Eliza Doolittle arrives at Professor Higgins' laboratory, offering to pay for speech lessons so she can work in a flower shop. Despite her rough dialect, she asserts her dignity and demands to be treated with respect.
Act 5 of Pygmalion, the morning after the ambassador's reception that was Eliza's social triumph. Higgins has spent the night not congratulating her but congratulating himself, then mislaying his slippers. Eliza has fled to Mrs Higgins's house, and Higgins has come to retrieve her. In the scene leading to this speech, Higgins has been bullying, dismissive, and obtuse about what Eliza has actually been through. Mrs Higgins is present; Pickering, the gentleman who treated Eliza like a lady throughout, has been credited by Eliza with her real transformation. Eliza's speech about washing her face is part of a longer confrontation in which she finally articulates how Higgins's careless behaviour and Pickering's quiet courtesy together remade her. It is the speech where she stops being a project and becomes a person who has the upper hand.
Eliza here is no longer the flower girl and not yet sure what she is instead. What she wants from Higgins is recognition — not romance, not even apology necessarily, but acknowledgement that the change in her is hers, not his trophy. She is angry, but the anger is controlled, almost analytic; she has been thinking this through all night. She is also testing herself, hearing her own new voice in a register she has not used before — the register of an equal. Underneath is fear of what comes next (she cannot go back, cannot stay) and a stubborn refusal to be patronised. The speech is partly addressed to Higgins and partly to Mrs Higgins as witness; Eliza needs an audience who will register what she is saying because Higgins keeps trying not to.
The pitfall is righteousness. Eliza is not making a speech about women's rights; she is describing, with precision, how small acts of courtesy from Pickering made her into a lady and how Higgins's casual contempt nearly undid her. Keep it specific to those people and those acts — the slippers, the "Eliza," the manners at meals. Mark the moments she catches her own grammar and pronunciation working without effort; there should be a small private pleasure in that, even mid-confrontation. The trap is class indignation as a single note; Shaw writes her wittier and more poised than that. Find where she is genuinely amused at her own transformation. Higgins is the addressee but Mrs Higgins is the chorus; play to both. Tempo: measured, with a few hard accelerations when Higgins interrupts in your head or out loud. Watch the vowels — Eliza's English is now correct but her ear remembers Lisson Grove, and that tension is the music of the part. Avoid sounding like My Fair Lady; Shaw is drier.
An excellent piece for actors in their twenties, for classical-modern repertory, conservatory finals, and any company doing Shaw, Wilde, or Coward. It shows class fluency (a rare and tested skill), comic intelligence, and the ability to win an argument on stage without raising the volume. Casting-wise it reads as ingénue with steel — Viola, Beatrice, Isabella, plus contemporary equivalents. Moderately over-used because of the musical's popularity; you will distinguish yourself by playing Shaw and not Lerner — drier, sharper, less melodic. Avoid it if your accent work is unreliable; the speech is a test piece for vowel control. Strong choice for actors who want to demonstrate they can hold their own against a domineering scene partner without external props.
I washed my face and hands before I come, I did. And I'm a good girl, I am. I know what the like of you would do to a girl what come in here without knowing her place. I ain't come here to ask for any compliment; and if my money's not good enough I can go elsewhere.
I want to be a lady in a flower shop stead of selling at the corner of Tottenham Court Road. But they won't take me unless I can talk more genteel. He said he could teach me. Well, here I am ready to pay him—not asking any favor—and he treats me as if I was dirt.
I know what lessons cost as well as you do; and I'm ready to pay. I won't be called a baggage when I've offered to pay like any lady. I have my feelings the same as anyone, and I won't be put upon.
I come here with a proper idea of what's right, and I won't have anyone treating me as if I was nobody. I may be only a flower girl, but I have as much right to be here as anybody.
And if Professor Higgins don't want to teach me, I'll go to somebody who will.