Pygmalion and Three Other Plays by George Bernard Shaw

8/10

I just finished this book tonight. I again had my four-year-old daughter choose my book for me. I'm still in "time out" for my Ulysses selection. When she chose this book I asked her why and she said, "Because it's pink." Sounded like a good enough reason for me.

The four plays in the book are: (1) Major Barbara; (2) The Doctor's Dilemma; (3) Pygmalion; and (4) Heartbreak House. Usually I have a hard time ranking things, but not this time. Pygmalion is fantastic and the clear winner (which is why it is singled out apart from the "Three Other Plays"). It is the play that My Fair Lady is based on. My second favorite was The Doctor's Dilemma which was a comical satire of the medical profession. This one had some funny characters and some pretty sweet burns on doctors (pun!) and a very interesting plot. Major Barbara was pretty good and had some good moments and some good characters. Shaw's Socialism comes through in this one more than the others which put a bit of a damper on it as a whole. And lastly, the proverbial runt of the litter was Heartbreak House which had none of the humor found in the other three plays and had unenjoyable characters to go along with a boring story that seemed to be haphazardly constructed.

So three out of four a'int bad. I would definitely recommend reading this book for the plays. I would hesitate to recommend this book, however, due to the prefaces before each play. They were tedious and did nothing to illuminate the actual plays. They were just Shaw ranting. And while his plays were comical, his rants were too serious and off-putting. The preface to Major Barbara gives an insight into his extreme Socialist views which were "interesting" to say the least. The preface to Pygmalion was the only somewhat enjoyable one to read. Coincidentally this was the only short-winded preface coming in at five pages (Major Barbara: 43 pages, The Doctor's Dilemma: 83 pages!, and Heartbreak House: 43 pages).

But I liked it overall. The plays were good enough to overcome the prefaces. And there is another Barnes & Noble Classics collection of some of his other plays that I am sure I will acquire somewhere down the line.

Some quotes:

From Major Barbara:

"Genuine unselfishness is capable of anything"

"He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career."

From The Doctor's Dilemma:

"Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh."

From Pygmalion:

"Remember that you are a human being with a soul and the divine gift of articulate speech: that your native language is the language of Shakespear and Milton and The Bible; and don't sit there crooning like a bilious pigeon."

"There's always something professional about doing a thing superlatively well."

"The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls: in short, behaving as if you were in Heaven, where there are no third-class carriages, and one soul is as good as another."