My Fair Lady [antikvár]

SCENE ONE Outside the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Time: After-theatre, a cold March ni^ht. At rise of curtain: The opera is just over. Richly gowned, beautifully tailored Londoners are pouring from the Opera House and making their way across Covent Garden in search of taxis. Some huddle together under the columns of St Paul's Church which are partially in view on one side of the stage. On the opposite side, there is a smudge-pot fire around which a quartet of costermongers are warming themselves. Calls of'Taxi' punctuate the icy air. three street entertainers, buskers, rush On tO perform a few acrobatic tricks, stunts, and dance steps. They detain the crowd for a moment. The female member of the trio passes the hat as her two associates continue and reach the 'climax' of their act. mrs eynsford-hill, a middle-aged lady in evening dress, and her son freddy, ayoung man of twenty, also in evening dress, come through the crowd in search of a taxi. One of the buskers collides into him. He is thrown backwards and strikes a figure hidden behind a group of people who now comes flying forward and lands in a heap. She is a flower girl, eliza doolittle. Her basket of flowers has been knocked from her hands and her violets scattered about. She is not at all an attractive person. She is perhaps eighteen, perhaps twenty, hardly older. She wears a little sailor hat of black straw that has long been exposed to the dust and soot of London and has seldom if ever been brushed. Her hair needs washing rather badly; its mousy colour can hardly be natural. She wears a shoddy shawl, a dirty blouse with a coarse apron. Her boots are much the worse for wear. She is no doubt as clean as she can afford to be; but compared to the ladies she is very 14