"Ellen Schoeters is a member of Actorama + where actors can upload a monologue or scene performance for peer review. What do you think of Ellen Schoeters's performance?"
(0 votes)
| Character | Mr Higgins | |
|---|---|---|
| Gender | Male | |
| Age Range(s) | Adult (36-50), Senior (>50) | |
| Type of monologue / Character is | Scolding, Mocking, Malicious/scheming | |
| Type | Dramatic | |
| Year | 1912 | |
| Period | 20th Century | |
| Genre | Romance, Drama, Comedy | |
| Description | Mr Higgins belittles Eliza Dolittle | |
| Details | ACT 5 | |
Summary
The story is set in Victorian London. Mr Higgins is a professor of phonetics who bets against his friend Colonel Pickering that he can teach a Cockney speaking flower girl, Eliza Dolittle, to speak like a duchess in a few months. He plans to take her to high London society parties and make people believe that she is actually a duchess. Eliza moves in Higgins' house and starts her lessons. Eventually she passes all the tests which consist in visiting Higgins' mother's home and then the ambassador's party in which she successfully passes herself as a duchess.
Mr Higgins, who is a smart but cold person incapable to understand people, treats Eliza like an object and doesn't offer any praise after she transforms herself. Eliza grows frustrated and when he asks her to fetch his slippers she runs away to his mother's house. Higgins finds her and they have a confrontation. She accuses him not to care about her and of "sneering". In this monologue Mr Higgins expresses how he feels about her, that is he created her and now he just doesn't care what will become of her or their friendship.
Mr Higgins, who is a smart but cold person incapable to understand people, treats Eliza like an object and doesn't offer any praise after she transforms herself. Eliza grows frustrated and when he asks her to fetch his slippers she runs away to his mother's house. Higgins finds her and they have a confrontation. She accuses him not to care about her and of "sneering". In this monologue Mr Higgins expresses how he feels about her, that is he created her and now he just doesn't care what will become of her or their friendship.
Written by Administrator
| Excerpt |
|---|
| HIGGINS. I have never sneered in my life. Sneering doesn't become either the human face or the human soul. I am expressing my righteous contempt for Commercialism. I don't and won't trade in affection. You call me a brute because you couldn't buy a claim on me by fetching my slippers and finding my spectacles. You were a fool: I think a woman fetching a man's slippers is a disgusting sight: did I ever fetch YOUR slippers? I think a good deal more of you for throwing them in my face. No use slaving for me and then saying you want to be cared for: who cares for a slave? If you come back, come back for the sake of good fellowship; for you'll get nothing else. You've had a thousand times as much out of me as I have out of you; and if you dare to set up your little dog's tricks of fetching and carrying slippers against my creation of a Duchess Eliza, I'll slam the door in your silly face. [LIZA. What did you do it for if you didn't care for me?] HIGGINS [heartily] Why, because it was my job. [LIZA. You never thought of the trouble it would make for me.] HIGGINS. Would the world ever have been made if its maker had been afraid of making trouble? Making life means making trouble. There's only one way of escaping trouble; and that's killing things. Cowards, you notice, are always shrieking to have troublesome people killed. [LIZA. I'm no preacher: I don't notice things like that. I notice that you don't notice me.] HIGGINS [jumping up and walking about intolerantly] Eliza: you're an idiot. I waste the treasures of my Miltonic mind by spreading them before you. Once for all, understand that I go my way and do my work without caring twopence what happens to either of us. I am not intimidated, like your father and your stepmother. So you can come back or go to the devil: which you please. |
