- Pygmalion, a sculptor, creates a beautiful woman out of marble and falls in love with it.
- Aphrodite takes pity on Pygmalion and brings the statue to life.
Musical My Fair Lady
- Professor Henry Higgins makes a bet that he can transform a flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, into a proper lady.
- Eliza undergoes a transformation with Higgins' help, both in terms of her appearance and her speech.
Play Pygmalion
- In George Bernard Shaw's 1913 play Pygmalion, Henry Higgins is a phonetics professor who makes a bet with his friend, Colonel Pickering, that he can transform Eliza, a working-class flower girl, into a lady who can pass for a duchess at an ambassador's garden party.
- Shaw's play explores the themes of class, language, and social inequality, and it was later adapted into the musical My Fair Lady.
Similarities
- All three works explore the theme of transformation. Pygmalion transforms the statue into a woman, Higgins transforms Eliza into a lady, and Shaw explores the transformation of Eliza's social status.
- All three works also feature a love story between the creator and the creation. Pygmalion falls in love with the statue, Higgins falls in love with Eliza, and Shaw's play suggests a romantic attraction between Higgins and Eliza.