eruption that begins “I can see her now” runs to fifty-four mea-
sures. Joseph Swain has observed that the melody resembles
Eliza’s own fantasy song, “Just You Wait, ’enry ’iggins,” hinting
at an underlying similarity between these two,^6 and the fifty-
four measures would be an AABA song in themselves (stretched,
as Higgins is wont to do) were it not for the spoken Quasi recita-
tivohe tags on: “Poor Eliza, How simply frightful! How hu-
miliating! How delightful!” Then he talks his way through a
twenty-measure elongated A section of this inner song, reprises
“I’m an ordinary man” (this time it is “I’m a most forgiving
man”), swings into a reactionary reprise of “I shall never take
her back,” and comes to what he thinks is a triumphant declara-
tion of the old Higgins, a shouted “Marry Freddy, Ha!!”
At this point the orchestra intrudes to tell him he is wrong.
In a wonderful bit of scoring, “appassionate e rubato,” the or-
chestra plays the opening phrase of “I’ve Grown Accustomed
to Her Face,” and the old Higgins gives in to the new. He sim-
ply sings the song. ABACA′, period. “I’ve Grown Accustomed
to Her Face.” This time Lerner gives him a touching rhyme to
end with:
I’ve grown accustomed to the trace
Of something in the air;
Accustomed to her face—and he ends there. Before he could never endsongs. He had to
run on with them, carrying them into other songs, refusing to
give standard endings to standard formats, but at last he be-
comes eligible for a singer-character like Eliza by ending the
song simply and unassertively. One may argue about changing
Shaw’s plot to a conventional romantic outcome, as Lerner and
Loewe did, but one has to admire the skill with which they
brought this piece of sentiment about.
The heart of the musical is the projection of musical ability,
which takes the performers into the second order of time, lyric
66 CHAPTER THREE
(^6) The Broadway Musical: A Critical and Musical Survey, pp. 195–96. Swain’s
entire discussion of “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face” is outstanding.