3-053-577 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Scene from "Arkwright's Wife," at the Globe Theatre, 1873. London stage production. 'The merits of this drama...have been universally acknowledged. It is such solid food as the modern stage seldom presents in the way of entertainment. It has none of the lightness and shallowness of some recent productions, but deals with the substantial realities of life, as they actually work themselves out in daily practice. Our Illustration represents the tableau formed at the end of the second act, when, after the destruction of the machine by the misguided wife of the inventor, at the suggestion of the envious Hayes, the appalled husband enters to see the result of all his labours lying in ruins. Immediately thereupon he repudiates the offender - a stern measure of justice which must have smitten him to the heart while compelled to inflict it on the woman he loved. He knows, however, that the mischief is not irreparable, since he has preserved the drawings, as, indeed, is skilfully intimated in a preceding portion of the play. These he doubtless subsequently employed in the construction of the new machines by which he made the fortune which, in the last scene, we see him possessing. But for the moment the shock was terrible'. From "Illustrated London News", 1873.