Provide a short critical analysis to the play "Pygmalion."

The play
, byis, like the previous post accurately stated, primarily a socialthat
belongs to the genre of Romanticism, and most specifically, to the form of Comedy of Manners.
Within this genre, society is often mocked particularly by the way that the upper classes act
and think.

One most keep into consideration that GB Shaw is an Irish
playwright who produces pieces for a very complex British Victorian audience. Victorian society
is notorious for its classicist nature, for its hypocritical values, and for its 'holier than
thou' attitudes. When we take this into consideration, we can safely argue that Shaw literally
laughed at the English Victorian audience right in its face by pointing out the shallow nature
of their judgement of other people.

You see this creature
with her kerbstone English: the English that will keep her in the gutter to the end of her days.
Well, sir, in three months I could pass that girl off as a duchess at an ambassador's garden
party. I could even get her a place as lady's maid or shop assistant, which requires better
English. That's the sort of thing I do for commercial millionaires. And on the profits of it I
do genuine scientific work in phonetics, and a little as a poet on Miltonic lines.

The central theme of the play revolves around making a peasant girl
look portrayDuchess in an upcoming fashionable event. In the process of transforming Eliza, Shaw
irreverently points at the coarse and terrible image that the lower classes have of the upper
classes by making jokes at the way Eliza should pronounce words and use specific mannerisms.
These words are exaggerated and made to look ridiculous. The mannerisms are meant to mock the
aristocrats. The language used by Eliza and her peers throughout the transformation process just
adds salt to the wound: It brings the upper classes spiraling down from their self-made
pedestals.

Therefore, far from portraying the English as tolerant, kind, and
intelligent people, Shaw shows us how easily to deceive they can be if only you make someone
look and sound the way an aristocrat is meant to look and sound. Because of this clear attack to
a society that accepts no criticism, Shaw obtained mixed reviews about the play. It is not so
much because of its form, but because of its central message: Shaw seems to have been quite
interested in pointing out social flaws, and this is obviously something that, in a shallow
society, will not transform into a vote of approval.