Her first performance

HIGGINS: Mother.

MRS HIGGINS: Henry, what a disagreeable surprise! HIGGINS: Hello, mother. How nice you look!

MRS HIGGINS: What are you doing here? You promised never to come to Ascot. Go home at once.

HIGGINS: I can’t, mother. I’m here on business.

MRS HIGGINS: Oh no Henry you mustn’t. I’m quite serious. You offend all my friends. The moment they meet you I’ll never see them again. You aren’t even dressed for Ascott.

HIGGINS: I’ve changed my shirt. Listen, mother, I’ve got a job for you: a phonetics job. I’ve picked up a girl.

MRS HIGGINS: Henry.

HIGGINS: Oh no. I haven’t a love affair. She’s a flower girl. I’m taking her to the annual Embassy ball and I wanted to try her out first.

MRS HIGGINS: I beg your pardon.

HIGGINS: Well you know the Embassy Ball?

MRS HIGGINS: Of course I know the ball but…

HIGGINS: So I invited her to yout box today do you understand?

MRS HIGGINS: Common flower girl?

HIGGINS: Oh, that’ll be all right. I’ve taught her to speak properly; and she has strict instructions as to her behaviour. She’s to keep to two subjects: the weather and everybody’s health—Fine day and How do you do, you know—and not to let herself go on things in general. It will be quite safe.

MRS HIGGINS: Safe? To talk about one’s health in the middle of a race!

HIGGINS: Yes, you’ve got to talk about something.

MRS HIGGINS: Where’s the girl now?

HIGGINS: She’s being pinned. Some of hthe clothes we bought didn’t quite fit. I told Pickering we should have taken her with us.

MRS HIGGINS: Mrs. Eynsford Hill.

MRS EYNSFORD HILL: Good afternoon Mrs Higgins.

MRS HIGGINS: Do you know my son Henry?

MRS EYNSFORD HILL: How do you do?

HIGGINS: I’ve seen you somewhere before.

MRS EYNSFORD HILL: I don’t know.

HIGGINS: It doesn’t matter. You’d better sit down.

MRS HIGGINS: Lady Boxington?

HIGGINS: Where the devil can they be?

MRS HIGGINS: Lord Boxington?

HIGGINS: Ah…

MRS HIGGINS: Colonel Pickering, you’re just in time for tea.

PICKERING: Thank you Mrs Higgins. May I introduce Miss Eliza Doolittle?

MRS HIGGINS: My dear Miss Doolittle.

ELIZA DOOLITTLE: How kind of you to let me come.

MRS HIGGINS: Delighted my dear. Lady Boxington.

LADY BOXINGTON: How do you do?

ELIZA DOOLITTLE: How do you do?

MRS HIGGINS: Lord Boxington.

LORD BOXINGTON: How do you do?

ELIZA DOOLITTLE: How do you do?

MRS HIGGINS: Mrs Eynsford Hill, Miss Doolittle.

MRS EYNSFORD HILL: How do you do?

ELIZA DOOLITTLE: How do you do?

MRS HIGGINS: And Freddy Eynsford Hill.

ELIZA DOOLITTLE: How do you do?

FREDDY: How do you do?

HIGGINS: Miss Doolittle.

ELIZA DOOLITTLE: Good afternoon Professor Higgins.

FREDDY: The first race was very exciting Miss Doolittle. I’m so sorry that you missed it.

MRS HIGGINS: Will it rain you think?

ELIZA DOOLITTLE: The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain but in Hartford, Hereford and Hampshire hurricanes hardly ever happen.

FREDDY: Ha! Ha! How awfully funny!

ELIZA DOOLITTLE: What is wrong with that, young man? I bet I got it right.

FREDDY: Smashing.

MRS EYNSFORD HILL: Hasn’t it suddenly turned chilly. I do hope we won’t have any unseasonable cold spells. They bring on so much influenza and the whole of our family is susceptible to it.

ELIZA DOOLITTLE: My aunt died of influenza: so they said. But it’s my belief they done the old woman in.

MRS HIGGINS: Done her in?

ELIZA DOOLITTLE: Yes, Lord love you! Why should she die of influenza when she come through diphtheria right enough the year before? Fairly blue with it, she was. They all thought she was dead; but my father he kept ladling gin down her throat. Then she come to so sudden she bit the bowl off the spoon.

MRS. EYNSFORD HILL: Dear me!

ELIZA DOOLITTLE: Now, what call would a woman with that strength in her have to die of influenza? And what become of her new straw hat that should have come to me? Somebody pinched it; and what I say is, them as pinched it done her in.

MR EYNSFORD HILL: Done her in, done her in did you say?

MRS EYNSFORD HILL: What ever does it mean?

HIGGINS: Oh, that’s the new small talk. To do somebody in means to kill them.

MRS EYNSFORD HILL: But you surely don’t believe that your aunt was killed?

ELIZA DOOLITTLE: Do I not! Them she lived with would have killed her for a hat-pin, let alone a hat.

MRS EYNSFORD HILL: But it can’t have been right for your father to pour spirits down her throat like that. It might have killed her.

ELIZA DOOLITTLE: Not her. Gin was mother’s milk to her. Besides, he’d poured so much down his own throat he knew the good of it.

MRS EYNSFORD HILL: Do you mean that he drank?

ELIZA DOOLITTLE: Drank! My word! Something chronic.

HENRY: Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!

ELIZA DOOLITTLE: What are you sniggering at?

HENRY: It’s the new small talk, you do it so awfully well.

ELIZA DOOLITTLE: Well, if I was doing it proper, what was you sniggering at? Have I said anything I oughtn’t?

MRS PICKERING: Not at all my dear.

ELIZA DOOLITTLE: Well, that’s a mercy, anyhow. What I –

HIGGINS: Ahem.

PICKERING: I don’t know if there’s enough time before the next race to place a bet. But come my dear.

MRS HIGGINS: I don’t suppose so.

HENRY: I have a bet on number 7, I should be so happy if you would take it. You’ll enjoy the race so much more.

ELIZA DOOLITTLE: That’s very kind of you.

HENRY: His name is Dover.

PICKERING: Come along.

ELIZA DOOLITTLE: Come on, come on Dover, come on, come on Dover, come on, come on Dover move your blooming ass.