ABSTRACT
Thackeray turned his attention towards the drama, while The Newcomes was coming out in monthly numbers. In the album of Thackeray’s letters and drawings are many references to plays, and quite little gallery of theatrical portraits and scenes. His famous novels teem with allusions to plays and players. In The Virginians the Warrington brothers and Lambert family go to Covent Garden Theatre to see a performance of Mr. John Howe’s immortal tragedy of Douglas, in which Mr. Spranger-Barry is magnificently attired as Norval, and beautiful Mrs. Washington makes all the ladies, and even the grenadiers on guard on each side of stage, weep visibly. The Rose and the Ring was adapted for representation on the stage by Mr. H. Savile Clarke, and set to music by Mr. Walter Slaughter. It was produced on the afternoon of December 20, 1890, at the Prince of Wales’s Theatre, with Miss Violet Cameron, Mr. John le Hay, and Mr. Harry Monkhouse in the cast.
