May Fortescue company. She toured with her company for many years, frequently performing the plays of W. S. Gilbert. A tour of the United States from 1886 to 1887 included the New York premiere of Gilbert's play "Gretchen", with Fortescue in the title role (although "The New York Times" found her performance wanting). During these touring years, she revived at least eight other works by Gilbert, playing such roles as Jenny Northcott in "Sweethearts", Galatea in "Pygmalion and Galatea", Selene in "The Wicked World" and Clarice in "Comedy and Tragedy". Fortescue's troupe premiered Gilbert's 1897 drama, "The Fortune Hunter", in which she
Pygmalion and Galatea (1898 film) had long been popular with theatrical illusionists. "Pygmalion and Galatea" was the first film adaptation of the story; many others followed it in the silent era and beyond. Méliès and Jehanne d'Alcy play the roles of Pygmalion and Galatea in the film. Ideas from the myth returned in later films by Méliès, including "The Brahmin and the Butterfly" (1901), in which the woman's power and freedom of choice are emphasized, and which Jennifer Forrest summarized as "a Pygmalion and Galatea scenario gone wrong"; "The Drawing Lesson, or the Living Statue" (1903), in which a mischievous magician creates an equally mischievous