My Fair Lady

Outside on the street, Freddy is still waiting and singing “On the Street Where You Live.” Then Eliza emerges from the house with her suitcase, and Freddy exclaims, “Darling!” (99) She is surprised to see him there, but Freddy explains that he spends a lot of time there. Eliza asks, “Freddy, you don’t think I’m a heartless guttersnipe, do you?” (99) Stunned, he asserts that he feels the opposite, which he has explained in the many letters he’s sent her.

He starts to sing “Show Me,” declaring poetically the way she makes him feel, but Eliza interjects that she is “sick of words” (100), and that if he loves her, he needs to show her—if he wants to hold her or kiss her, he needs to do it. Throughout the song, she throws him around, pushing and pulling him and tossing him to the ground. At the end, Eliza shoves her suitcase at him and exits. Freddy takes the suitcase and follows her, lovelorn.

In the early morning hours, the vendors of Covent Garden are out, getting ready for the day. While some of them sing a reprise of “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?,” Eliza enters and watches. The men see her and offer to help her, treating her like a customer. Eliza asks whether she can warm her hands on their fire, and they oblige. They stare at her as if she’s familiar, but no one says anything. One offers to hail a cab for her, commenting, “A lady like you shouldn’t be walkin’ around London alone at this hour of the mornin’” (104). Eliza declines, singing a contemplative reprise of “Wouldn’t it Be Loverly?” to herself.

Then, there is a din at the pub, and Eliza sees her father emerge, followed by the bartender, who is thanking Doolittle for being a customer rather than being tossed out. Doolittle is well-dressed, and Eliza gets his attention. He accuses her of being a spy, assuming that she already knows that Higgins has ruined his life. Eliza is confused, and Doolittle explains that the American millionaire who had been trying to convince Higgins to speak died, and thanks to Higgins’s letter calling Doolittle “the most original moralist in England” (106), the American left him four thousand pounds a year in his will.

Now, Doolittle overdressed because the money made him so respectable that Eliza’s “stepmother” wants to marry him and be respectable herself. Eliza asks why Doolittle doesn’t return the money if he doesn’t want it, but Doolittle admits, “I haven’t the nerve” (106). Upon learning that Eliza has left Higgins’s house, he laments that Higgins clearly expects Eliza to become his responsibility now. Doolittle urges Eliza to defy him by refusing to take any money from her father and to stand up on her own. He invites Eliza to the wedding, although he adds that he doesn’t recommend it, and she declines.

Freddy enters, and Eliza wishes her father luck and exits. Backed by Harry and Jamie, Doolittle sings “Get Me to the Church On Time,” about the life of freedom he’s giving up to get married in the morning, and having one last hurrah without being late to his own wedding.

At the Higgins house, Higgins is frantically searching for Eliza, confounded as to why she would have left suddenly in the middle of the night. Pickering is simply confused and has nothing to add. Mrs. Pearce asks whether either of the men had said something upsetting to her the night before. On the contrary, Higgins insists, Eliza had said upsetting things to him that seemed completely unprovoked.

Higgins tells Pickering to call the police, and Mrs. Pearce comments that he can’t just call the police on her as if she had stolen something or was a belonging that he had lost. Higgins exclaims, “Why not? I want to find her! The girl belongs to me! I paid five pounds for her!” (113). Pickering calls the police, but he becomes stuck on basic questions about her, such as eye and hair color, which Higgins shouts to him from the other room. Pickering becomes offended when the officer on the other end seems to have suggested that Eliza was living in the house with two men because she was doing something untoward, and Scotland Yard hangs up.

Higgins enters and begins singing “A Hymn to Him,” expressing confusion at Eliza’s behavior and wondering why women can’t just behave like men. Instead, they’re “illogical” and “emotional,” and he finds them confusing. Higgins exits.

In Mrs. Higgins’s garden, she and Eliza are drinking tea. Mrs. Higgins is appalled that her son and Pickering returned from the ball and only patted themselves on the back as if Eliza hadn’t done something extraordinary. Higgins begins to call his mother from offstage. Mrs. Higgins has been expecting him, and she tells Eliza to stay where she is, stating, “Remember, last night you not only danced with a prince, but you behaved like a princess” (119).

Higgins enters and is surprised to see Eliza. Eliza greets him politely and makes graceful small talk, but Higgins tells her to stop her foolishness and come home. Mrs. Higgins states that she invited Eliza to tea and would ask Higgins to leave if he can’t be pleasant. She wonders how Eliza could have learned such manners around her son, but Eliza replies that she learned them from Pickering. Eliza explains, “You see, Mrs. Higgins, apart from the things one can pick up, the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she is treated” (121, emphasis added). Higgins is agitated. A maid informs Mrs. Higgins that the Vicar is there to see her. Not wanting to subject him to her son, she goes to meet him inside, warning Higgins to behave.

Higgins doesn’t understand what Eliza wants. He won’t ask her to come back for his sake. He won’t change himself or the way he treats her, noting that he treats everyone the same way. There won’t be any more stability than there was. She explains that she doesn’t want him to be in love with her. She wants to be friends, and she wants him to be kind to her instead of treating her like nothing. Eliza states that she’ll marry Freddy as soon as she has a job that can support them both.

Higgins scoffs until Eliza threatens to go and take his methods to become an assistant to Karpathy. He threatens to “wring [her] neck” (125) if she does, and Eliza replies that she has always expected him to become violent. She starts to sing “Without You,” exclaiming how ridiculous she was for idolizing him, as the world will continue to function without him in her life.

Higgins takes in her anger and responds with surprising awe, seeing Eliza as his brilliant creation, now a “complete” and incredible woman. Eliza says politely that she won’t see Higgins again and leaves. Mrs. Higgins returns, and he tells her what happened, bitterly asserting that he was too good for her. He stomps out, while Mrs. Higgins says, “Bravo, Eliza!” (128).

Now in the street in front of his house, Higgins stops and suddenly curses, exclaiming, “I’ve grown accustomed to her face” (129). He begins to sing the song by the same title, lamenting that he’s become used to seeing her and having her around.

Higgins thinks that marrying Freddy is a ridiculous choice that will destroy her life. He imagines a scenario in which Eliza ages and then finds Freddy with another woman, taking pleasure in her imaginary pain. Higgins assumes that Eliza will then show up at his door, which he will slam in her face. On the other hand, in the present reality, he doesn’t know what to do about the fact that he misses her, although he won’t admit it in those words and only repeats that he has become “accustomed to her face” (131).

Alone in his study, Higgins puts on the recording of Eliza’s voice, still in her original accent. On the recording, Higgins calls her “deliciously low, so horribly dirty” (132). Then Eliza enters, speaking her own lines from the recording (and earlier in the play). Higgins is ecstatic to see her, but he doesn’t know how to express it, wanting to rush to her and embrace her, but unable to do it. Instead, he exclaims, “Eliza? Where the devil are my slippers?” (132), and Eliza smiles.