| Pygmalion |
| Act III (Excerpts) |
| Whiskers. Maestro ,
maestro [he embraces Higgins and kisses him on both cheeks]. You remember
me? Higgins. No I don't. Who the devil are you? Whiskers. I am your pupil. you first pupil, your best and greatest pupil. I am little Nepommuck, the marvellous boy. I have made your name famous throughout Europe. You teach me phonetic. You cannot forget ME. Higgins. Why don't you shave? Nepommuck. I have not your imposing appearance, your chin, your brow. Nobody notices me when I shave. Now I am famous. they call me Hairy Faced Dick. Higgins. And what are you doing here among all these swells ? Nepommuck. I am interpreter. I speak 32 languages. I am indispensable at these international parties. You are great cockney specialist. you place a man anywhere in London the moment he opens his mouth. I place any man in Europe. [A footman hurries down the grand staircase and comes to Nepommuck.] Footman. You are wanted upstairs. Her Excellency cannot understand the Greek gentleman. Nepommuck. [to Higgins] This Greek diplomatist pretends he cannot speak nor understand English. He cannot deceive me. He is the son of a Clerkenwell watchmaker. He speaks English so villainously that he dare not utter a word of it without betraying his origin. I help him to pretend; but I make him pay through the nose . I make them all pay. Ha Ha! [He hurries upstairs]. Pickering. Is this fellow really an expert? Can he find out Eliza and blackmail her? Higgins. We shall see. If he finds her out I lose my bet. [Eliza comes from the cloakroom and joins them.] Pickering. Well. Eliza, now for it. Are you ready? Liza. Are you nervous, Colonel? Pickering. Frightfully. I feel exactly as I felt before my first battle. It's the first time that frightens. Liza. It is not the first time for me, Colonel. I have done this fifty times--hundreds of times--in my little piggery in Angel Court in my day-dreams. I am in a dream now. Promise me not to let Professor Higgins wake me; for if he does I shall forget everything and talk as I used to in Drury Lane. Pickering. Not a word, Higgins. [To Eliza] Now ready? Liza. Ready. Pickering. Go. [They mount the stairs, Higgins last. Pickering whispers to the footman on the first landing.] First landing footman. Miss Doolittle, Colonel Pickering, Professor Higgins. Second landing footman. Miss Doolittle, Colonel Pickering, Professor Higgins. [At the top of the staircase the Ambassador and his wife, with Nepommuck at her elbow, are receiving.] Hostess. [taking Eliza's hand] How d'ye do? Host. [same play] How d'ye do? How d'ye do, Pickering? Liza. [with a beautiful gravity that awes her hostess] How do you do? [She passes on to the drawing room]. Hostess. Is that your adopted daughter, Colonel Pickering? She will make a sensation. Pickering. Most kind of you to invite her for me. [He passes on]. Hostess. [to Nepommuck] Find out all about her. Nepommuck. [bowing] Excellency--[he goes into the crowd]. |
Higgins. He can learn a language in a fortnight--knows dozens of them. A sure mark of a fool. As a phonetician, no good whatever.
Hostess. How d'ye do, Professor?
Higgins. How do you do? Fearful bore for you this sort of thing. Forgive my part in it.
[He passes on].
[In the drawing room and its suite of salons the reception is in full swing. Eliza passes through. She is so intent on her ordeal that she walks like a somnambulist in a desert instead of a débutante in a fashionable crowd. They stop talking to look at her, admiring her dress, her jewels, and her strangely attractive self. Some of the younger ones at the back stand on their chairs to see.
The Host and Hostess come in from the staircase and mingle with their guests. Higgins, gloomy and contemptuous of the whole business, comes into the group where they are chatting. ]
Hostess. Ah, here is Professor Higgins; he will tell us. Tell us all about the wonderful young lady, Professor.
Higgins. [almost morosely] What wonderful young lady?
Hostess. You know very well. They tell me there has been nothing like her in London since people stood on their chairs to look at Mrs. Langtry.
[Nepommuck joins the group, full of news.]
Hostess. Ah, here you are at last, Nepommuck. Have you found out all about the Doolittle lady?
Nepommuck. I have found out all about her. She is a fraud.
Hostess. A fraud! Oh, no.
Nepommuck. YES, yes. She cannot deceive me. Her name cannot be Doolittle.
Higgins. Why?
Nepommuck. Because Doolittle is an English name. And she is not English.
Hostess. Oh, nonsense! She speaks English perfectly.
Nepommuck. Too perfectly. Can you show me any English woman who speaks English as it should be spoken? Only foreigners who have been taught to speak it speak it well.
Hostess. Certainly she terrified me by the way she said How d'ye do. I had a schoolmistress who talked like that; and I was mortally afraid of her. But if she is not English what is she?
Nepommuck. Hungarian.
All the rest. Hungarian!
Nepommuck. Hungarian. And of royal blood. I am Hungarian. My blood is royal.
Higgins. Did you speak to her in Hungarian?
Neopommuck. I did. She was very clever. She said "Please speak to me in English. I do not understand French." French! She pretends not to know the difference between Hungarian and French. Impossible. she knows both.
Higgins. And the blood royal? How did you find that out?
Nepommuck. Instinct, maestro, instinct. Only the Magyar races can produce that air of the divine right, those resolute eyes. She is a princess.
Host. What do you say, Professor?
Higgins. I say an ordinary London girl out of the gutter and taught to speak by an expert. I place her in Drury Lane.
Nepommuck. Ha ha ha! Oh, maestro, maestro, you are mad on the subject of cockney dialects. The London gutter is the whole world for you.
Higgins. [to the Hostess] What does your Excellency say?
Hostess. Oh, of course I agree with Nepommuck. She must be a princess at least.
Host. Not necessarily legitimate, of course.Morganatic perhaps. But that is undoubtedly her class.
Higgins. I stick to my opinion.
Hostess. Oh, you are incorrigible.
[The group breaks up, leaving Higgins isolated. Pickering joins him.]
Pickering. Where is Eliza? We must keep an eye on her.
[Eliza joins them.]
Liza. I don't think I can bear much more. The people all stare so at me. An old lady has just told me that I speak exactly like Queen Victoria. I am sorry if I have lost your bet. I have done my best; but nothing can make me the same as these people.
Pickering. You have not lost it, my dear. You have won it ten times over.
Higgins. Let us get out of this. I have had enough of chattering to these fools.
Pickering. Eliza is tired; and I am hungry. Let us clear out and have supper somewhere.
(1913)
