The better book brought on a need to disguise the standard-
form love song without giving it up, and the best example of
this revision comes in My Fair Lady, where the hero cannot be
imagined singing anything so conventional as a love song, es-
pecially not joining a duet. This is not only because the origi-
nal Higgins, Rex Harrison, could barely sing. The more im-
portant reason is that Higgins is devoted to singing by himself.
“Soloist” is a leading note of the Higgins character and one he
must lose before the un-Shavian promise of romance between
Higgins and Eliza can be realized. Let’s see how Lerner and
Loewe met this challenge.
No matter how quirky and self-centered Higgins may seem,
his solos are designed for the standard patterns of popular
song. He must assert himself against these patterns throughout
most of the action in order to prove himself singular and origi-
nal. Then he must change at the last minute and accept these
conventional song patterns in order to prove himself fit for
Eliza. Eliza has no trouble with the standard patterns. She’s a
good girl, she is. Her “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” and “I Could
Have Danced All Night” are neatly proportioned AABA songs,
lyrical and conventional, suggesting that she can move musi-
cally through either of her environments, poverty on Totten-
ham Court Road or respectability on Wimpole Street. But
Higgins kicks against the traces until the end, when his perfor-
mance finally comes to terms with a standard song, and he
turns out to be a good match for Eliza after all.
His first solo number, “Why Can’t the English Teach Their
Children How to Speak?” has the standard AABA stanza struc-
ture, but as Higgins reaches the final rhyme word of the final
A, which would perfect the form, he pushes it into a new
stanza, one that does not fit any other song (it begins at “Set”):
One common language I’m afraid we’ll never get.
Oh, why can’t the English learn to—
Set a good example to people whose English
Is painful to your ears?The intrusion of new material runs sixteen measures, as though
it might belong to a standard format too, but Higgins brings it