Pygmalion (play)

Pygmalion
Illustration depicting Mrs Patrick Campbell as Eliza Doolittle
Written byGeorge Bernard Shaw
Characters
  • Professor Henry Higgins
  • Colonel Pickering
  • Eliza Doolittle
  • Alfred Doolittle
  • Mrs Pearce
  • Mrs Higgins
  • Mrs Eynsford-Hill
  • Clara Eynsford-Hill
  • Freddy Eynsford-Hill
Date premiered16 October 1913 (1913-10-16)
Place premieredHofburg Theatre in Vienna, Austria
GenreRomantic comedy, social criticism
SettingLondon, England

Pygmalion is a play written by Bernard Shaw in 1912, named after the Greek mythological figure. It was first presented onstage in German translation, premiering at the Hofburg Theatre in Vienna on 16 October 1913. Its English-language premiere took place at His Majesty's Theatre in the West End of London in April 1914 and starred Herbert Beerbohm Tree as a phonetics professor, Henry Higgins, and Mrs Patrick Campbell as a Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle.

Pygmalion became the playwright's most popular play, enduring in popular culture as the heavily adapted and romanticized My Fair Lady (1956 musical and 1964 film).