Pygmalion: Annotated

Pygmalion has become by far Shaw's most famous play, mostly through its film adaptation in 1938. Shaw was intimately involved with the making of the film. He wrote the screenplay and was the first man to win both a Nobel Prize and an Academy Award.

Shaw wrote the part of Eliza Doolittle for a beautiful actress named Mrs. Patrick Campbell, with whom it was rumored that he was having an affair. This rumor later turned out not to be true, and some critics read the disappointed love affair between Higgins and Eliza as reflecting Shaw's own romantic frustrations including a long, celibate marriage.