Additionally, it is notable that the songs that stayed in the show tend to avoid being too specific where they could have been overt expressions of love. For instance, “Why Can’t the English?” contains some initial addresses to Eliza but broadens out to include the crowd (and indeed people from all over the world). Eliza’s equivalent opening statement, “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?” talks about “Someone’s head resting on my knee” but does not refer to anyone specific, and it would certainly be difficult to register this as an allusion to Higgins. “I’m an Ordinary Man” expresses a negative attitude toward women but does not involve Eliza directly (nor does it discuss romance or matrimony, for that matter), while the more direct “Just You Wait” comes so obviously in the aftermath of Higgins’s strict treatment of her as his pupil that it would take a stretch of the imagination to receive it as an “anti-love” love song. As noted above, “Show Me” is sung not to Higgins but to Freddy, so that the brief mention of the Professor in Eliza’s opening verse (“I get words all day through / First from him, now from you”) goes by relatively unnoticed. She has sickened of the behavior of men in general, and there is little sense of Freddy acting as an object against whom Eliza can vent her anger toward Higgins in the physical absence of the latter. Similarly subtle is the brief reference to him in the line “I only know when he / Began to dance with me” from “I Could Have Danced All Night”: certainly it strikes us that some kind of feeling has been aroused inside Eliza, but the thought is so fleeting that we cannot conclude too much from it.
Lerner and Loewe delay confrontation of the issue until the pair’s last two songs, when Eliza sings that she can live “Without You,” and Higgins admits that “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face.” Along with “I Could Have Danced All Night,” the latter is surely the only strong reason to infer a romantic connection between the two: lines such as “She almost makes the day begin” and “I’ve grown accustomed to the trace of something in the air” undoubtedly represent a very personal expression of feeling for Eliza on Higgins’s part. Yet Lerner never takes either of them any farther than this. Whereas song is traditionally a conduit through which a character’s heightened emotions can flow, in My Fair Lady the musical numbers contribute to the grander scheme of creating a central relationship whose full implications we can never fully understand.
Julie Andrews in the final scene of My Fair Lady (Photofest)
In other words, the triumph of My Fair Lady is not its resolution of the romance between Higgins and Eliza but that Lerner and Loewe resolve the characters’ ongoing battle without defining their relationship any more explicitly than it has been earlier in the show. It is a stroke of genius: because the argument 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, Her
eford 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 children how to speak?
In Norway there are legions of literate Norwegians.
In German a wee mistake and the Germans rant and roar;
And promptly prepare to go to war.
In Italy ev’ry tenor learns his language like the gospel.
The Hebrews learn it backwards which would seem to be imposs-bel.
But use proper English, you’re regarded as a freak.
Oh why can’t the English
Use standard English?
Why can’t the English learn to speak?
APPENDIX 3 “ON THE STREET WHERE YOU LIVE” (ORIGINAL VERSION)
The original lyric was as follows (with the cut passages in bold text):
Love appears at the most peculiar places.
You can never foresee when it will start.
Love attacked me while I was at the races;
And I lost my money and my heart.
(dialogue with Mrs. Pearce)
There’s the tree she rushes under when it starts to rain.
See the way it’s filled with bloom.
And isn’t there a garland all around that window-pane?
That could only be her room!
This street is like a garden
And her door a garden gate.
What a lovely place to wait.
I have often walked down this street before;
(as published, up to:)
No, it’s just on the street where she lives”
Some men hate to wait and wait
If by chance the girl is late.
I don’t mind the waiting part at all.
Some get bored and wander on;
Curse their fate and soon are gone.
I would wait through winter spring and fall.
For oh! the towering feeling
(etc.)
APPENDIX 4 CUT MATERIAL FROM “THE ASCOT GAVOTTE”
Verse 2
Now they’re at the gate
For the second run.
Now the cue is sounding;
They are bounding
Forward—
Look! It has begun!
What a burst of pandemonium!
Never heard the like of it any place.
’Twas a thrilling, absolutely chilling
Running of the Ascot Second Race!
End of Scene
There they are again
For another run.
Now they’re holding steady,
Each equestrian is ready
For it—
Look! It has begun!
APPENDIX 5 “YOU DID IT”: CUT PASSAGE
Pickering
Tonight, old man, you did it!
You did it! You did it!
You said that you would do it
And indeed you did.
I thought that you would rue it;
I doubted you’d do it.
But now I must admit it
That succeed you did.
Pickering
You should get a medal
Or be even made a knight.
Servants
They should honour you
By making you a knight.
Pickering
All alone you hurdled
Ev’ry obstacle in sight.
Higgins
I must confess
Without undue conceit,
It was an electrifying feat!
Pickering
And you’re the one who did it!
Who did it … who did it!
I said you couldn’t do it
But you pulled her through.
Tonight, old man, you did it!
You did it! You did it!
I know that I have said it
But you did it and the credit
For it all belongs to you!
Servants
Congratulations,
Professor Higgins!
For your glorious
Victory!
Congratulations,
Professor Higgins!
You’ll be mentioned
In history!
Servants
Congratulations,
Professor Higgins!
Who would dream you
Could pull her through?
Congratulations,
Professor Higgins!
Sing a hail and halleluiah!
Ev’ry bit of credit
For it all belongs to you!
NOTES
ABBREVIATIONS
Loverly:The Life and Times of My Fair Lady (Broadway Legacies) Page 27
