PRETEST

Born in Dublin in 1856 to a middle-class Protestant family bearing pretensions to nobility (Shaw's embarrassing alcoholic father claimed to be descended from Macduff, the slayer of Macbeth), George Bernard Shaw grew to become what some consider the second greatest English playwright, behind only Shakespeare. Others most certainly disagree with such an assessment, but few question Shaw's immense talent or the play's that talent produced. Shaw died at the age of 94, a hypochondriac, socialist, anti-vaccinationist, semi-feminist vegetarian who believed in the Life Force and only wore wool. He left behind him a truly massive corpus of work including about 60 plays, 5 novels, 3 volumes of music criticism, 4 volumes of dance and theatrical criticism, and heaps of social commentary, political theory, and voluminous correspondence.

WHAT IS THE TOPIC OF THE EXCERPT?

• A. George Bernard Shaw

• B. Great English playwright

• C. Macduff

• D. William Shakespeare

Pygmalion is a romance in five acts by George Bernard Shaw, produced in German in 1913 in Vienna. It was performed in England in 1914, with Mrs. Patrick Campbell as Eliza Doolittle. The play is a humane comedy about love and the English class system.

WHAT IS THE TOPIC OF THE EXCERPT ?

• A. Eliza Doolittle

• B. English class system

• C. Mrs. Patrick Campbell

• D. Pygmalion

Henry Higgins, a phonetician, accepts a bet that simply by changing the speech of a Cockney flower seller he will be able, in six months, to pass her off as a duchess. Eliza undergoes gruelling training. When she successfully ―passes in high society—having in the process become a lovely young woman of sensitivity and taste—Higgins dismisses her abruptly as a successfully completed experiment. Eliza, who now belongs neither to the upper class, whose mannerisms and speech she has learned, nor to the lower class, from which she came, rejects his dehumanizing attitude.

WHAT IS THE TOPIC OF THE EXCERPT?

• A. Eliza’s poor background

• B. Eliza’s rejection of Henry

• C. Henry’s relationship with Eliza

• D. Henry’s tutelage with Eliza

"She is not at all a romantic figure." So is she introduced in Act I. Everything about Eliza Doolittle seems to defy any conventional notions we might have about the romantic heroine. When she is transformed from a sassy, smart- mouthed kerbstone flower girl with deplorable English, to a (still sassy) regal figure fit to consort with nobility, it has less to do with her innate qualities as a heroine than with the fairy-tale aspect of the transformation myth itself. A. characterization of Eliza B. heroines of romantic comedies C. plot of Pygmalion D. unconventional characters.

WHAT IS THE TOPIC OF THE EXCERPT?

• A. characterization of Eliza

• B. heroines of romantic comedies

• C. plot of Pygmalion

• D. unconventional characters

The play became famous as a motion picture in 1938 and later as the stage musical My Fair Lady (1956), with a musical score by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe. A 1964 film version of the musical featured Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn.

WHAT IS THE TOPIC OF THE EXCERPT?

• A. Alan Jay Lerner

• B. Audrey Hepburn

• C. My Fair Lady

• D. Pygmalion