Melodrama : plots that thrilled (1954)

BRUTAL REALISM 71 It's Never Too Late to Mend (Princess's, 1865) : The Australian Goldfields she won a word or two of praise for the way she plied, in silken rags, her besom as a crossing-sweeper. She became a favourite of Strand burlesque, especially as Jack Sheppard, and then went to New York. At San Francisco she married J. P. Burnett, actor-playwright, whose aim in life was to write a piece exactly suited to her. She saw herself as Dickens' pathetic little crossing-sweeper. So far Bleak House had taken rank on the American stage merely as one of the lesser works of Brougham, who had seen it as a vehicle for himself as Turveydrop. At the California Theatre the story became Jo. It was a success. Husband and wife came to England in the November of 1875 and acted his play as Bleak House at the Prince of Wales's, Liverpool. That Christmas Jennie Lee spent at the Surrey. In the February of 1867 she leased the Globe in the Drury Lane slums, and there Jo triumphed. The hoarse voice, the slouching, dejected gait, and the furtiveness of some hunted animal were acclaimed as " realism difficult to surpass " and yet not " too ", however illogical this may seem now. The initial run of over a hundred performances gives an inadequate idea of Jennie Lee's success. With another supporting company,