dramatizes the scene in which the cockney flower girl, Eliza
Doolittle, masters upper-class pronunciation under the instruc-
tion of Professor Henry Higgins. Shaw’s play omits the instruc-
tion scene altogether. Shaw was determined to avoid romantic
implications between the flower girl and the older professor, so
the play steers around the intimacy of the accomplishment that
occurs between them and hastens on to the social results of the
accomplishment, Eliza’s visit to Mrs. Higgins’s “at-home” tea.
The breakthrough instruction scene first appears in the screen
play that Shaw and Gabriel Pascal devised for the 1938 film.^9
Lerner and Loewe followed the film in many respects, and it
was perhaps their happiest musical decision to cap the instruc-
tion scene with a number celebrating Eliza’s success, “The
Rain in Spain.” The turning point itself, when Eliza actually
speaks “the rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain” with cor-
rect pronunciation, occurs as a book scene. It is a dialectical
exchange—Higgins shows some feeling for Eliza’s exhaustion,
and she responds by learning his way of speech. The number is
reserved for the elation that follows. It elaborates the turning
point, but the turning point itself belongs to the book. “I think
she’s got it!” cries Higgins as the orchestra picks up on “Spain”
with habanera underscoring, and the change into lyric time
follows with wonderful effect. The elevated feeling of song is
perfectly in keeping with the change from exhaustion to delight
in the characters. The difference in the characters matches the
difference in mode, as the number takes over from the book.
But the number does take over. A change of mode is notice-
able. The humor by which Higgins’s hard-handed instruction
about rain and Spain becomes a tango beat, and a song-and-
dance number in which even the professor participates is whole-
hearted and appropriate. Its effect could not be attained in book
mode.
In West Side Story, the love potion device from Romeo and
Julietis replaced by one of Arthur Laurents’s best book scenes.
Shakespeare’s plot depends on a prevented message. The mes-
48 CHAPTER TWO
(^9) The relationship between film and musical is described in Block, En-
chanted Evenings: The Broadway Musical fromShow Boat to Sondheim, pp. 232 ff.