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1. Summary It is between four and five o’clock, and Mrs. Higgins, Henry Higgins’s mother, is at home to visitors (ladies at this time would have had regular weekly hours when their friends could be sure of finding them “at home” and dispensing tea and cake). She is in her drawing room, which is tastefully decorated in the style of Morris and Burne Jones, when Higgins enters with his hat on. Mrs. Higgins promptly takes it off as he bends down to kiss her, telling him to go home at once. She has friends coming to visit, she says, and Higgins always offends her friends so that they never come again.
Higgins explains, in a roundabout and rather unhelpful way, that he has a job for his mother. He has invited Eliza to her “at home” day as part of his experiment, to see whether she will pass for an upper-class woman among Mrs. Higgins’s friends. His hasty explanations are interrupted by the arrival of Mrs. Eynsford Hill and her daughter, Clara. Higgins is reluctant to meet them but cannot escape and is offhand and distant, proving his mother’s point about his lack of social graces. They are soon joined by Colonel Pickering, then Freddy Eynsford Hill, whereupon Higgins abruptly decides that the Eynsford Hills will do as well as anyone else for his experiment, though he still refuses to preoccupy himself with small talk and audibly wonders, “what the devil are we going to talk about until Eliza comes?”
Eliza enters, exquisitely dressed and looking beautiful. Her pronunciation is pedantically correct, but she has little to say. When she talks about the weather, she sounds like a meteorological report. Mrs. Eynsford Hill’s mention of influenza then leads her to tell a story about the death of her aunt which, though perfectly pronounced, is wildly inappropriate in both vocabulary and content: it includes theft, drunkenness, and possible murder. She then proceeds to discuss her father’s bouts of drunkenness. Freddy finds her conversation immensely amusing, while Mrs. Eynsford Hill is rather shocked. Higgins decides that they should leave, and Freddy, who is already smitten with Eliza, asks her to walk across the park with him. This gives rise to Eliza’s parting line: “Walk! Not bloody likely. I am going in a taxi.” The word “bloody” was regarded as quite shocking at the time and would never have been used in polite society. Its use created a sensation among audiences of the play, as it does in Mrs. Higgins’s drawing room. The consternation of Mrs. Eynsford Hill in particular sets the seal on the failure of this section of Higgins’s experiment.
The Eynsford Hills leave soon after Eliza. Clara imitates her by using the word “bloody,” which she thinks is a mark of fashionable society, but Mrs. Eynsford Hill apologizes to Mrs. Higgins, saying that Clara does not get out in society much and does not know any better. As soon as they have gone, Mrs. Higgins informs her son of the utter failure of his experiment, telling him that Eliza betrays her lowly origins “in every sentence she utters.”
Like Mrs. Pearce, Mrs. Higgins wants to know what Eliza’s status is within Higgins’s household. She accuses Higgins and Pickering of behaving like children, playing with a live doll. They brush off her concerns in a way that only serves to exacerbate them and demonstrate the justice of her accusation. The two men then leave, deciding impulsively to take Eliza to the Shakespeare exhibition at Earls Court, where “her remarks will be delicious,” according to Pickering. After their departure, Mrs. Higgins exclaims in exasperation, “Oh, men! men! men!!!”
An abbreviated version of the play, which is sometimes used in stage performances and often appears in online versions, concludes act 3 at this point. However, Shaw wrote another scene and placed it at the end of act 3, allowing the audience to witness Eliza’s triumph at first hand.
The setting is a grand reception at an embassy in London. It is after dark, and everyone is in full evening dress. Higgins, Pickering, and Eliza enter, whereupon Higgins is immediately accosted by a voluble Hungarian with an enormous moustache. This is Nepommuck, a former phonetics student of Higgins’s. He describes himself as Higgins’s first and greatest pupil, though Higgins does not appear to be at all pleased to see him or to rate his intelligence highly.
Nepommuck prides himself on his skill in detecting linguistic impostors, whom he blackmails in return for his silence and complicity. He speaks to Eliza to try to discover who she is and later, when he joins the group of people in which Higgins is standing, dramatically announces that she is a fraud. When pressed for further details, Nepommuck explains that Eliza speaks English too perfectly for her to be a native. She is clearly a foreigner, as he is. Moreover, he announces, she is clearly a Hungarian of royal blood. When Higgins disagrees and suggests that Eliza might be “an ordinary London girl out of the gutter and taught to speak by an expert,” everyone, including Nepommuck, laughs at this preposterous suggestion. When Eliza comes and tells Higgins that she cannot bear much more of this society and apologizes for losing his bet for him, Higgins responds that she has not lost it; She has “won it ten times over.” Tired but triumphant, they leave the embassy to have supper.
2. Passages from Act III HIGGINS [rising hastily and running to MRS. HIGGINS] Here she is, mother. [He stands on tiptoe and makes signs over his mother's head to ELIZA to indicate to her which lady is her hostess]. [ELIZA, who is exquisitely dressed, produces an impression of such remarkable distinction and beauty as she enters that they all rise, quite flustered. Guided by HIGGINS'S signals, she comes to MRS. HIGGINS with studied grace.] LIZA [speaking with pedantic correctness of pronunciation and great beauty of tone] How do you do, Mrs. Higgins? [She gasps slightly in making sure of the H in Higgins, but is quite successful]. Mr. Higgins told me I might come. MRS. HIGGINS [cordially] Quite right: I'm very glad indeed to see you. PICKERING. How do you do, Miss Doolittle? LIZA [shaking hands with him] Colonel Pickering, is it not? MRS. EYNSFORD HILL. I feel sure we have met before, Miss Doolittle. I remember your eyes. LIZA. How do you do? [She sits down on the ottoman gracefully in the place just left vacant by HIGGINS]. MRS. EYNSFORD HILL [introducing] My daughter Clara. LIZA. How do you do? CLARA [impulsively] How do you do? [She sits down on the ottoman beside ELIZA, devouring her with her eyes]. FREDDY [coming to their side of the ottoman] I've certainly had the pleasure. MRS. EYNSFORD HILL [introducing] My son Freddy. LIZA. How do you do? [FREDDY bows and sits down in the Elizabethan chair, infatuated.] HIGGINS [suddenly] By George, yes: it all comes back to me! [They stare at him]. Covent Garden! [Lamentably] What a damned thing! MRS. HIGGINS. Henry, please! [He is about to sit on the edge of the table]. Don't sit on my writing-table: you'll break it. HIGGINS [sulkily] Sorry. [He goes to the divan, stumbling into the fender and over the fire-irons on his way; extricating himself with muttered imprecations; and finishing his disastrous journey by throwing himself so impatiently on the divan that he almost breaks it. MRS. HIGGINS looks at him, but controls herself and says nothing.] [A long and painful pause ensues.] MRS. HIGGINS [at last, conversationally] Will it rain, do you think? LIZA. The shallow depression in the west of these islands is likely to move slowly in an easterly direction. There are no indications of any great change in the barometrical situation. FREDDY. Ha! ha! how awfully funny! LIZA. What is wrong with that, young man? I bet I got it right.
FREDDY. Killing! MRS. EYNSFORD HILL. I'm sure I hope it won't turn cold. There's so much influenza about. It runs right through our whole family regularly every spring. LIZA [darkly] My aunt died of influenza: so they said. MRS. EYNSFORD HILL [clicks her tongue sympathetically]!!! LIZA [in the same tragic tone] But it's my belief they done the old woman in. MRS. HIGGINS [puzzled] Done her in? LIZA. Y-e-e-e-es, Lord love you! Why should she die of influenza? She come through diphtheria right enough the year before. I saw her with my own eyes. Fairly blue with it, she was. They all thought she was dead; but my father he kept ladling gin down her throat til she came to so sudden that she bit the bowl off the spoon. MRS. EYNSFORD HILL [startled] Dear me! LIZA [piling up the indictment] What call would a woman with that strength in her have to die of influenza? What become of her new straw hat that should have come to me? Somebody pinched it; and what I say is, them as pinched it done her in. MRS. EYNSFORD HILL. What does doing her in mean? HIGGINS [hastily] Oh, that's the new small talk. To do a person in means to kill them. MRS. EYNSFORD HILL [to ELIZA, horrified] You surely don't believe that your aunt was killed? LIZA. Do I not! Them she lived with would have killed her for a hat-pin, let alone a hat. MRS. EYNSFORD HILL. But it can't have been right for your father to pour spirits down her throat like that. It might have killed her. LIZA. Not her. Gin was mother's milk to her. Besides, he'd poured so much down his own throat that he knew the good of it. MRS. EYNSFORD HILL. Do you mean that he drank? LIZA. Drank! My word! Something chronic. MRS. EYNSFORD HILL. How dreadful for you! LIZA. Not a bit. It never did him no harm what I could see. But then he did not keep it up regular. [Cheerfully] On the burst, as you might say, from time to time. And always more agreeable when he had a drop in. When he was out of work, my mother used to give him fourpence and tell him to go out and not come back until he'd drunk himself cheerful and loving-like. There's lots of women has to make their husbands drunk to make them fit to live with. [Now quite at her ease] You see, it's like this. If a man has a bit of a conscience, it always takes him when he's sober; and then it makes him low- spirited. A drop of booze just takes that off and makes him happy. [To FREDDY, who is in convulsions of suppressed laughter] Here! what are you sniggering at? FREDDY. The new small talk. You do it so awfully well. LIZA. If I was doing it proper, what was you laughing at? [To HIGGINS] Have I said anything I oughtn't? MRS. HIGGINS [interposing] Not at all, Miss Doolittle. LIZA. Well, that's a mercy, anyhow. [Expansively] What I always say is-- HIGGINS [rising and looking at his watch] Ahem! LIZA [looking round at him; taking the hint; and rising] Well: I must go. [They all rise. FREDDY goes to the door]. So pleased to have met you. Good-bye. [She shakes hands with MRS. HIGGINS]. MRS. HIGGINS. Good-bye. LIZA. Good-bye, Colonel Pickering. PICKERING. Good-bye, Miss Doolittle. [They shake hands]. LIZA [nodding to the others] Good-bye, all. FREDDY [opening the door for her] Are you walking across the Park, Miss Doolittle? If so-- LIZA. Walk! Not bloody likely. [Sensation]. I am going in a taxi. [She goes out]. [PICKERING gasps and sits down. FREDDY goes out on the balcony to catch another glimpse of ELIZA.]
1.3:35-6:20 training session 1 1.9:15-15:50 training session 2 1.17:15-21:00 success of experiment 1.26:00-31:40 test at a horse racing 1.39-41:40 the meaning of experiment and the appearance of Eliza
about 21 minutes
 
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