Shaw's primary purposes in writing Pygmalion, the story of a phonetics professor who, on a bet, transforms a guttersnipe of a flower girl into a lady, was to educate. The title of the play comes from the Greek myth of Pygmalion, a sculptor who created a statue of surpassing beauty; at his request, the gods animated the statue as Galatea. The myth is updated, and substantially altered, by Shaw; instead of a statue, Galatea is Eliza Doolittle, a Covent Garden flower girl, whose accent immediately marks her out as from the very bottom of the English class structure. Professor Henry Higgins, an expert on accents and pronunciation, represents Pygmalion. He undertakes to transform her speech so that she can be taken for a duchess at a society party and succeeds in spite of the inherent difficulties.

In his foreword to the play, Shaw writes, "It is so intensely and deliberately...
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