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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 243

Part of General Paper Session (Other abstracts in this session)

Pygmalion a la Berlinois

Authors: Conolly-Smith, Peter Jonathan
Submitted by: Conolly-Smith, Peter Jonathan (Queens College, City University of New York, United States of America)

Pygmalion à la Berlinois

Written with a 1913 German-language Vienna Hofburgtheater premiere specifically in mind, George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion next moved to Berlin, then Stockholm, Budapest, Moscow, and the German-language immigrant stage of New York—all before it ever debuted in London’s West End. Shaw’s effort to snub the English critics who had long mocked his work paid off: the play was a huge success abroad and, in 1914, was greeted by both enormous anticipation and acclaim in London, consolidating once and for all Shaw’s status as Britain’s foremost living playwright. Little-known today, it is an irony of theater history that Eliza Doolittle, before ever having uttered her first cockney word, had already traveled the world speaking Viennese and Berlinerisch as well as Russian, Swedish, and Muscovite guttertalk. As Siegfried Trebitsch, Shaw’s German-language translator, wrote in the opening stage directions in the first published version of the play (1911): “Die Figur der Eliza ist durch den ortsüblichen Dialekt zu charakterisieren.”

This paper follows Pygmalion’s multilingual journey from Central European to the English-language stage, with particular emphasis on its various German versions. Linguistic anachronisms (a cockney flowergirl speaking in a Berlin dialect in a play set in London, for example) as well as hard-to-translate subtleties (idioms, such as Eliza’s most famous line, “not bloody likely”; and grammatical peculiarities, such as the German “Du”/“Sie” distinction) will receive particular attention. Versions to be examined include the 1913 Berlin premiere at Viktor Barnowsky’s Lessingtheater (starring Tilla Durieux); a 1935 film version by Erich Engel (starring Gustaf Gründgens and Jenny Jugo); and a 1941 Wolfgang Liebeneiner-directed Berliner Staatstheater version starring Heinz Rühmann and Lola Müthel.

Because of the nature of the material, this paper will be presented in both English and German.