Loverly:The Life and Times of My Fair Lady (Broadway Legacies) by McHugh, Dominic (best ereader for pc .TXT) 📗

her arms to hurt her. Mrs. Pearce warned me. Time and again she has wanted to leave you; and you always got around her at the last minute. And you don’t care a bit for her. And you don’t care a bit for me. I won’t care for anybody that doesn’t care for me” (RS, 2-5-31). Here, Lerner seems to have considered sketching a new aspect of Mrs. Pearce’s relationship with Higgins: we do not otherwise know that she has nearly left him several times, nor do we realize that Eliza and Mrs. Pearce are confidantes who have discussed the Professor’s behavior. This fact is not unimportant, since it explains why Mrs. Pearce is not surprised at Eliza’s bolting, as well as telling us why she did not prevent her from doing so.

Romance becomes a topic again in the next part of the scene. There was originally a series of lines about Freddy’s advances toward Eliza: Higgins “damns his impudence,” Eliza says that “he has a right to” love her, Higgins declares that she has “no right to encourage him,” but she responds that “Every girl has a right to be loved.” Higgins refers to him as a “fool,” yet Eliza says that “if he’s weak and poor and wants me, maybe he’d make me happier than my betters that bully me and don’t want me” (RS, 2-5-32). Notwithstanding the reference to marrying Freddy, this exchange unequivocally foregrounds the possible Higgins-Eliza romance. Higgins’s overt grumpiness at the idea of Eliza having a young, foolish lover shows his own desire for her, while Eliza’s suggestion that Freddy might make her happier than her “betters that bully” her again nominates Higgins as her potential lover. Yet the replacement for this exchange appears to make the union impossible. Higgins proclaims, “Oh, in short, you want me to be as infatuated about you as he is. Is that it?” (PS, 146), and Eliza explains in response that she entered into the experiment “not for the dresses and the taxis” but “because we were pleasant together” and because she “came to care” for him. She says that she did not want him to “make love” to her or “forget the difference” between them but to be more friendly.

In a final change, after Eliza has sung “Without You” and exits, Higgins’s response was modified: RS has him say, “Eliza has left me! For good,” while PS changes it to “She’s gone!” (PS, 150). Yet again, the modification moves the script from language that implies a relationship (“left me”) to something less specific (“gone”). From beginning to end, this subject was systematically deleted or obscured during the rehearsal period, so that whereas RS charts a conventional Broadway romance between a man and a woman, PS forged a bond that was scarcely less strong yet much more difficult to define. In the end, Lerner tantalizes us with the possibilities of an alliance between Eliza and Higgins, yet never quite delivers it.

STRUCTURE

The structural robustness of My Fair Lady is a major asset and it was clearly no accident. Its brilliance operates on several levels. First, the layout of the scenes takes us on a careful journey from one location to the next (see table 3.6). We meet the main protagonist, Eliza, at the very beginning of the first scene, and she is at Covent Garden market carrying a basket of flowers. The first moment of tension between her and Higgins occurs here, and it is no coincidence that the final clash between the two takes place in another sort of “artificial garden,” Mrs. Higgins’s conservatory. The market represents a space in which things come out into the open: Higgins’s and Eliza’s world-views emerge here, in “Why Can’t the English?” and “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?” respectively, and Eliza’s return to the market in act 2, scene 3, is a moment of high emotion in which she realizes that she no longer belongs there. Higgins’s study is also pivotal to the unfolding of the story. It is a place of learning of all kinds: in a literal sense, Eliza’s lessons take place here, but this is also the place where we find out about Higgins’s attitude to women (act 1, scene 3), Doolittle’s background and lifestyle (act 1, scene 5), the relationship between Higgins and his household (act 1, scene 5), Higgins’s newfound respect for Eliza as they depart for the ball (act 1, scene 9), his overriding conceitedness and his new awareness of her true personality (act 2, scene I), and the final resolution of the story (act 1, scene 7). One might add to this list act 2, scene 4, which takes place in the “Upstairs hall of Higgins’s house” and is often staged on the same set as the study scenes. Here, Higgins learns that Eliza has bolted and realizes that she has gained complete independence from him.

Dualities are also used cleverly in the scenic structure of the piece. Act 1, scenes 6/7 (Ascot) and 10/11 (the Embassy Ball) are connected in being two pairs of scenes that take place in high society where Eliza is put to the test. In both cases the first of each pair takes place outside the main location and involves a discussion between Pickering and Mrs. Higgins about Eliza and the potential for disaster in the following scene. The second scene of each pair is the actual event—the first goes badly (Ascot), the second is a triumph (the ball). In this way Lerner cleverly replicates the format used in the Ascot scene to rebuild the tension for the Embassy Ball scene, thereby making us believe that Eliza could fail again (something that is intensified by the presence of Zoltan Karpathy, who threatens to reveal Eliza’s background). The two remaining locations also occur in pairs. The “Tenement section” at Tottenham Court Road in act 1, scenes 2 and 4, is the place where we meet Alfred Doolittle and where he sings both the original rendition and reprise of “With a Little Bit