3-052-338 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Scene from the Westminster Play, 1872. Public schoolboys performing in Latin. 'One old dramatic institution still resists the efforts of our innovating age. In the Westminster Play what may be called the time-honoured peculiarities of pronunciation are maintained, though it is pretty certain that the sound of Latin, pronounced as it has been for some generations at Westminster, must appear hideously modern to many a Norman and Saxon ghost in the neighbouring cloisters, and must make many an old English monk, lying buried in the precincts, turn in his grave...The scene depicted in the Illustration is the second of the third act. The lady (P. G. L. Webb), accompanied by a nurse (A. W. W. Wynn), overhears her faithful henchman (W. A. L. P. Evans), who is on his way to tell her what he thinks he has found out, inveighing like a madman, to her and the nurse's astonishment and alarm, against some "scoundrel" unknown to them, and discovered on inquiry to be "their own" Tom...And admirably did the young actor (Evans) represent the comically exaggerated rage of the faithful henchman'. From "Illustrated London News", 1880.