2-995-934 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Scene from Mr. Brougham's comedy of "Romance and Reality", at the Hammersmith Theatre, 1860. London stage production. Act IV. 'Rosabel Manly has realised her ideal of happiness - love in a cottage - and, thinking her husband to be only a farmer, and not recognising Jack Swift as her husband's friend, but regarding him only as a rustic labourer - has not yet penetrated the ruse that has been designed to cure her of her romantic follies, yet begins to suspect that all is not right, and that there is a cloud impending over her happiness. But even here she is not free from intrusion. The female emancipationist, Miss Barbara Manly, finds herself on the spot in pursuit of Swift, with whom she had supposed that she had eloped, but who had adroitly substituted for himself Mr. Lavender Kydd (Mr. W . Farren), and alarms the astonished bride by the violence of her denunciations and the virulence of her suspicions. The scene permits the grouping of the principal characters - Mr. Frank Meredith (Mr. Howe), Jack Swift (Mr. John Brougham), Rosabel (Miss Florence Haydon), Barbara Manly (Mrs. Wilkins), and Blossom, the servant (Mrs. E. Fitzwilliam)'. From "Illustrated London News", 1860.