Finally, as we know, Eliza goes to the party at the ambassador’s, where everyone takes her for a princess rather than a just a duchess, and Higgins wins his bet – but that night, after throwing a lot of reproaches in his face, Eliza runs away from his house, to be found later at his mother’s. There they speak again, Eliza announcing her intention to marry Freddy. Higgins responds with one of his most nasty laughs.

There the play ends; but that’s where the complicated part begins. Bernard Shaw himself was quite opposed to the idea that Eliza would actually marry Higgins. which looked so attractive to theatres and was later hinted at in the famous “My Fair Lady” film. Eliza married Freddy, the author insisted, and even wrote a long afterword describing their married life. All in vain: the readers, the film directors, the Russian translators of the book – all seem to insist that this is the wrong end to the story. Eliza is destined to marry her rude, disrespectful teacher who treats her like dirt but justifies it by the fact that he would treat everyone – even a real dutchess – exactly the same.

I must admit I agree with Bernard Shaw here. Granting that Higgins, despite his awful manners, has certain charm, and that marriage to Eliza might have reformed him over time, why should this fine young girl have sacrificed her one and only life to this monster? Just for a bit of adrenalin? Or for love? But she was never in love with him, though her bitter words on the night of her escape might suggest that. To support the common myth that women are most likely to fall in love with those who mistreat them? If there’s a grain of truth in this myth, I am sorry for those women. We aren’t <em>all</em> like that though. Eliza has a strong character, and is exactly the type Freddy needs to guide and support him; with Higgins it would have been permanent war.

But I can’t forbid people to feel the way they do, if the author himself couldn’t.

I remember reading the book for the first time at the age of 23 or 24 – I liked it enormously back then. I laughed and cried while reading it, the exasperated dialogue between Eliza and Higgins’s housekeeper Mrs Pearce about taking baths being my absolute favourite. Later I lended the book to a friend and never saw it again. Now, as so many years have passed, a colleague has given me another copy of it.

I am holding it in my hands trying in vain to resurrect the old feeling, but I perceive the book very differently now. It’s clever and funny, but the old charm has gone. Probably there are just different books for different ages. But I still don’t understand how a person as highly educated as Professor Higgins can be such an ill-mannered bully. These two sides of his personality just don’t go together well.

But perhaps I just lack the necessary knowledge of human nature, and I’m prepared to admit that.

Then we are moved to Jack Worthing’s country house and meet his charming young ward Cecily and her governess Miss Prism. One by one, Algernon, Jack, Gwendolen and her mother arrive at the scene. Algernon calls himself Ernest Worthing and as such proposes to Cecily. Later, Gwendolen and Cecily quarrel over the non-existent Ernest Worthing, only to find out later that they both have been deceived.

Later, when Jack’s origins become known to him (they had been a secret to him all his life), he makes the most shocking discovery about himself: all the lies he ever told were in fact literal truth! And his real name is Ernest, after all – but John too.

Three happy engagements follow, looking unforgivably decent among all the cynicism, hypocrisy and lies that have been so pleasant to encounter… Even the young ladies – so beautiful, so passionate and so truthful – have their morals somewhat inside out, which doesn’t make them any less charming and lovable.

The play presents us with yet another side of Oscar Wilde’s multi-dimentional talent: his humour. Quite wicked – and totally perfect: not a word out of place – and at the same time he makes it quite easy to see what kind of message he is trying to convey. Just how many people surely felt indignant after recognising themselves in the characters of the play? We can only guess – and yet I’m sure they couldn’t help laughing at the same time.

Actually, both Jack and Algernon are a milder version of Sir Henry in “The Picture of Dorian Gray” – but they are harmless. I’m sure they’ll be perfect (and probably a bit dull) husbands to Gwendolen and Cecily respectively, once they grow just a little older. Amazing how Oscar Wilde could always highlight the most unpleasant about the very same society to which he himself belonged – and make it look either tragic or funny, depending on how he felt about it.

Re-reading this play was a nice bit of morning fun – it was, perhaps, one of the last mornings I was able to dedicate to this innocent entertainment, now that I’m about to get extremely busy. I have to warn my readers that from now on my new reviews will appear on this blog far less often, but I promise to keep this project going, no matter what. It’s been too much of a pleasure to abandon it just like this.