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66 MELODRAMA
Uriah Too late ! We must fly, or we are lost ! — Two travellers have heard the screams — the report of the gun — and are coming as fast as their steeds can bear them (rapidly descending). Quick, Sir Peregrine ; quick !
Sir P. Mercy of Heaven ! Look there ! (the face of Mrs. Fryer is seen above the ice).
Mrs. F. My head above the ice ! My hand close woven in her hair ! Murder ! Help ! (with her other hand alternately clinging to, and endeavouring to break the ice).
Uriah Rouse, man ! and away !
Mrs. F. (getting Jenny s head above the ice) At last ! At last ! Thank heaven ! (she seizes the crowbar which Uriah has left upon the ice, and breaks her way towards shore). Arms round my neck, Jenny! Cling to me, darling ! Cling to me ! (Mrs. Fryer reaches the land, and drags Jenny out of the water in a fainting state.)
Such evidence proves that Surreyside drama in the 1860s was like Adelphi drama, only better. Plays of the prisoners' van, once indigenous to the Surreyside, had taken root and thriven in the theatres of fashion. Again and again the " mirror had been held up to circumstantial evidence ", crime had been shown its own features, delirium tremens its own image, and the detective policeman had been reflected (vain assumption) " in every variety of type ".
Even the Haymarket, hitherto " distinguished for representations of a more refined class ", was seized in 1869 with an attack of dramatic jail-fever. This was because Tom Taylor had written for Miss Bateman his realistic and sensational drama of Mary Warner. George, her husband, is charged with theft when missing banknotes are found in his possession. To save him she makes a false confession. Each believes the other guilty. When he visits her in prison they bicker. After her release she sinks very low in the social scale indeed. She is charged with " accosting " a gentleman who turns out to be, in the policecourt, none other than George (a fine legal point for any magistrate). Meanwhile alcohol has rendered the real thief's constitution so pervious to virtue that he convinces George and Mary Warner of each other's innocence.
" More than the ordinary regard for realism of effect " meant vast steam-engines in full operation, the interior of Brixton prison, a squalid alley in Lambeth lit with real gas-lamps, a grimy interior " commanding the usual fine view of the illuminated clock tower at Westminster , a police-court with prisoners' dock, witness-box, constables, spectators and presiding magistrate all complete. No pains had been spared to