Loverly:The Life and Times of My Fair Lady (Broadway Legacies), McHugh, Dominic [fantasy books to read TXT] 📗

the Covent Garden workers while maintaining a richness of texture. Lerner’s idiomatic lyric plays its part in establishing the social class of the characters, but so too does Loewe’s melody. Its harmonization, however, is comparatively ornate, taking the song far beyond its broad allusion to the jauntiness of the English musical hall.

The same goes for “Just You Wait,” Eliza’s next song. It features a strong martial aspect, depicting Eliza’s fury at Higgins’s sadistic treatment of her, and the freedom of form Loewe uses in the number is equally striking. After the opening refrain in C minor, Loewe writes an episode in D-flat major in which Eliza dreams of fame and fortune. She imagines gaining the king’s attention and requesting that Higgins be beheaded. A transition in B-flat major (“‘Done,’ says the King…”) leads back into the opening material. This time it is rendered in C major, and the music portrays Higgins’s march to the firing line (“Then they’ll march you, ’enry ’iggins, to the wall”). Therefore, while the opening passage has the overall trappings of the 32-bar song (abbreviated to 30 due to the melodic diminution of the return of the A section at the end), the number as a whole also follows a similar form in macrocosm, namely a long opening section in which the character lays out her position, a contrasting section about three-quarters of the way through, and a return to the opening material. Also, in spite of its modal contrast to the opening section, the D-flat major passage retains its links to the main “Just you wait” theme by starting each phrase with a similar three-note ascending pick-up (“One day,” “One eve[ning],” “All the peo[ple]” and so on). Along with the ominously understated fermatas when Eliza declares she wants Higgins’s head and the jubilant trumpet line when the king gives his order, this is one of several aspects of the number that show how Lerner and Loewe make even a short song into a complex musical scene.

Ex. 5.1. “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?” bars 27–28.

Lerner states that “Just You Wait” was one of the first songs he tackled with Loewe, and names it as one of those that he played for Mary Martin during their first meeting about the show.9 This is supported by Outline 1 (chap. 3), in which “Just You Wait” is one of the few songs referred to by title; Eliza sings it in the upstairs bathroom, “wet and shaking like a drowned rat.” By Outline 3, a montage of lessons has been introduced, but the song is not explicitly referred to. Only Outline 4 confirms its final position: it takes place in Higgins’s study and is the “Second Song” after a first “Song: Montage of lessons” (surely “The Servants’ Chorus”). At this stage “Just You Wait” was to be preceded by a refrain of “The Servants’ Chorus,” but in the published show Eliza’s song comes first, allowing her to vent her frustration before the servants illustrate the passage of time during the lessons. The rehearsal script shows an intermediate structure: “Just You Wait” is immediately followed by a blackout, a verse of the servants’ song, another blackout, then the lesson about “The rain in Spain.” The published script, however, misses out this instance of the “Chorus” and goes straight to the lesson.

This illustrates how Lerner and Loewe operated on both the local and the broader level. Originally, the song allowed Eliza to express her humiliation at being stripped of her clothes, forced to have a bath, and compelled to wear Higgins’s bathrobe. But by changing it to express Eliza’s frustration about her lessons rather than about being treated inhumanely, Lerner softened the dislikeable part of Higgins’s personality. “Just You Wait” isolates the tension between the two so that it tells of a discouraged pupil who does not know how to fulfill the expectations of a perturbed teacher, who in turn does not know how to give his student what she needs. Language, not misogyny, is the subject of the song, even though the lyric is outwardly a hyperbolic description of Eliza’s imagined retribution.

The lyric underwent one major change and one minor alteration. The major change involved the complete recasting of the third and fourth verses, which were originally as follows:

Oooooo …’enry ’iggins!

Have your fun but ’enry ’iggins you beware.

Ooooo …’enry ’iggins!

When the shoe is on the other foot, take care!

You won’t think it such a farce

When I kick your bloomin’ arse!

This version appears on a lyric sheet in Levin’s papers and is also used in a copyist’s score held in the Warner-Chappell Collection.10 These sources also contain a small alteration in the lyric of the penultimate stanza of the song (the king’s imaginary lines): “All the people will celebrate all over the land; / And whatever you wish and want will be my command.” was modified to “All the people will celebrate the glory of you, / And whatever you wish and want I gladly will do.” Though the big change was made in the rehearsal script and Bennett’s orchestration, both contain the king’s couplet in its original form.

However, the composer’s manuscript is again difficult to place. It is certainly not Loewe’s “original” score for the number, because Rittmann’s hand is unmistakable in the writing of the clefs, time and key signatures, and most of the piano part. Loewe wrote out the lyric, vocal line, and tempo markings, but since Rittmann did not join the team until late 1955 (whereas we know the song was conceived much earlier), the manuscript must be a fair copy prepared for the copyist and orchestrator. On the title page, Loewe wrote “Att. Franz [Allers, the conductor]: Julie may be E flat? Please try.” The copyist’s score follows Loewe in every respect including the use of the key of D minor and does not make this transposition, but a note at the top reads: “1 tone lower.” Since this score was intended for Bennett’s use, it is no surprise that the orchestrator’s full score is