by Shey Cannon

Created on: June 06, 2008   Last Updated: June 08, 2008

Beginning with Pygmalion, Shaw exploits the tradition and convention firstly in the title. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Pygmalion falls in love with the statue he brings to life. The premise of this sets up a fairytale structure to be played out in Shaw's stage play. In Pygmalion, Henry Higgins, the creator, takes a lower class girl of no importance, Eliza Doolittle, and begins to mould her into his creation, so she can be presentable to the middle classes.

Euripedes however, builds his play on the foundation of classical traditions and conventions by using the story of Jason from Homer's The Odyssey. He opens the play in exposition as the nurse delivers the prologue of Jason's history and where in the Odyssey myth he is referring to. By using this exposition Euripedes can explain via the nurse what has occurred to the main characters, Medea and Jason, before the play; Jason's journey on the Argo, his marriage and children to Medea and now, at the start of his own play, Jason's treachery to leave Medea and marry King Creon's daughter. The nurse goes on to reveal her deep concern for her mistress' state of mind from the result of his treachery. She already begins to hint powerfully at the direction the play will go in lines 35-38:
She hates her sons;
To see them is no pleasure to her.
I am afraid some dreadful purpose
Is forming in her mind. She is
A frightening woman.
Here, Euripedes is setting up the structure and single theme of the play. The nurse goes on to use such words as dark mood', eye like a wild bull', and her nature dangerous'. These descriptions of Medea's psychology sets in place the intense theme of the play.

Shaw also uses this tradition of exposition at the start of Pygmalion, whereby the characters reveal information to the audience they seem to already know. Higgins's seems to have an astute ability to uncover information without being told. He seems to be able to know where people originate from purely on accent alone. He correctly guesses one bystander is from Hoxton, another from Selsey, and a mother from Epsom. Higgins's also reveals Pickering's history, Cheltenham, Harrow, Cambridge, and India'.
As with Euripedes, Shaw is able to put into place the directional theme of the play; that in three months Higgins's will be able to pass that girl off as a duchess'. Because Eliza is witness to this and sees Higgins's give Pickering his address, Shaw puts into effect the next move in the play. It is perfectly realistic when Eliza turns up at Higgins's

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