Выходит первый ведущий и начинает вечер.
1st Compere: Good evening dear teachers, mothers, fathers, boys and girls. Le t us begin our English party devoted to the outstanding. British dramatist George Bernard Shaw
2d Compere: Do you k now that G.B. Shaw was born in Dublin, Ireland, on the 26 of July 1856? His family was very poor. Shaw even had to leave school at the age of fifteen. He became a cashier in a Dublin land agency. He hated his job and after he had worked For five years he gave it up and left for London.
3d Compere: Shaw tried to make a living by writing. He wrote four novels. Which were published in magazines but they were not a success.
From 1885 to 1898 he wrote a lot as critic of art, music, literature and drama and was very popular with the readers.
1st Compere: In the nineties Shaw began to write for the theatre. He was the creator of new publicist drama. Shaw wrote over twenty plays.
One of his most popular plays is “Saint Joan” (1923). The play is devoted to Joan of Arc (the Maid of Orleans). Since its first performance the play has always been a great success with the public. Shaw himself liked this play very much.
2d Compere: In 1931 he made a tour visiting India, China, Africa, America, Russia.
In 1925 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and in 1934 the medal of the Irish Academy of Letters.
3d Compere: Our today’s play is called Pygmalion I’ll tell you a little about it.
Pygmalion is of Shaw’s most popular and successful plays. It is an exhilarating amusing and deep comedy. Like any of Shaw’s plays, Pygmalion is full of criticism of contemporary life. The criticism in this case is directed against social barriers and distinctions.
The idea of the play, expressed in the title, originates from an antique myth.
1st Compere: Pygmalion, an ancient sculptor, while creating a statue of a beautiful girl Galatea, by name, fell in love with his creation.
His love was so great that he began to pray to Aphrodite, the goddess of love, to breathe life into the statue. The goddess made the statue alive, and Pygmalion married Galatea.
2d Compere: Pygmalion in Shaw’s play is Mr. Higgins, a professor of phonetics.
Galatea is Eliza Doolittle, a street flower girl, and the play itself is a story of Mr. Higgins attempt to make a duchess out of the flower girl.
And now watch a play…
“Pygmalion” (after the play by B. Shaw)
Characters: the story – teller, the flower – girl, Mr. Higgins, Colonel Pickering, t heave – goers.
The sounds of rain and thunder. A story – teller appears under the umbrella.
Act I
S t о v у - t e 11 e r (under the umbrella):' It is evening. It is raining cats and dogs. The theatregoers are waiting for the cabs to take them home. Suddenly a young but very dirty flower girl offers flowers to an elderly gentleman. The second man writes her words down and repeats them. The girl begins to cry because she is afraid that the second man is a policeman.
The flower girl: Ah-ah-ow-ow-ow-o! 1 ain't done nothing wrong. I never spoke to him except to ask him to buy a flower off me.
The second man (to the elderly one): You see, this girl will be in the gutter to the end of her days because of her awful pronunciation. Well, sir, in three months I could pass her off as a duchess at an ambitssadof garden party. I could even get her a place as a lady's maid or shop assistant, which requires better English. I'm professor of phonetics. My name is Higgins. t
The elderly gentleman: Professor Higgins? Oh, I've come from India to make your acquaintance. I am Colonel Pickering.
Higgins: Pleased to meet you. Come and see me tomorrow. My address is 27 A Wimpole Street.
Pickering: With great pleasure.
(They shake hands and go away. The flower girl is looking in the direction of Mr. Higgins.)
Act II
Characters: story-teller, Mr. Higgins, Colonel Pickering, Mrs. Pearce, the flower girl (Liza).
Story-teller: Mr. Higgins and Colonel Pickering are examining a piece of apparatus when Mrs. Pearce enters the room,
Mrs. Pearce (to Mr. Higgins): A young woman wants to see you, sir.
Higgins: Show her in, Mrs. Pearce.
The flower girl enters the room. She is wearing a hat of three ostrich feathers, orange, sky-blue and red. She has a nearly clean apron and her coat has been brushed a little.
Higgins (recognizing her): Why, this is the girl whose words I jotted down last night. She is no use: I've got all the notes I need of the Lisson Grove accent. Be off with you. The flower girl: Don't be so saucy. I ain't come here to ask for any compliment; and if my money is good enough I can go elsewhere.
Higgins: Good enough for what?
The flower girl: Good enough for ye-oo. I've come to have lessons, I am. And to pay for them too: make no mistake.
Higgins: Well!!! (Recovering his breath with a gasp) What do you expect me to say to you?
The f1оweг girl: Well, if you was a gentleman, you might ask me to sit down, I think.
Pickering: Sit down, please. What is your name? What is it you want, my girl?
The flower girl (sitting down): My name is Liza, Eliza Doolittle. I want to be a lady in a flower shop. But they won't take me in unless I can talk more genteel. (Pointing to Higgins) He said he could teach me. And I am ready to pay him — not asking any favour — and he treats me as if I was dirt.
Mrs, Pearce: How can you be such a foolish girl as to think you could afford to pay Mr. Higgins?
Liza: Why shouldn't I? I know what lessons cost as well as you do, and Fm ready to pay you a sniffing. Take it or leave it.
Higgins (walking up and down the room): You know, Pickering, if you consider a shilling not as a simple shilling, but as a percentage of this girl's income, it works out fully equivalent to sixty pounds from a millionaire.
Liza (rises): Sixty pounds. What are you talking about? Oh — (She begins to cry.)
Higgins: Sit down. Here's a handkerchief for you.
Liza: What's-this for?
Higgins: To wipe your eyes. To wipe any part of your face that feels moist. Remember: that's your handkerchief and that's your sleeve. Don't mistake the one, from the other if you wish to become a lady in a shop.
Pickering: Higgins, I'm interested. What about the ambassador garden party? I'll say you are the greatest teacher alive if you make that good.
Higgins (tempted, looking at her): It's almost irresistible. She is so horribly dirty —
Liza : Ah-ah-ow-ow-oo! I ain't dirty. I washed my face and hands afore I come, I did,
Pickering; Will you help us, Mis. Pearce?
Mrs. Pearce: Certainly. Come with me, Liza.
Act Ш
Characters: story-teller, Mrs. Higgins and her guests — Mrs. Eynsford Hill, Clara Bynsford Hill, Freddy Eymford Hiil, Liza, Mr. Higgins, Colonel Pickering.
Story-teller: Some time passes, and the experiment is in full swing. In order to check up on its results, Professor. Higgins takes Liza to his mother's home, where some guests are present. They are drinking tea. Lisa enters the room.
L i z a (elegantly dressed and speaking with pedantic correctness of pronunciation): How do you do, Mrs. Higgins? Mr. Higgins toM rne I might come.
Mrs. Higgins (cordially): Quite right. I am very glad indeed to see you.
Pickering; How do you do, Miss Doolittle?
Liza: Colonel Pickering” is it not?
Mrs. Eynsford Hill: I feel sure we have met. before, Miss Doolittle. I remember your eyes.
L iza: How do you do? (She sits down on the ottoman gracefully and takes a cup of tea.)
Mrs. Eynsford. Hill- {introducing): My daughter Clara.
L i z a. : How do you do?
С 1 a r a : How do you do?
Fr eddy: I've certainly had the pleasure —
Sirs. Eynsford Hill: My son Freddy.
Liza: How do you do?
Mrs. Higgins (after a small pause): Will it rain, do you think?
L iza: The' shallow depression in the west of these islands is likely to move slowly in an easterly direction. There are no indications of any great change in the barometrical situation.
Freddy: Hal ha! how awfully funny!
Liza: What is wrong with that, young man? I bet Г got it right.
Mrs. Eynsford Hill: I'm sure 1 hope it won't turn cold. There's so much influenza about. It runs right through our whole family regularly every spring.
Liza (darkly): My aunt died of influenza: so they said.
Mrs. Eynsford Hill clicks her tongue sympathetically.
Liza (in the same tragic tone): But it's my belief they done the old woman in.
Mrs. Higgins (puzzled): Done her in? \H Mrs. Eynsford Hill: What does doing her in mean?
H i g g i n s (hastily): Oh, that's the new small talk. To do a person in means to kill him.
Mrs. Eynsford Hill: How awful!
Liza: What I always say is
Higgins : Aliern!
L i z a (looking round her, taking the hint and rising): Well: I must go. (They all rise. Freddy goes to the doot.) So pleased to have met you. Goodbye, (She shakes hands with Mrs. Higgins.) Mrs. Higgins: Good-bye.
Liza: Good-bye, Colonel Pickering.
Pickering: Good-bye, Miss Doolittle. (They shake hands.)
Liza (nodding to the others): Good-bye, everyone. (Goes away.)
Act IV
Characters: story-teller, Mr, Higgins, Colonel Pickering, Liza.
Story-teller: It is midnight, after the ambassador garden party. Professor Higgins and Colonel Pickering are in Higgins' drawing room. Then Liza comes down. All of them look very tired.
Higgins: I wonder where the devil my slippers are!
Liza looks at him darkly and suddenly leaves the room.
Higgins: Oh, Lord! What an evening! What a crew!
Pickering: It's been a long day. A garden party, a dinner party and the opera! Rather too much of a good thing. But you've won your bet, Higgins. Eliza has been perfect.
Higgins: Thank God it's over.
Pickering: I think I shall go upstairs. Still it's been a great occasion, a triumph for you. Goodnight. (Hе goes.)
Higgins: Goodnight. (Over his shoulder, at the door): Put on the lights, Eliza; and tell Mrs. Pearce not to make coffee for me in the morning. I'll take tea. And what the devil have I done with my slippers?
Liza (appears upstairs and hurls the slippers at Higgins one after the other): Here are your slippers. Take them and may you never have a day's luck with them.
Higgins (astounded): What on earth — What's the matter? Anything wrong?
Li z a : Nothing wrong with you. I've won your bet for you, haven't I? That's enough for you. don't matter, I suppose.
Higgins : | You won my bet. You! Insect. I won it.
Liza: What's to become of me? What's to become of me?
H i g g i n s : How the devil do I know what's to become of you? What does it matter what becomes of you?
Liza: You don't care. I know you don't care. You wouldn't care if I were dead.
H i g g i n s (a little uneasy): I suppose it was natural for you to be anxious about the garden party. But that's all over now. There is nothing more to worry about.
Liza: No. Nothing more for you to worry about. Oh, God! I wish I were dead.
H i g g i n s : Why? Now you are free and can do what you like.
Liza: What am I fit for? What have you left me fit for? Where am I to go? What am I to do? What's to become of me?
Higgins: Oh, that's what's worrying you, is it? You might marry, you know. I daresay my mother could find some chap or other who would do very well.
Liza: We flower girls were above that; I sold flowers. I didn't sell myself.
H i g g i n s : And what about your old idea of a florist's shop? Come! You'll be all right. I must be off to bed. By the way, I came down for something. I forget what it was.
Liza: Your slippers.
Higgins: Oh yes, of course. You hurled them at me.
Liza: You'd better leave a note for Mrs. Pearce about the coffee, for she won't be told by me.
H iggi ns : Damn Mrs. Pearce, and damn the coffee, and damn you. (He goes out,) Eliza smiles for the first time.
Act V
Characters: story-teller, Mr. Higgins,
Story-teller: Next morning Mr. Higgins doesn't find Liza in his house. And he needs her badly. He can't find anything without her help. He doesn't know what appointments he has. He rushes to his mother's house and sees Liza there. They begin to talk again.
Higgins: Well, Eliza, you've had a bit of your own back, as you call it. Have you had enough?
Liza: You want me back only to bring your slippers and put up with your tempers and fetch and carry for you.
Higgins: I haven't said I wanted you back at all.
Liza: Oh, indeed. Then what are we talking about?
Higgins : About you, not about me. If you come back, I shall treat you just as I have always treated you. I can't change my nature; and I don't intend to change my manners. My manners are exactly the same as Colonel Pickering's.
Liza: That's not true. He treats a flower girl as if she "was a duchess.
Higgins: And I treat a duchess as if she was a flower girl.
Liza: I see. The same with everybody.
H i g g i n s : Just so. (A pause.) What will you do?
Liza: Freddy Eynsford Hill writes to me two or three times a day, sheets and sheets.
H i g g i n s (disagreeably surprised): Damn his impudence!
Liza4. He has a right to if he likes, poor lad. And he does love me.
H i g g i n s : You have no right to encourage him.
Liza: Every girl has a right to be loved. Freddy has no money, but I'll marry him, I will, as soon as I'm able to support him.
Higgins: But how will you make a Living?
Li z a: What a fool I was not to think of it before! You can't take away the knowledge you gave me. You said I had a finer ear than you. And I can be civil and kind to people, which is more than you can. Aha! Henry Higgins! I'll advertise it in the papers that your duchess is only a flower girl that you taught, and that she'll teach anybody to be a duchess in just the same way in six months for a thousand pounds. Oh, when I think of myself crawling at your feet and being trampled on and called names, when all the time I had only to lift up my finger to be as good as you, I could just kick myself.
Higgins (wondering at her): Damn your impudence, young woman! But it's better than i snivelling; better than fetching slippers and finding spectacles, isn't it? By George, Eliza, I said I'd make a woman of you; and I have. I like you like this.
Story-teller: The above remarks could lead to two different endings — Liza leaves Professor Higgins or returns to his house. Which ending do you prefer?
3d Compere: B Shaw wrote Pygmalion, which scandalized the “respectable” public by using folk words which English usage considered Vulgar, in 1912
Today “Pygmalion” is ninety – four years old.
And many people all over the world admire it today.
B. Shaw is a part of British culture and history. D. Shaw’s success with millions of readers today.
1st Compere: Dear guests!
Our party is now over.
We hope you liked it.
Come again please.
Good – bye.
Список литературы:
- E. Kakhova Readings from English Literature. M., “Prosveshcheniye” 1983, pp 89-110
- И.Ю.Баканова, Н.В.Береговая и др. Английский язык. Большой справочник для школьников и поступающих в вузы М., “Дрофа” 1999.
- С.Б.Закс Школьные вечера на английском языке. М., “Просвещение” 1981г.
- “Иностранные языки в школе”, журнал №5 1996г. стр. 82-84