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Pygmalion (play) Pygmalion (mythology)
Pygmalion is a play by George Bernard Shaw, named after a Greek mythological character. It was first presented on stage to the public in 1913.

Professor of phonetics Henry Higgins makes a bet that he can train a bedraggled Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, to pass for a duchess at an ambassador's garden party by teaching her to assume a veneer of gentility, the most important element of which, he believes, is impeccable speech. The play is a sharp lampoon of the rigid British class system of the day and a commentary on women's independence.

In ancient Greek mythology, Pygmalion fell in love with one of his sculptures, which then came to life. The general idea of that myth was a popular subject for Victorian era English playwrights, including one of Shaw's influences, W. S. Gilbert, who wrote a successful play based on the story called Pygmalion and Galatea  first presented in 1871. Shaw would also have been familiar with the burlesque version, Galatea, or Pygmalion Reversed. Shaw's play has been adapted numerous times, most notably as the musical My Fair Lady and the film of that name.

Shaw mentioned that the character of Professor Henry Higgins was inspired by several British professors of phonetics: Alexander Melville Bell, Alexander J. Ellis, Tito Pagliardini, but above all, the cantankerous Henry Sweet. 

First productions

Shaw wrote the play in early 1912 and read it to famed actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell in June. She came on board almost immediately, but her mild nervous breakdown contributed to the delay of a London production. Pygmalion premiered at the Hofburg Theatre in Vienna on 16 October 1913, in a German translation by Shaw's Viennese literary agent and acolyte, Siegfried Trebitsch.   Its first New York production opened on 24 March 1914 at the German-language Irving Place Theatre.  It opened in London on 11 April 1914, at Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree's His Majesty's Theatre and starred Mrs. Campbell as Eliza and Tree as Higgins, running for 118 performances.  Shaw directed the actors through tempestuous rehearsals often punctuated by at least one of the two storming out of the theatre in a rage. 

Plot

Shaw was conscious of the difficulties involved in staging a complete representation of the play.  Acknowledging in a "note for technicians" that such a thing would only be possible "on the cinema screen or on stages furnished with exceptionally elaborate machinery", he marked some scenes as candidates for omission if necessary.  Of these, a short scene at the end of Act One in which Eliza goes home, and a scene in Act Two in which Eliza is unwilling to undress for her bath, are not described here.  The others are the scene at the Embassy Ball in Act Three and the scene with Eliza and Freddy in Act Four.  Neither the Gutenberg edition referenced throughout this page nor the Wikisource text linked below contain these sequences.

Act One

'Portico of Saint Paul's Church (not Wren's Cathedral but Inigo Jones Church in Covent Garden vegetable market)' – 11.15p.m.  A group of people are sheltering from the rain.  Among them are the Eynsford-Hills, superficial social climbers eking out a living in "genteel poverty", consisting initially of Mrs. Eynsford-Hill and her daughter Clara.  Clara's brother Freddy enters having earlier been dispatched to secure them a cab (which they can ill-afford), but being rather timid and faint-hearted he has failed to do so. As he goes off once again to find a cab, he bumps into a flower girl, Eliza.  Her flowers drop into the mud of Covent Garden, the flowers she needs to survive in her poverty-stricken world.  Shortly they are joined by a gentleman, Colonel Pickering.  While Eliza tries to sell flowers to the Colonel, a bystander informs her that a man is writing down everything she says.  The man is Henry Higgins, a professor of phonetics.  Eliza worries that Higgins is a police officer and will not calm down until Higgins introduces himself.  It soon becomes apparent that he and Colonel Pickering have a shared interest in phonetics; indeed, Pickering has come from India to meet Higgins, and Higgins was planning to go to India to meet Pickering.  Higgins tells Pickering that he could pass off the flower girl as a duchess merely by teaching her to speak properly.  These words of bravado spark an interest in Eliza, who would love to make changes in her life and become more mannerly, even though, to her, it only means working in a flower shop.  At the end of the act, Freddy returns after finding a taxi, only to find that his mother and sister have gone and left him with the cab.  The streetwise Eliza takes the cab from him, using the money that Higgins tossed to her, leaving him on his own.

Act Two 

Higgins' –  Next Day.  As Higgins demonstrates his phonetics to Pickering, the housekeeper, Mrs. Pearce, tells him that a young girl wants to see him.  Eliza has shown up because she wishes to talk like a lady in a flower shop.  She tells Higgins that she will pay for lessons.  He shows no interest, but she reminds him of his boast the previous day.  Higgins claimed that he could pass her for a duchess.  Pickering makes a bet with him on his claim, and says that he will pay for her lessons if Higgins succeeds.  She is sent off to have a bath.  Mrs. Pearce tells Higgins that he must behave himself in the young girl's presence.  He must stop swearing, and improve his table manners.  He is at a loss to understand why she should find fault with him.  Alfred Doolittle, Eliza's father, appears with the sole purpose of getting money out of Higgins.  He has no paternal interest in his daughter's welfare.  He sees himself as a member of the undeserving poor, and means to go on being undeserving.  With his intelligent mind untamed by education, he has an eccentric view of life.  He is also aggressive, and when Eliza, on her return, sticks her tongue out at him, he goes to hit her, but is prevented by Pickering.  The scene ends with Higgins telling Pickering that they really have got a difficult job on their hands.

Act Three

Mrs. Higgins' drawing room.  Higgins bursts in and tells his mother he has picked up a "common flower girl" whom he has been teaching.  Mrs. Higgins is not very impressed with her son's attempts to win her approval because it is her 'at home' day and she is entertaining visitors.  The visitors are the Eynsford-Hills.  Higgins is rude to them on their arrival.  Eliza enters and soon falls into talking about the weather and her family.  Whilst she is now able to speak in beautifully modulated tones, the substance of what she says remains unchanged from the gutter.  She confides her suspicions that her aunt was killed by relatives, and mentions that gin had been "mother's milk" to this aunt, and that Eliza's own father was always more cheerful after a goodly amount of gin. Higgins passes off her remarks as "the new small talk", and Freddy is enraptured.  When she is leaving, he asks her if she is going to walk across the park, to which she replies, "Walk? Not bloody likely!" (This is the most famous line from the play, and, for many years after the play's debut, use of the word 'bloody' was known as a  pygmalion; Mrs. Campbell was considered to have risked her career by speaking the line on stage ) After she and the Eynsford-Hills leave, Henry asks for his mother's opinion.  She says the girl is not presentable and is very concerned about what will happen to her, but neither Higgins nor Pickering understand her thoughts of Eliza's future, and leave feeling confident and excited about how Eliza will get on. This leaves Mrs. Higgins feeling exasperated, and exclaiming, "Men! Men!! Men!!!"

Act Four

Higgins' home – The time is midnight, and Higgins, Pickering, and Eliza have returned from the ball.  A tired Eliza sits unnoticed, brooding and silent, while Pickering congratulates Higgins on winning the bet.  Higgins scoffs and declares the evening a "silly tomfoolery", thanking God it's over and saying that he had been sick of the whole thing for the last two months.  Still barely acknowledging Eliza beyond asking her to leave a note for Mrs. Pearce regarding coffee, the two retire to bed.  Higgins returns to the room, looking for his slippers, and Eliza throws them at him.  Higgins is taken aback, and is at first completely unable to understand Eliza's preoccupation, which aside from being ignored after her triumph is the question of what she is to do now.  When Higgins does understand he makes light of it, saying she could get married, but Eliza interprets this as selling herself like a prostitute. "We were above that at the corner of Tottenham Court Road."  Finally she returns her jewellery to Higgins, including the ring he had given her, which he throws into the fireplace with a violence that scares Eliza.  Furious with himself for losing his temper, he damns Mrs. Pearce, the coffee and then Eliza, and finally himself, for "lavishing" his knowledge and his "regard and intimacy" on a "heartless guttersnipe", and retires in great dudgeon. Eliza roots around in the fireplace and retrieves the ring.

Act Five

Mrs. Higgins' drawing room, the next morning.  Higgins and Pickering, perturbed by the discovery that Eliza has walked out on them, call on Mrs. Higgins to phone the police.  Higgins is particularly distracted, since Eliza had assumed the responsibility of maintaining his diary and keeping track of his possessions, which causes Mrs. Higgins to decry their calling the police as though Eliza were "a lost umbrella".  Doolittle is announced; he emerges dressed in splendid wedding attire and is furious with Higgins, who after their previous encounter had been so taken with Doolittle's unorthodox ethics that he had recommended him as the "most original moralist in England" to a rich American founding Moral Reform Societies; the American had subsequently left Doolittle a pension worth three thousand pounds a year, as a consequence of which Doolittle feels intimidated into joining the middle class and marrying his missus.  Mrs. Higgins observes that this at least settles the problem of who shall provide for Eliza, to which Higgins objects – after all, he paid Doolittle five pounds for her.  Mrs. Higgins informs her son that Eliza is upstairs, and explains the circumstances of her arrival, alluding to how marginalised and overlooked Eliza felt the previous night.  Higgins is unable to appreciate this, and sulks when told that he must behave if Eliza is to join them.  Doolittle is asked to wait outside.

Eliza enters, at ease and self-possessed.  Higgins blusters but Eliza isn't shaken and speaks exclusively to Pickering.  Throwing Higgins' previous insults back at him ("Oh, I'm only a squashed cabbage leaf"), Eliza remarks that it was only by Pickering's example that she learned to be a lady, which renders Higgins speechless.  Eliza goes on to say that she has completely left behind the flower girl she was, and that she couldn't utter any of her old sounds if she tried – at which point Doolittle emerges from the balcony, causing Eliza to relapse totally into her gutter speech.  Higgins is jubilant, jumping up and crowing over her.  Doolittle explains his situation and asks if Eliza will come with him to his wedding.  Pickering and Mrs. Higgins also agree to go, and leave with Doolittle and Eliza to follow.

The scene ends with another confrontation between Higgins and Eliza.  Higgins asks if Eliza is satisfied with the revenge she has brought thus far and if she will now come back, but she refuses.  Higgins defends himself from Eliza's earlier accusation by arguing that he treats everyone the same, so she shouldn't feel singled out.  Eliza replies that she just wants a little kindness, and that since he will never stop to show her this, she will not come back, but will marry Freddy.  Higgins scolds her for such low ambitions: he has made her "a consort for a king."  When she threatens to teach phonetics and offer herself as an assistant to Nepomuck, Higgins again loses his temper and promises to wring her neck if she does so.  Eliza realises that this last threat strikes Higgins at the very core and that it gives her power over him; Higgins, for his part, is delighted to see a spark of fight in Eliza rather than her erstwhile fretting and worrying. He remarks "I like you like this", and calls her a "pillar of strength".  Mrs. Higgins returns and she and Eliza depart for the wedding.  As they leave, Higgins incorrigibly gives Eliza a number of errands to run, as though their recent conversation had not taken place.  Eliza disdainfully explains why they are unnecessary and wonders what Higgins is going to do without her (in another version, Eliza disdainfully tells him to do the errands himself; Mrs. Higgins says that she'll get the items, but Higgins cheerfully tells her that Eliza will do it after all).  Higgins laughs to himself at the idea of Eliza marrying Freddy as the play ends.

Ending

Pygmalion was the most broadly appealing of all Shaw's plays. But popular audiences, looking for pleasant entertainment with big stars in a West End venue, wanted a "happy ending" for the characters they liked so well, as did some critics.  During the 1914 run, to Shaw's exasperation but not to his surprise, Tree sought to sweeten Shaw's ending to please himself and his record houses."From the Point of View of A Playwright," by Bernard Shaw, collected in Herbert Beerbohm Tree, Some Memories of Him and His Art, Collected by Max Beerbohm (1919). London: Hutchinson. [https://archive.org/details/herbertbeerbohmt00beer Versions at Text Archive] [https://archive.org/about/about.php Internet Archive] Shaw returned for the 100th performance and watched Higgins, standing at the window, toss a bouquet down to Eliza. "My ending makes money; you ought to be grateful," protested Tree, to which Shaw replied "Your ending is damnable; you ought to be shot."   Shaw remained sufficiently irritated to add a postscript essay, "'What Happened Afterwards,"  to the 1916 print edition for inclusion with subsequent editions, in which he explained precisely why it was impossible for the story to end with Higgins and Eliza getting married.

He continued to protect what he saw as the play's and Eliza's integrity by protecting the last scene. For at least some performances during the 1920 revival, Shaw adjusted the ending in a way that underscored the Shavian message. In an undated note to Mrs. Campbell he wrote,
When Eliza emancipates herself – when Galatea comes to life – she must not relapse. She must retain her pride and triumph to the end. When Higgins takes your arm on 'consort battleship' you must instantly throw him off with implacable pride; and this is the note until the final 'Buy them yourself.' He will go out on the balcony to watch your departure; come back triumphantly into the room; exclaim 'Galatea!' (meaning that the statue has come to life at last); and – curtain. Thus he gets the last word; and you get it too. 

(This ending, however, is not included in any print version of the play.)

Shaw fought against a Higgins-Eliza happy-end pairing as late as 1938. He sent the 1938 film version's producer, Gabriel Pascal, a concluding sequence which he felt offered a fair compromise: a tender farewell scene between Higgins and Eliza, followed by one showing Freddy and Eliza happy in their greengrocery-flower shop. Only at the sneak preview did he learn that Pascal had finessed the question of Eliza's future with a slightly ambiguous final scene in which Eliza returns to the house of a sadly musing Higgins and self-mockingly quotes her previous self announcing "I washed my face and hands before I come, I did".

Different versions

Different printed versions of the play omit or add certain lines. The Project Gutenberg version published online, for instance, omits Higgins' famous declaration to Eliza, "Yes, you squashed cabbage-leaf, you disgrace to the noble architecture of these columns, you incarnate insult to the English language! I could pass you off as the Queen of Sheba!" – a line so famous that it is now retained in nearly all productions of the play, including the 1938 film version of Pygmalion as well as in the stage and film versions of My Fair Lady. 

The co-director of the 1938 film, Anthony Asquith, had seen Mrs. Campbell in the 1920 revival of Pygmalion and noticed that she spoke the line, "It's my belief as how they done the old woman in." He knew "as how" was not in Shaw's text, but he felt it added color and rhythm to Eliza's speech, and liked to think that Mrs. Campbell had ad libbed it herself. Eighteen years later he added it to Wendy Hiller's line in the film.

In the original play Eliza's test is met at an ambassador's garden party, offstage. For the 1938 film Shaw and co-writers replaced that exposition with a scene at an embassy ball; Nepommuck, the blackmailing translator spoken about in the play, is finally seen, but his name is updated to Aristid Karpathy – named so by Gabriel Pascal, the film's Hungarian producer, who also made sure that Karpathy mistakes Eliza for a Hungarian princess. In My Fair Lady he became Zoltan Karpathy. (The change of name was likely to avoid offending the sensibilities of Roman Catholics, as St. John Nepommuck was, ironically, a Catholic martyr who refused to divulge the secrets of the confessional.)

The 1938 film also introduced the famous pronunciation exercises "the rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain" and "In Hertford, Hereford, and Hampshire, hurricanes hardly ever happen".  Neither of these appear in the original play. Shaw's screen version of the play as well as a new print version incorporating the new sequences he had added for the film script were published in 1941. The scenes he had noted in "Note for Technicians" are added.

Influence

Pygmalion remains Shaw's most popular play. The play's widest audiences know it as the inspiration for the highly romanticized 1956 musical and 1964 film My Fair Lady.

Pygmalion has transcended cultural and language barriers since its first production. The British Museum contains "images of the Polish production...; a series of shots of a wonderfully Gallicised Higgins and Eliza in the first French production in Paris in 1923; a fascinating set for a Russian production of the 1930s. There was no country which didn't have its own 'take' on the subjects of class division and social mobility, and it's as enjoyable to view these subtle differences in settings and costumes as it is to imagine translators wracking their brains for their own equivalent of 'Not bloody likely'."[http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/anne-summers-the-lesson-of-a-polish-production-of-pygmalion-676377.html "The lesson of a Polish production of 'Pygmalion.'"] The Independent on Sunday, 3 July 2001. [http://www.independent.co.uk/ The Independent]

Joseph Weizenbaum named his artificial intelligence computer program ELIZA after the character Eliza Doolittle. 

Notable productions

*1945: Raymond Massey and Gertrude Lawrence at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre
*1974: Diana Rigg at the Albery Theatre
*1984: Peter O'Toole and Jackie Smith-Wood at the Shaftesbury Theatre
*1997: Roy Marsden, Carli Norris (who replaced Emily Lloyd early in rehearsals) and Michael Elphick, directed by Ray Cooney at the Albery Theatre 
*2007: Tim Pigott-Smith and Michelle Dockery. Director Peter Hall. Old Vic Theatre, London.
*2007: Jefferson Mays and Claire Danes in a Broadway revival
*2011: Rupert Everett (later Alistair McGowan) and Kara Tointon at the Garrick Theatre, London 
*2011: Risteárd Cooper and Charlie Murphy at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin

Adaptations

;Stage
* My Fair Lady (1956), the Broadway musical by Lerner and Loewe (based on the 1938 film), starring Rex Harrison as Higgins and Julie Andrews as Eliza
*  Pygmalion (2013) Australian stage play

;Film

* Pygmalion (1935), a German film adaptation by Shaw and others, starring Gustaf Gründgens as Higgins and Jenny Jugo as Eliza. Directed by Erich Engel.
* Pygmalion (1937), a Dutch film adaptation, starring Johan De Meester as Higgins and Lily Bouwmeester as Elisa. Directed by Ludwig Berger.
* Pygmalion (1938), a film adaptation by Shaw and others, starring Leslie Howard as Higgins and Wendy Hiller as Eliza
* My Fair Lady (1964), a film version of the musical starring Audrey Hepburn as Eliza and Rex Harrison as Higgins
* The Opening of Misty Beethoven (1976), an American hardcore pornography film take-off starring Constance Money and Jamie Gillis
* She's All That (1999): a modern, teenage take on Pygmalion
*  The Duff  (2015): based on the novel of the same name by Kody Keplinger, which in turn is a modern teenage adaption of Pygmalion
;Television
* A 1963 Hallmark Hall of Fame production of Pygmalion, starring Julie Harris as Eliza and James Donald as Higgins
* Pygmalion (1973), a BBC Play of the Month version starring James Villiers as Higgins and Lynn Redgrave as Eliza
* Pygmalion (1981), a film version starring Twiggy as Eliza and Robert Powell as Higgins
* Pygmalion (1983), an adaptation starring Peter O'Toole as Higgins and Margot Kidder as Eliza
* The Makeover, a 2013 Hallmark Hall of Fame modern adaptation of Pygmalion, starring Julia Stiles and David Walton and directed by John Gray  
* Selfie, a 2014 television sitcom on ABC, starring Karen Gillan and John Cho.
* Classic Alice, a webseries, aired a 10-episode adaptation on YouTube, starring Kate Hackett and Tony Noto in 2014.
* Totalmente Demais, a 2015 Brazilian telenovela, starring Juliana Paes, Marina Ruy Barbosa and Fábio Assunção.

;Non–English language
* Ti Phulrani, an adaptation by Pu La Deshpande in Marathi. The plot follows Pygmalion closely but the language features are based on Marathi.
* Santu Rangeeli, an adaptation by Madhu Rye and Pravin Joshi in Gujarati.
*  A 1996 television play in Polish, translated by Kazimierz Piotrowski, directed by Maciej Wojtyszko and performed at Teatr Telewizji (Polish Television studio in Warsaw) by some of the top Polish actors at the time. It has been aired on national TV numerous times since its TV premiere in 1998.
*  A 2007 adaptation by Aka Morchiladze and Levan Tsuladze in Georgian performed at the Marjanishvili Theatre in Tbilisi
* Man Pasand, a 1980 Hindi movie directed by Basu Chatterjee
* Ogo Bodhu Shundori, a 1981 Bengali comedy film starring Uttam Kumar directed by Salil Dutta
* Laiza Porko Sushi, a Papiamentu adaptation from writer and artist May Henriquez
* Gönülcelen, a Turkish series starring Tuba Büyüküstün and Cansel Elcin
* Δύο Ξένοι, a Greek series starring Nikos Sergianopoulos and Evelina Papoulia

In popular culture

;Films
* Hoi Polloi (1935), a film adaptation by The Three Stooges.
* Willy Russell's 1980 stage comedy Educating Rita and the subsequent film adaptation are similar in plot to Pygmalion.[http://www.willyrussell.com/page2intro.html Willy Russell – Introduction]
* The First Night of Pygmalion (1972), a play depicting the backstage tensions during the first British production.
* Trading Places (1983), a film starring Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd.
* Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen (2004), a film starring Lindsay Lohan where she auditions for a modernized musical version of Pygmalion called "Eliza Rocks".

;Television
* Moonlightings second season episode "My Fair David" (1985) is inspired by the movie My Fair Lady, in a plot where Maddie Hayes makes a bet with David Addison consisting in making him softer and more serious with work. She is her Henry Higgins, while he is put in the Eliza Doolittle position, as the funny, clumsy, bad-mannered part of the relationship.
* The Man from U.N.C.L.E.'s third season episode "The Galatea Affair" (1966) is a spoof of My Fair Lady. A crude barroom entertainer (Joan Collins) is taught to behave like a lady. Noel Harrison, son of Rex Harrison, star of the My Fair Lady film, is the guest star.
* In The Beverly Hillbillies episode "Pygmalion and Elly" Sonny resumes his high-class courtship of Elly May by playing Julius Caesar and Pygmalion.
*In The Andy Griffith Show season 4 episode "My Fair Ernest T. Bass", Andy and Barney attempt to turn the mannerless Ernest T. Bass into a presentable gentleman. References to "Pygmalion" abound: Bass' manners are tested at a social gathering, where he is assumed by the hostess to be a man from up north. Several characters comment "if you wrote this into a play nobody'd believe it."
* In Doctor Who, the character of Leela is loosely based on Eliza Doolittle. She was a regular in the programme from 1977 to 1978, and later reprised in audio dramas from 2003 to present. In Ghost Light, the character of Control is heavily based upon Eliza Doolittle, with Redvers Fenn-Cooper in a similar role as Henry Higgins; the story also features reference to the "Rain in Spain" rhyme and the Doctor referring to companion Ace as "Eliza".
* In the Remington Steele season 2 episode "My Fair Steele", Laura and Steele transform a truck stop waitress into a socialite to flush out a kidnapper. Steele references the 1938 movie Pygmalion and My Fair Lady, and references the way in which Laura has "molded" him into her fictional creation.
* In the Magnum, P.I. episode "Professor Jonathan Higgins" of Season 5, Jonathan Higgins tries to turn his punk rocker cousin into a high society socialite. Higgins even references Pygmalion in the episode.
* The Family Guy episode One If By Clam, Two If By Sea involves a subplot with Stewie trying to refine Eliza Pinchley, his new Cockney-accented neighbor, into a proper young lady.  He makes a bet with Brian that he can improve Eliza's vocabulary and get her to speak without her accent before her birthday party. Includes "The Life of the Wife", a parody of the song "The Rain in Spain" (from My Fair Lady). The voice of Stewie was in fact originally based on that of Rex Harrison.
* The plot of the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Someone to Watch Over Me" is loosely based on Pygmalion.
* Pygmalion is the inspiration for The Simpsons episode entitled "Pygmoelian," in which infamously ugly character Moe, of Moe's Tavern, has a facelift. It was also parodied to a heavier extent in the episode "My Fair Laddy", where the character being changed is uncouth Scotsman Groundskeeper Willie.
* In the Boy Meets World episode "Turnaround", Cory and Shawn learn about "Pygmalion" in class, paralleling their attempt with Cory's uncool date to the dance. 
* The iCarly episode "iMake Sam Girlier" is loosely based on Pygmalion.
* The Season 7 King of the Hill episode "Pigmalian" describes an unhinged local pig magnate who attempts to transform Luanne into the idealized woman of his company's old advertisements.
* In the The King of Queens episode "Gambling N'Diction" Carrie tries to lose her accent for a job promotion by being taught by Spence. The episode was renamed to "Carrie Doolittle" in Germany.
* In 2014, ABC debuted a romantic situational comedy titled Selfie, starring Karen Gillan and John Cho.  It is a modern-day adaptation that revolves around an image-obsessed woman named Eliza Dooley (Gillan) who comes under the social guidance of marketing image guru Henry Higgs (Cho). Pygmalion (; , gen.: Πυγμαλίωνος) is a legendary figure of Cyprus. Though Pygmalion is the Greek version of the Phoenician royal name Pumayyaton,  he is most familiar from Ovid's narrative poem Metamorphoses, in which Pygmalion was a sculptor who fell in love with a statue he had carved.

In Ovid

In Ovid's narrative, Pygmalion was a Cypriot sculptor who carved a woman out of ivory. According to Ovid, after seeing the Propoetides  he was "not interested in women",  but his statue was so fair and realistic that he fell in love with it.

In time, Aphrodite's festival day came, and Pygmalion made offerings at the altar of Aphrodite. There, too scared to admit his desire, he quietly wished for a bride who would be "the living likeness of my ivory girl." When he returned home, he kissed his ivory statue, and found that its lips felt warm. He kissed it again, and found that the ivory had lost its hardness. Aphrodite had granted Pygmalion's wish.

Pygmalion married the ivory sculpture changed to a woman under Aphrodite's blessing. In Ovid's narrative, they had a daughter, Paphos, from whom the city's name is derived.

In some versions Paphos was a son, and they also had a daughter, Metharme. 

Ovid's mention of Paphos suggests that he was drawing on a more circumstantial account  than the source for a passing mention of Pygmalion in Pseudo-Apollodorus' Bibliotheke, a Hellenic mythography of the 2nd-century AD.  Perhaps he drew on the lost narrative by Philostephanus that was paraphrased by Clement of Alexandria.  Pygmalion is the Greek version of the Phoenician royal name Pumayyaton, and figures in legend of Paphos in Cyprus.

Parallels in Greek myth

The story of the breath of life in a statue has parallels in the examples of Daedalus, who used quicksilver to install a voice in his statues; of Hephaestus, who created automata for his workshop; of Talos, an artificial man of bronze; and (according to Hesiod) of Pandora, who was made from clay at the behest of Zeus.

The moral anecdote of the "Apega of Nabis", recounted by the historian Polybius, described a supposed mechanical simulacrum of the tyrant's wife, that crushed victims in her embrace.

The trope of a sculpture so lifelike that it seemed about to move was a commonplace with writers on works of art in antiquity. This trope was inherited by writers on art after the Renaissance.

Re-interpretations of Pygmalion

The basic Pygmalion story has been widely transmitted and re-presented in the arts through the centuries. At an unknown date, later authors give as the name of the statue that of the sea-nymph Galatea or Galathea. Goethe calls her Elise, based upon the variants in the story of Dido/Elissa.

A variant of this theme can also be seen in the story of Pinocchio, in which a wooden puppet is transformed into a "real boy", though in this case the puppet possesses sentience prior to its transformation; it is the puppet and not its creator, the woodcarver Mister Geppetto, who beseeches the divine powers for the miracle.

In the final scene of William Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, a statue of Queen Hermione which comes to life is revealed as Hermione herself, so bringing the play to a conclusion of reconciliations.

In George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion, a modern variant of the myth with a subtle hint of feminism, the underclass flower-girl Eliza Doolittle is metaphorically "brought to life" by a phonetics professor, Henry Higgins, who teaches her to refine her accent and conversation and otherwise conduct herself with upper-class manners in social situations.

Paintings

The story has been the subject of notable paintings by Agnolo Bronzino, Jean-Léon Gérôme (Pygmalion and Galatea), Honoré Daumier, Edward Burne-Jones (four major works from 1868–1870, then again in larger versions from 1875–1878 with the title Pygmalion and the Image), Auguste Rodin, Ernest Normand, Paul Delvaux, Francisco Goya, Franz von Stuck, François Boucher, and Thomas Rowlandson, among others. There have also been numerous sculptures of the "awakening".

Literature

Ovid's Pygmalion has inspired many works of literature, some of which are listed below. The popularity of the Pygmalion myth surged in the 19th century.

Poems 

England

*John Marston's [https://books.google.com/books?vidOCLC00904105&id
q4gLAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA199 "Pigmalion"], in "The Argument of the Poem" and "The Authour in prayse of his precedent Poem" (1598)
*John Dryden's poem "[https://books.google.com/books?id=-xwe8ck-_XMC Pygmalion and the Statue]" (1697–1700)
*Thomas Lovell Beddoes's "[https://books.google.com/books?id=-Lg-AAAAYAAJ Pygmalion, or the Cyprian Statuary]" (1823–25)
*Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess" (1842)
*William Cox Bennett's poem "Pygmalion" from his work Queen Eleanor's Vengeance and Other Poems (1856)
*Arthur Henry Hallam's poem "Lines Spoken in the Character of Pygmalion" from his work [https://books.google.com/books?id=FCHg1wzJWE0C Remains in verse and prose of Arthur Henry Hallam: With a preface and memoir] (1863)
*Robert Buchanan's poem "[https://books.google.com/books?id=YBgWAAAAYAAJ Pygmalion the Sculptor]" in his work Undertones (1864)
*William Morris's poem "[http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/morris/ep1/index.htm Earthly Paradise]" in which he includes the section "Pygmalion and the Image" (1868)
*William Bell Scott's "[http://shslboyd.pbworks.com/f/poems+about+Pygmalion+and+Galatea.pdf Pygmalion]"
*Thomas Woolner's long poem "[https://books.google.com/books?id=xGs1AAAAMAAJ Pygmalion]" (1881)
*Frederick Tennyson's "Pygmalion" from [https://books.google.com/books?id=3MfycmIdNWoC Daphne and Other Poems] (1891).
*Squire's "Galatea Awakes". (1920s)
*R.M. Montgomery's "Galatea to Pygmalion" (1920s)
*Robert Graves' "[http://www.sksmith.org/ap/hypertextpoetry08/Layla/index.htm Pygmalion to Galatea]" (1926) and "Galatea and Pygmalion".
*Melanie Challenger's "[http://www.saltpublishing.com/books/smp/1844712907.htm Galatea]" (2006)

Scotland

*Andrew Lang's "[http://shslboyd.pbworks.com/f/poems+about+Pygmalion+and+Galatea.pdf The New Pygmalion or the Statue's Choice]" (1911)
*Carol Ann Duffy's poem "[http://www.freewebs.com/carolannduffypoems/Pygmalion%27s%20Bride.htm Pygmalion's Bride]" (1999)

Ireland

*Emily Henrietta Hickey's [https://books.google.com/books?id=LCYkAAAAMAAJ A Sculptor and Other Poems] (1881)
*Patrick Kavanagh's "Pygmalion" (1938)
*Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin's "Pygmalion's Image" (1991)

Germany

*Friedrich Schiller's poem "[https://books.google.com/books?id=RZRJAAAAMAAJ The Ideals]" (Die Ideale) (1795-6)

Romania

*Nichita Stănescu's poem "[http://www.romanianvoice.com/poezii/poezii/galateea.php Către Galateea]" (Dreptul la timp) (1965)

United States

*Sara Jane Lippincott (Grace Greenwood)'s "[https://books.google.com/books?id=Sb8pAAAAYAAJ Pygmalion]" (1851)
*Elizabeth Stuart Phelps' "Galatea" from [http://www.harpers.org/archive/1883/05/0034264 Harper's Weekly] (1884).
*Edward Rowland Sill's "[http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/67959-Edward-Rowland-Sill-Hermione The Lost Magic]" (1900)
*H.D.'s "[https://books.google.com/books?id=M_lIqEo8c9wC Pygmalion]" (1913–17)
*Genevieve Taggard's "[http://shslboyd.pbworks.com/f/poems+about+Pygmalion+and+Galatea.pdf Galatea Again]" (1929).
*Albert G. Miller's "[http://shslboyd.pbworks.com/f/poems+about+Pygmalion+and+Galatea.pdf Pygmalion]" (1945)
*Harry C. Morris' "[http://www.jstor.org/stable/4333640 Pygmalion]" (1956)
*Melvin H. Bernstein's "[http://www.jstor.org/stable/40224482 Mr. Pygmalion to Miss Galatea: An Interior Monologue]" (1970).
*Katha Pollitt's "[http://www.jstor.org/stable/20593401 Pygmalion]" (1979)
*Joseph Brodsky's "[http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/24504-Joseph-Brodsky-Galatea-Encore Galatea Encore]" (1983)
*Katherine Solomon's "[http://www.sksmith.org/ap/hypertextpoetry08/Matt_P/15.htm Galatea]" (1999)
*John Hooley's "[http://www.blackcatpoems.com/h/pygmalion.html Pygmalion]" (first decade of the 21st century)
*David Kimel's "[http://www.voicesnet.org/displayonepoem.aspx?poemid=102079 Pygmalion]" (first decade of the 21st century)

Canada

*Walid Bitar's poem "[https://books.google.com/books?id=aKua_y0wkBgC Pigmalion]" (1993)

Nicaragua

*Claribel Alegría's "[http://shslboyd.pbworks.com/f/poems+about+Pygmalion+and+Galatea.pdf Galatea Before the Mirror]" (1993)

Short stories 

*Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "The Birth-Mark" and his similar novella, Rappaccini's Daughter.
*H.P. Lovecraft's "Herbert West–Reanimator"
*Tommaso Landolfi's  "La moglie di Gogol" ('The Wife of Gogol')
*John Updike's "Pygmalion"
*E.T.A. Hoffman's "The Sandman"
*Thomas London's "Pygmalion Unbound"
*Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
*Wilfred G's Creation of Chaos "[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22893/22893-h/22893-h.htm Pygmalion's Spectacles]"
*Jorge Luis Borges's "Las Ruinas Circulares" (Argentina)
*Isaac Asimov's short story Galatea (in his collection Azazel is a parody of the story, where a woman sculptor sculpts her idea of the ideal man)

Novels and plays 

*Lloyd C. Douglas's novel "Invitation To Live" (1940)
*William Hazlitt's Liber Amoris: or, the New Pygmalion (1894).
*Richard Powers's novel Galatea 2.2
*Amanda Filipacchi's novel Vapor
*Edith Wharton's [http://www.jstor.org/stable/375627 The House of Mirth]
*Henry James' [http://www.jstor.org/stable/375627 The Portrait of a Lady] (1880–81).
*George MacDonald's [https://books.google.com/books?id=n7gBAAAAQAAJ Phantastes]
*George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion
*Tawfiq el-Hakim's play Pygmalion
*William Schwenck Gilbert's play Pygmalion and Galatea
*Willy Russell's play Educating Rita
*Rousseau's play [https://books.google.com/books?id=QpvtF-WkdEAC Pygmalion, scéne lyrique]
* Villiers de l'Isle-Adam's novel Tomorrow's Eve
* Jacinto Grau's play El Señor de Pigmalión (1921)

Other 

*Pete Wentz's comic series Fall Out Toy Works
*Grant Morrison's Professor Pyg, who appears in Batman and Robin
*William Moulton Marston's origin of Wonder Woman was inspired by the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea, as she was sculpted by her mother Hippolyta from clay and given life by Aphrodite's breath. The sculpture represents the creative power of a mother's love for a child, passing some of her qualities on to her daughter.
*Chihiro Watanabe's manga series Pygmalion, which started its serialization in 2015 in the magazine Monthly Comic Garden, and Web Comic Beat's.

Opera, ballet, and music

*The story of Pygmalion is the subject of Jean-Philippe Rameau's 1748 opera, Pigmalion.
*It was also the subject of Gaetano Donizetti's first opera, Il Pigmalione.
*Molin produced a ballet-pantomime version of Pygmalion in 1800.
*The ballet Coppélia, about an inventor who makes a life-sized dancing doll, has strong echoes of Pygmalion.
*The great choreographer Marius Petipa and the composer Prince Nikita Trubetskoi created a four-act ballet on the subject called Pygmalion, ou La Statue de Chypre. The ballet was revived in 1895 with the great ballerina Pierina Legnani.
*The English progressive rock group Yes composed  "Turn Of The Century" (1977); it tells the story of the sculptor Roan who, in the grief of his wife's death, "molds his passion into clay."  The sculpture of his wife comes to life and they fall in love.
*British shoegazing band Slowdive named their third LP Pygmalion in 1995.
*The song "Trial By Fire" by darkwave/gothic band ThouShaltNot recreates the idea of a modern-day Pygmalion with lyrics such as "I sculpt your nature within, I am your Pygmalion" and "I dust away the plaster from off your breathing body...You'll never be the same."
*Mariusz Duda, working under his moniker Lunatic Soul, named a track off of his 2014 album after Pygmalion. Walking on a Flashlight Beam and the longest track, Pygmalion's Ladder, in a general sense, speak of a reclusive individual who struggles to understand the fiction around him, and the ways in which his imagination is affected by this introspective seclusion he has embraced or succumbed to "[http://lunaticsoul.com/the-albums LunaticSoul]" (2014).
* The progressive house artist Hellberg (Jonathan Hellberg) released a song called 'The Girl' featuring vocalist Cozi Zuehlsdorff in 2015. They have both admitted to having been inspired by the Pygmalion myth when creating the track.

Stage plays

There have also been successful stage-plays based upon the work, such as W. S. Gilbert's Pygmalion and Galatea  (1871). It was revived twice, in 1884 and in 1888.

In January, 1872, Ganymede and Galatea opened at the Gaiety Theatre.  This was a comic version of Franz von Suppé's Die schöne Galathee, coincidentally with Arthur Sullivan's brother, Fred Sullivan, in the cast.

In March 1872, William Brough's 1867 play Pygmalion; or, The Statue Fair was revived, and in May of that year, a visiting French company produced Victor Massé's Galathée.

In 1883, the musical burlesque Galatea, or Pygmalion Reversed was performed at the Gaiety Theatre with a libretto by Henry Pottinger Stephens and W. Webster, and a score composed by Wilhelm Meyer Lutz.

George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion (1912, staged 1914) owes something to both the Greek Pygmalion and the legend of "King Cophetua and the beggar maid"; in which a king lacks interest in women, but one day falls in love with a young beggar-girl, later educating her to be his queen.  Shaw's comedy of manners in turn was the basis for the Broadway musical My Fair Lady (1956).

P. L. Deshpande's play Ti Fulrani ("Queen of Flowers") is also based on Shaw's Pygmalion. The play was a huge success in Marathi theater and has earned many accolades.

Television

*The American TV series My Living Doll portrayed a female robot (Julie Newmar) whose creators attempted to transform her into a "perfect woman".
*The Man from U.N.C.L.E. 3rd season episode "The Galatea Affair" from 1966 is a spoof of My Fair Lady. A crude barroom entertainer (Joan Collins) is taught to behave like a lady. Noel Harrison, son of Rex Harrison, star of the My Fair Lady film, is the guest star.
*The Aerosmith music video for "Hole in My Soul" features a nerdy college student who tries to find the girl of his dreams by creating one in a lab, only to have her leave him.
*The Japanese anime series Bubblegum Crisis: Tokyo 2040 includes a character named Galatea, an artificial life form designed to be the next evolution of the human race.
*In Justice League Unlimited, Emile Hamilton creates a clone of Supergirl, that he names Galatea.
*An episode of the Philippine TV series Love Spell features a teenage boy who falls in love with a mannequin who comes to life when lightning strikes it.
*In the music video for "This Time" by K-pop group Wonder Girls, a designer falls in love with his mannequin, and she comes to life. She runs away, leaving the designer to chase after her.
*In "Fagmalion" a three-part episode of Will and Grace, Will Truman falls in love with a man named Barry whom he sculpts into a more refined gay man following his coming out.
*In King Of The Hill Season 7 Episode 9 "Pigmalion" Luanne becomes involved with a psychotic owner of a pork processing plant.
*In Disneys Hercules: The Animated Series, Pygmalion was Hercules' art teacher. His success in crafting a perfect wife for himself prompted Hercules to do the same to create a date for a school dance, naming it Galatea.
*In the "Live Show" episode of 30 Rock the character Jack tries to give up drinking and asks Liz Lemon to comfort him by telling a story. She impersonates Eliza selling flowers to which Jack orders her to leave the room.
*In Pygmoelion,an episode of The Simpsons, Moe gets plastic surgery and watches as his life is rewritten.
*In an episode of So Weird called Still Life, the family is pulled into a painting by wishing to be there.

Interactive fiction

*The text adventure Galatea, by Emily Short, is based on the myth of Galatea.
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George Bernard Shaw
 Who was the author of Pemilion? 

 The author of Pemian is called a Pem