2-888-174 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Scene from "Harlequin and Humpty-Dumpty", [Drury Lane Theatre, London], 1850. '...scene in which the hero figures in grotesque rotundity...The hero was a rebel in the days of King Richard - one who, on his Monarch's departure for the Holy Land, set up for an outlaw...and...levied blackmail on the citizens of Old London; running off...with the "Fayre Maide of the Chepe" - or, rather, in the pantomime, attempts to do so, for the monster is prevented by her father's apprentice, who ultimately defeats him and a weird crone, his prompter and assistant, and cuts up the giant, as a memento of the King's return from the crusades...The pantomime, in which the lessee has, we believe, been assisted by Mr. Fitzball, is entitled "Harlequin Humpty Dumpty; or, Big-bellied Ben and the First Lord Mayor of London"...arranged by Mr. Nelson Lee. The whole is picturesque and costly'. From "Illustrated London News", 1850.