George Bernard Shaw

“ HIGGINS Why dont you shave?
NEPOMMUCK I have not your imposing appearance, your chin, your brow. Nobody notice 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 a 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. ”

“ NEPOMMUCK Thank you, yes, immediately.
The footman goes and is lost in the crowd.
NEPOMMUCK (to Higgins) This Greek diplomatist pretends he cannot speak nor understand English. He cannot deceive me. He is a 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. ”

“ They are interrupted by the parlor-maid, announcing guests.
THE PARLOR-MAID Mrs and Miss Eynsford Hill. [She withdraws.]
HIGGINS Oh Lord! [He rises; snatches his hat from the table; and makes for the door; but before he reaches it his mother introduces him.]
Mrs. and Miss Eynsford Hill are the mother and daughter who sheltered from the rain in Covent Garden. The mother is well bred, quiet, and has the habitual anxiety of straitened means. The daughter has acquired a gay air of being very much at home in society: the bravado of genteel poverty. ”

“ PICKERING Dressing Eliza.
MRS. HIGGINS What!
HIGGINS Inventing new Elizas.
[Higgins and Pickering, speaking together:]
HIGGINS: You know, she has the most extraordinary quickness of ear—
PICKERING: I assure you, my dear Mrs. Higgins, that girl—
HIGGINS: just like a parrot. I've tried her with every—
PICKERING: is a genius. She can play the piano quite beautifully—
HIGGINS: possible sort of sound that a human being can make—
PICKERING: We have taken her to classical concerts and to music—
HIGGINS: Continental dialects, African dialects, Hottentot—
PICKERING: halls ”

“ What do you know of poetry? [To Mrs. Hill] What do you know of science? [Indicating Freddy] What does he know of art or science or anything else? What the devil do you imagine I know of philosophy?
MRS HIGGINS [warningly] Or of manners, Henry?
THE PARLOR-MAID [opening the door] Miss Doolittle. [She withdraws.]
HIGGINS [rising hastily and running to Mrs. Higgins] Here she is, mother. [He stands on tiptoe and makes signs over his mother's head to Eliza to indicate to her which lady is her hostess.] ”

“ Inside the house they find themselves in a spacious hall from which the grand staircase rises. On the left are the arrangements for the gentlemen's cloaks. The male guests are depositing their hats and wraps there.
On the right there is a door leading to the ladies' cloakroom. Ladies are going in cloaked and coming out in splendor. Pickering whispers to Eliza and points out the ladies' room. She goes into. Higgins and Pickering take off their overcoats and take tickets for them from the attendant. ”

“ We're so poor! And she gets so few parties, poor child! She doesn't quite know. [Mrs Higgins, seeing that her eyes are moist, takes her hand sympathetically and goes with her to the door.] But the boy is nice. Don't you think so?
MRS. HIGGINS Oh, quite nice. I shall always be delighted to see him.
MRS EYNSFORD HILL Thank you, dear. Good-bye. [She goes out.]
HIGGINS [eagerly] Well? Is Eliza presentable [he swoops on his mother and drags her to the ottoman, where she sits down in Eliza's place with her son on her left.]
[Pickering returns to his chair on her right.] ”

“ The windows are open, giving access to a balcony with flowers in pots. If you stand with your face to the windows, you have the fireplace on your left and the door in the right-hand wall close to the corner nearest the windows. Mrs. Higgins was brought up on Morris and Burne Jones; and her room, which is very unlike her son's room in Wimpole Street, is not crowded with furniture and little tables and nicknacks. In the middle of the room there is a big ottoman ”

“ 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. ”

“ When he was out of work, my mother used to give him fourpence and tell him to go out and not come back until he'd drunk himself cheerful and loving-like. There's lots of women has to make their husbands drunk to make them fit to live with. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He goes to the divan, stumbling into the fender and over the fire-irons on his way; extricating himself with muttered imprecations; and finishing his disastrous journey by throwing himself so impatiently on the divan that he almost breaks it. Mrs. ”