Act I [ edit ] In Edwardian London, Eliza Doolittle is a flower girl with a thick Cockney accent. The noted phonetician Professor Henry Higgins encounters Eliza at Covent Garden and laments the vulgarity of her dialect ("Why Can't the English?"). Higgins also meets Colonel Pickering, another linguist, and invites him to stay as his houseguest. Eliza and her friends wonder what it would be like to live a comfortable life (" Wouldn't It Be Loverly ?"). BRILLIANT! William called Princess Catherine Duchess Doolittle! Catherine full name Catherine Elizabeth Middleton The Royal Family has indeed a very strange sense of humor! Eliza's dustman father, Alfred P. Doolittle, stops by the next morning searching for money for a drink (" With a Little Bit of Luck "). Soon after, Eliza comes to Higgins's house, seeking elocution lessons so that she can get a job as an assistant in a florist's shop. ...