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

is over, the audience can enjoy the conventional satisfaction of a happy ending, but because there is no duet, no physical connection, and no verbal expression of love, the ambiguity that has been achieved during the previous three hours is maintained even at the final curtain. In that respect, and in spite of Lerner’s epigram to the script, they avoid negating Shaw’s beliefs about what the relationship means, and yet send a Broadway audience home entirely satisfied in the knowledge that the characters they care about are friends once more. Now that Eliza has gained her independence from Higgins, she can return to his company as her own woman: both her breaking away and her decision to come back are signs of Lerner’s retention of the latent feminism in Shaw’s play. Their reconciliation is clear-cut, but an uncertain note remains. When Higgins utters his final line, “Where the devil are my slippers?” Lerner tells us in the stage directions that Eliza “understands.” Exactly what she understands is perhaps up to the individual, and can also vary according to the director and performer. Trevor Nunn’s 2001 production, for instance, had the two characters standing up, folding their arms, and laughing, during the final bars of the show, implying that the whole thing had been a joke; the staging of the 1964 film is more poignant but still does not depict a romantic union. Since Higgins is too independent and emotionally immature to let a woman in his life, and Eliza is too strong to allow herself to become beholden to him, there can never be love between them. In an article written a few years after the show’s opening, Lerner indicated his agreement on the matter: “It was impossible for Higgins to love Eliza; for them to admit to themselves that they felt anything emotional about each other.”37 What Higgins really wanted, he said, “was a friend. He wanted Eliza, but he wanted her to behave as a friend because he didn’t understand the emotional pressure of an intimate relationship.”38 For that reason, Lerner wrote the perfect ambiguous conclusion: the “serenely independent” Higgins cannot love Eliza but is happy to admit that he has grown accustomed to her face.

APPENDICES

APPENDIX 1 “WITHOUT YOU” (EARLY VERSIONS)

Copyist

There’ll be spring every year without you.

England still will be here without you.

There’ll be fruit on the tree and a shore by the sea;

There’ll be crumpets and tea without you!

I can thrill to a play without you;

Take a bath ev’ry day without you.

I can still have a dream and it’s liable to seem

Even more like a dream without you.

I can do without you!

The world without your smiling face,

Still will be a highly agreeable place!

They can still rule the land without you;

Windsor Castle will stand without you.

And without much ado

We can all muddle through without you!

Without your pulling it, the tide comes in.

Without your twirling it, the earth can spin.

Without your pushing them, the clouds roll by.

If they can do without you, ducky, so can I!

There’ll be fog ev’ry year without you;

When it clears, it’ll clear without you.

And there still will be rain on the plain down in Spain;

Even that will remain without you!

I can laugh till it hurts without you;

Order fat’ning desserts without you!

I can prosper and thrive, and be glad I’m alive;

Be the mother of five without you.

Bennett

There’ll be spring every year without you.

England still will be here without you.

There’ll be fruit on the tree and a shore by the sea;

There’ll be crumpets and tea without you!

I can thrill to a play without you;

Take a bath ev’ry day without you.

I can still have a dream and it’s liable to seem

Even more like a dream without you.

I can do without you!

The world without your smiling face,

Still will be a highly agreeable place!

They can still rule the land without you;

Windsor Castle will stand without you.

And without much ado

We can all muddle through without you!

Without your pulling it, the tide comes in.

Without your twirling it, the earth can spin.

Without your pushing them, the clouds roll by.

If they can do without you, ducky, so can I!

There’ll be fog ev’ry year without you;

When it clears, it’ll clear without you.

And there still will be rain on the plain down in Spain;

Even that will remain without you!

I can do without you!

You, dear friend, can jolly well

Plumb go straight to Hartford, Hereford and Hampshire!

I can carve out a niche without you!

Even scratch where I itch without you.

So go back in your shell, I can do bloody well without you!

(Higgins interrupts with “By George, I really did it!”)

I can do without you!

You, dear friend, can jolly well

Plumb go straight to Hartford, Hereford and Hampshire!

I can carve out a niche without you!

Even scratch where I itch without you.

So go back in your shell, I can do bloody well without …

(Higgins interrupts with “By George, I really did it!”)

APPENDIX 2 “WHY CAN’T THE ENGLISH?” (ORIGINAL VERSION)

Higgins

Look at her, a prisoner of the gutters;

Condemned by ev’ry syllable she utters.

By right she should be taken out and hung

For the cold-blooded murder of the English tongue!

Daily her barbaric tribe increases,

Grinding our language into pieces.

Hear them down in Soho Square,

Dropping aitches everywhere,

Speaking English any way they like.

“You, sir, did you go to school?”

Cockney

“What d’you take me fer, a fool?”

Higgins

No-one taught him “take” instead of “tike.”

Hear a Yorkshireman converse,

Cornishmen are even worse,

A national ensemble singing flat.

Chickens cackling in a barn,

Just like this one.

Eliza

Garn!

Higgins

I can see the writing on the wall.

Soon we’ll have no language left at all!

Why can’t the English teach their children how to speak?

In every other nation

They stress pronunciation.

In France, mispronounce a word

And the French are fit to kill,

And frequently add it to your bill.

Rumanians learn Rumanian although why remains a riddle;

Hungarians learn Hungarian once they’ve learned to play the fiddle.

But well-spoken English you will hardly ever get!

Oh why can’t the English learn to

Set a good example to people whose English is painful to your ears?

Canadians pulverise it

In Ireland they despise it.

There even are places where English completely disappears.

Americans haven’t used it for years.

Why can’t the English teach their