MAYFAIR LADY

A one-act adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s

Pygmalion By GARY PETERSON

CAST OF CHARACTERS
HENRY HIGGINS ........................professor of phonetics
ELIZA DOOLITTLE ......................flower seller
ALFRED DOOLITTLE ...................Eliza’s father; a dustman
COL. HUGH PICKERING ..............from India
MRS. PEARCE ...........................Higgins’s housekeeper
MRS. HIGGINS ..........................Higgins’s mother
MRS. EYNSFORD-HILL ...............upper-crust lady
CLARA EYNSFORD-HILL ..............her daughter
FREDDY EYNSFORD-HILL............her son
ENSEMBLE ...............................six or more as TOWNSPEOPLE,MAID, FOOTMAN (voice only),
DIGNITARY, BALL DANCERS
SETTING
Time: Spring 1912.
Place: Various locations throughout London, England

MAYFAIR LADY

Scene One
AT RISE: SOUND EFFECTS: HEAVY RAIN and sporadic HONKING TAXIS. Late night outside St. Paul’s Church in
Covent Garden. TOWNSPEOPLE are scattered UPSTAGE under the portico suggested by the pillars. They
look out over the AUDIENCE as they await cabs or buses. FREDDY
is unseen behind a CENTER pillar. HENRY HIGGINS lounges against a pillar RIGHT, the only person with
his back to the AUDIENCE. He is totally consumed taking notes in a notebook. COLONEL HUGH
PICKERING stands with him. SOUND EFFECTS FADE.
Suddenly, FREDDY dashes DOWN CENTER with an umbrella open,
FREDDY: (Calls out.) Taxi! Taxi! (Not seeing ELIZA, collides with her.)
ELIZA: (In a strong cockney accent.) Nah then, Freddy, look wh’ y’ gowin, deah. [Now then, Freddy, look
where you’re going, dear.]
FREDDY: Sorry. (Starts off but stops when he sees ELIZA picking up her scattered flowers and placing them
back in her basket.)
 ELIZA: There’s menners f’ yer! Te-oo banches o voylets trod into da mad. [There’s manners for you!
Two bunches of violets trod into the mud.]
FREDDY: (Smiles.) However, did you know my name was Freddy?
ELIZA: Is your name really Freddy? That’s lucky! I calls all gentlemen Freddy or Charlie or summut,
same as y’ might yourself if y’ was talking to a stranger and wished to be pleasant. Buy a flower off a
poor girl? They’s only a penny a bunch.
FREDDY: (Kindly, reaches into his pocket.) Well, here’s tuppence. (Gives coins, and then looks away without
taking any flowers.) Oh, there’s one! Taxi! Taxi! (Dashes OFF LEFT without looking back.)
ELIZA: Cheer ap, Keptin, n’ baw ya flahr orf a pore gel. [Cheer up, Captain, and buy a flower off a poor girl.]
COL. PICKERING: I’m sorry, I haven’t any change.
ELIZA: (Continues with a heavy cockney accent. See PRODUCTION NOTES.) I can change half-a-crown. Take
this for a penny.
COL. PICKERING: I really haven’t any change— (Tries his pockets.) Stop, here’s two ha’pence, if that’s any use
to you. (Hands ELIZA a coin and then moves on with Higgings.)
ELIZA: Thank you, sir.
MAN ONE: (Approaches ELIZA, conspiratorially.) You be careful. Give him a flower for the money. The man
with him is taking down every blessed word you’re saying. (Indicates HIGGINS with his thumb.) Must be
a detective!
ELIZA: (Afraid.) I ain’t done nothing wrong by speaking to the gentleman.
I’ve a right to sell flowers if I keep off the curb. (Becomes agitated.) I’m a respectable girl. So help me, I
never spoke to him except to ask him to buy a flower off me.
HIGGINS: (Turns around, as a crowd gathers around them.) There, there! There, there! Who’s hurting you,
silly girl? What do you take me for?
MAN One: (Explains to HIGGINS.) She thought you was a sort of informer.
HIGGINS: (Annoyed.) Oh, shut up, shut up! Do I look like a policeman?
ELIZA: Then what did you take down my words for? You just show me what you’ve wrote about me.
(HIGGINS opens his book and shows it to her. It looks like gibberish.)
What’s that? That hain’t proper writing. I can’t read that.
HIGGINS: I can. (Reads, reproducing her pronunciation precisely.)
“Cheer ap, Keptin, n’ baw ya flahr orf a pore gel.”

MAN TWO: He’s a blooming busybody, that’s what he is.

HIGGINS: (Turns to him genially.) And how are all your people down at Selsey?
MAN TWO: (Suspicious.) Who told you my people come from Selsey?
HIGGINS: Never you mind. They did. (To ELIZA.) How do you come to be up so far east? You were born in
Lisson Grove.

ELIZA: (Shocked.) Oh, what harm is there in my leaving Lisson Grove? I had to pay four-and-six a week.
(Starts to cry noisily.)
HIGGINS: Oh, stop that noise.

MAN TWO: (Still to HIGGINS.) How do you where we people come from?
HIGGINS: Simply phonetics. The science of speech. I’ve made it in to a profession. I am a professor in
correct English. I can place any man within six miles, simply by hearing his pronunciation of English words.
Within two miles in London. Sometimes within two streets.
ELIZA: (With feeble defiance.) I’ve a right to be here if I like, same as you.
HIGGINS: A woman who utters such depressing and disgusting sounds has no right to be anywhere.
Remember that you are a human being with a soul and the divine gift of articulate speech—that your
native language is the language of Shakespeare and Milton and the Bible—and don’t sit there crooning
like a bilious pigeon.
ELIZA: (Overwhelmed.) Ah–ah–ah–ow–ow–oo!
HIGGINS: (Whips out his book.) Heavens! What a sound! (Writes in the book as he reproduces her
vowels exactly.) Ah–ah–ah–ow–ow–oo!
ELIZA: (Tickled by his performance, laughs in spite of herself.)
Garn! [Go on!]
HIGGINS: And that one— “Garn!” (Makes another note. Then to COL. PICKERING.) Is that supposed to
be an English word? You see this creature with her curbstone English? Her sad pronunciation will
keep her in the gutter to the end of her days. Well, in three months I could pass that girl off as a
duchess at the Embassy Ball. That’s the sort of thing I do in my profession.
ELIZA: (As they pass.) Buy a flower from me? I’m short for me lodging.
HIGGINS: Liar. You said you could change half-a-crown.
ELIZA: (Angrily.) You ought to be stuffed with nails, you ought. (Flings the basket at his feet.) Take the
whole blooming basket for sixpence. (HIGGINS and COL. PICKERING turn to leave, but just then
SOUND EFFECT: CHURCH BELL CHIMES.)
HIGGINS: (Suddenly thoughtful.) A reminder. “There, but for the grace—” (Throws a handful of coins
on the street near ELIZA, then EXITS with COL. PICKERING.)
ELIZA: (Quickly picks up the coins, astonished at the amount of money.)

Ah-ow-ooh! Aaaaahhh-ow-ooh! (LIGHTS FADE to BLACK.)

End of Scene One

~INTERSCENE~
BEFORE LIGHTS UP. AUDIO ONLY. HIGGINS forms various vowel sounds—“ay-rie,” “ow-rie,” “ooo-rie,”
“eye-rie,” etc. The last of these is a long, drawn out, single syllable which transitions from an “ay”
sound, down through “ee,” “eye,” “oh,” down to “oo” over a period of
about fifteen seconds, if possible.
END OF INTERSCENE

Scene Two
LIGHTS UP on HIGGINS’S Wimpole Street study, the next morning. COL. PICKERING is seated, listening
to an old-fashioned wax cylinder phonograph or Victrola with a large horn. HIGGINS stands at a
blackboard with squiggles on it. He is indicating various squiggles with a pointer as the long vowel
syllable of the INTERSCENE concludes.
HIGGINS: Now, how many vowel sounds did you hear?
COL. PICKERING: I counted over twenty.
 HIGGINS: One hundred and thirty. Shall we listen again? Perhaps more slowly.
COL. PICKERING: No, thank you, not now. I’m quite done up for this morning.
HIGGINS: Tired of listening to sounds?
MRS. PEARCE: (ENTERS.) A young woman wants to see you, sir.
HIGGINS: A young woman! What does she want?
MRS. PEARCE: Well, sir, she says you’ll be glad to see her when you know what she’s come about.
She’s quite a common girl, sir.
HIGGINS: Well, send her in. (MRS. PEARCE EXITS)
MRS. PEARCE: (RE-ENTERS with ELIZA, who is more cleaned up than before. Her face is clean of soot
smudges and dirt, and she wears her very best, which is still plain and unimpressive and includes a
dingy hat with feathers.) This is the young woman, sir.
HIGGINS: (Brusquely, recognizing her. To COL. PICKERING.) Why, this is the girl I jotted down last night.
Why has she come here?
ELIZA: Don’t you be so saucy. You ain’t heard what I come for yet. (To MRS. PEARCE.) Did you tell him I
come in a taxi?
MRS. PEARCE: Nonsense, girl! What do you think a gentleman like Mr. Higgins cares what you came
in?
ELIZA: He ain’t above giving lessons, not him. I heard him say so. Well, I ain’t come here to ask for any
compliment. And if my money’s not good enough, I can go elsewhere.
HIGGINS: Good enough for what?
ELIZA: Good enough for ye-oo [you]. I’m come to have lessons, I am.
And to pay for ’em, too— I want to be a lady in a flower shop ’stead of selling flowers on the street by
Covent Garden. You said you could teach me. Well, here I am ready to pay you—not asking any favor
—and you treats me as if I was dirt.
MRS. PEARCE: How can you be such a foolish ignorant girl as to think you could afford to pay Mr.
Higgins?
ELIZA: Why shouldn’t I? I know what lessons cost as well as you do, and I’m ready to pay.
ELIZA: (Coy.) Don’t mind if I do. (Tries awkwardly to sit in a “ladylike” manner.)
HIGGINS: What’s your name?
ELIZA: Eliza Doolittle.

HIGGINS: Let’s talk business, Eliza. How much do you propose to pay me for the lessons?
ELIZA: Oh, I know what’s right. A lady friend of mine gets French lessons for eighteen pence an hour
from a real French gentleman. Well, you wouldn’t have the face to ask me the same for teaching me
my own language as you would for French. So I won’t give more than a shilling. Take it or leave it.
HIGGINS: (Thinks.) You know, Pickering, if you consider a shilling, not as a simple shilling, but as a
percentage of this girl’s presumable income, it works out as fully equivalent to sixty or seventy
pounds from a millionaire. It’s handsome. By George, it’s enormous! It’s
15 the biggest offer I ever had.
ELIZA: (Rises, terrified.) Sixty pounds! What are you talking about? I never offered you sixty pounds. Where
would I get— (Starts to cry.) (Wipes her face on her sleeve and sits.)
HIGGINS: Don’t cry, you silly girl (Offers ELIZA his handkerchief.)
ELIZA: What’s this for?
HIGGINS: To wipe your eyes. To wipe any part of your face that feels moist. Remember… (Points.) …
that’s your handkerchief… (Grabs her cuff.) …and that’s your sleeve. Don’t mistake the one for the
 other if you wish to become a lady in a shop.
COL. PICKERING: Higgins, I’m interested. What about the Embassy Ball? That’s about three months
away. I’ll say you’re the greatest teacher alive if you can make her ready for that. I’ll bet you all the
expenses of the experiment you can’t do it. (Beat.) And I’ll pay for the lessons.
ELIZA: (To COL. PICKERING.) Oh, you are a real good. Thank you, Keptin.
HIGGINS: (Looks at her, tempted.) It’s almost irresistible. She’s … so horribly dirty—
ELIZA: (Protests.) Ah–ah–ah–ow–ow–oo! I ain’t dirty! I washed my face and hands afore I come, I did.
HIGGINS: Take all her clothes off and burn them. Call for a whole new wardrobe! Pickering will pay.