In one of his best-loved plays, Pygmalion, (which became the basis for the musical My Fair Lady), George Bernard Shaw compels the audience to see the utter absurdity and hypocrisy of class distinction when Professor Henry Higgins wagers he can transform a common flower girl into a lady—and then pass her off as a duchess—simply by changing her speech and manners.

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW (1856-1950) has been called the greatest British dramatist after Shakespeare, a satirist equal to Jonathan Swift, and a playwright whose most profound gift was his ability to make audiences think by provoking them to laughter. He was certainly one of the world’s greatest literary figures.

Author of hundreds of essays, reviews, and letters, fifty-three plays, and numerous books, he is best known for Mrs. Warren’s Profession (1893), Arms and the Man (1894), Caesar and Cleopatra (1898), Man and Superman (1903), Major Barbara (1905), Pygmalion (1913), Heartbreak House (1919), and Saint Joan (1923). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925.