking of romance in terms of love rather than its medieval usage of "chivalry." Similarly, tragedy and comedy are not used in the same way as they were in ancient times. (Latin grammarian Diomedes (4th century C.E.) describes tragedy as "dealing with the fortunes of heroes in adversity," while "Comedy treats of private deeds with no threat to life." A tragedy, in the Greek usage, moves from joy to sadness, while a comedy is the opposite.) I just realized that if we use romance to mean chivalry, we open another discussion--who was chivalrous to whom? Certainly not Higgins to Eliza. Perhaps Pickering?
ReplyDeleteRegardless of Shaw's intentions--which he makes abundantly clear in his "sequel"--I agree that it's fascinating that such a short, seemingly unimportant play, can provoke so much discussion!
Since this play was entitled "Pygmalion" and it was the basis for "My Fair Lady," I assumed that the play would end with Higgins and Eliza falling in love and getting married. It seems ironic to me that the love Pygmalion has for his sculpture is so absent in Shaw's play, since the love affair was the central part of the story. His love was so strong and passionate that Venus brought his sculpture to life. The love affair is played down in Shaw's Pygmalion - in fact, it's completely nonexistent. It seems strange that a theme so central to the original story has been removed from the play and still it is called by the same name and supposedly inspired by Ovid's poem.
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