I was quoting the acting edition. the version you quote..Sir herbert tree rejected.

oh..and btw..i am far from delusional. wtf do you know.Iv'e read Shaw's "sqequel" as well. cShaw however brilliant was as inconsistant as Brecht.

I just put "Hear, hear!", without noticing intermediary post.

I was actually affirming the last post by teapot, not Salome.

I mever thought it made sense that Eliza would go back to Higgins at all. And the Salome concept that she would condemn herself to living with Higgins and Pickering as three squabbling bachelors is just awful!

honey, ive studied shaw under experts. there are several valid interpretations.

if you read the "Sequel" you'd see how miserable liza was with freddy too.

I hope you haven't genuinely studied Shaw, Salome, because all you have demonstrated is a very limited understanding of human nature.

And I would suggest you go and read the sequel again yourself. Because as much as you obviously want to interpret that as saying Eliza and Freddy were miserable together, that isn't actually what it says at all. It might not have been a fairy tale ending of happy ever after in ease and prosperity, but hardships having to be faced and overcome together in a "normal" life does not equate to "misery".

you are quite funny.

Salome is nothing if not inconsistent in her arguments. After insisting that there is no romance between Higgins and Eliza (which IS valid, although not for the reasons she mumbles), she now informs that she is relying on the "acting version" of the play, with her lofty comment on Beerbohm Tree rejecting the published version. Of course, she ignores the fact that the so-called "acting version" (of which there are several) that Beerbohm Tree used promoted the idea of a romance between Eliza and Henry, which was what so angered Shaw that he wrote the afterpiece. In fact, Beerbohm Tree felt that there was a real romance between Higgins and Doolittle, and insisted on playing it like that, to the point of throwing a bouquet of flowers to Eliza as she is leaving. But when did Salome EVER support her opinion with logic? Nevertheless, it is no surprise that our Little Theatre diva is of the school that refuses to play the characters as written by the author, preferring her own "interpretation". And as a Shavian scholar, her claim to fame is self-supported.

hmm...you no longer sound like a newbie.

[mod edit to remove insult]

Sorry, Salome, you are way off base. What I AM is a person in this profession, who, in nearing my retirement, found this board when looking for information on places young people go to be encouraged in theater. I was actually looking for workshops and conservatories across the country where I could volunteer, but was struck by how many teens and college aged people on this board were so enthused by musicals, so I stayed to watch.

Salome, you've given me an idea. If Valerie Delacorte is feeling up to it next time I'm on the East Coast, I'll see if I can ask her whether Pascal thought Shaw missed the point. I'm sure she'll be amused.

After the ball, when Eliza goes back to the street where she orginally lived, she realizes that she can't go back to the way she used to live now that she had been a true lady. But she also can't marry Freddy and become a lady because he sees her as something she's not and never will totally be.

That's an interesting point about Freddy. Both Pygmalion and My Fair Lady have Freddy being a bit dismissive of Eliza in the first scene when she's just a flower girl, he says sorry then rushes off without paying for the flowers he knocked out of her basket. And a little later Higgins throws her some money. Higgins' self-proclaimed strength, whether we agree or not, is that at least he's consistent - consistently a wanker to everyone, regardless of class. And I can see how Eliza would be worried about how she and Freddy would get on in the long run. But on the other hands, she *knows* that Higgins would be hell to get on with in the long run! And I'm not sure if 'calculated resignation' is the feeling we're meant to attribute to Eliza in the final scene of MFL. (I'm not implying that it has to be 'love', either, although that's because of the effectiveness of the previous scenes rather than the clarity of the ending.)
Cynical thought - maybe Eliza just stuck with Higgins because she knew it would fulfil her 'I want' song better. Except for the last verse.