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Title-page:
The Tale of Two Cities; or, The Incarcerated Victim
of The Bastille. An Historical Drama, in a Prologue and Four Acts.
Fox Cooper's dramatic adaptation of Dickens's Tale of Two Cities
Dicks' Standard Plays, No. 780
1860
Wood engraving
For more details about this adaptation, see "A Discussion of Fox Cooper's Adaptation of Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities (July 1860)."
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
[You may use the image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the photographer and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
(Opens the door, MADAME DEFARGE dashes in wildly. MISS PROSS crosses, stands in front of her, and shows great mental embarrassment.)
MADAME DEFARGE. (Looking coldly at her.) The wife of Evremonde — where is she?
MISS PROSS. How should I know? Dont think to frighten me with your looks. You might, from your appearance, be the wife of Lucifer. Nevertheless, you shall not get the better of me — I am an Englishwoman.
MADAME DEFARGE. (Scornfully.) On my way to the guillotine where they reserve my chair and knitting for me, I am come to make my compliments to heer in passing. I wish to see her.
MISS PROSS. I know that your intentions are evil; and, you may depend upon it, I'll hold my own against them.
MADAME DEFARGE. It will do her no good to keep herself concealed from me at this moment. Good patriots will know what that means. Go, tell her that I wish to see her. Do you hear? (Looking wildly at her.)
MISS PROSS. If those eyes
MADAME DEFARGE. Woman, I take no answer from you! Either tell her that I demand to see her, or stand out of the way, and let me go to her. I am desperate.
(Striving to pass.)
MISS PROSS. I am a Briton! I don't care an English twopence for you or me either. I'll not leave a handful of hair on your head, if you lay a finger upon me!
MADAME DEFARGE. Ha, ha! You poor wretch! What are you worth> I address myself to the doctor. (Calling aloud.) Citizen Doctor! Wife of Evremonde! Any person but this miserable fool, answer the Citizeness Defarge! (After a pause.) No answer — this silence. Ah! I have a sudden misgiving that they are gone. (She rushes to the various doors, opens them, and looks in.) The rooms are all in disorder — there has been hurried packing — there are odds and ends upon the ground. Is there no one in that room behind you? Let me look!
MISS PROSS. Never!
MADAME DEFARGE. I will tear you to pieces but I will have you from that door! (Closing with her.)
MISS PROSS. (Struggling.) I am stronger than you, I bless heaven for it — I'll hold onto you till one or the other of us faints or dies,
MADAME DEFARGE. (Disengaging herself, and drawing a pistol from her bosom.) Then die!
(MISS PROSS, with a nimble effort, catches her arm. They struggle for possession. The pistol explodes. MADAME DEFARGE falls, wounded.)
LUCY. How did this happen?
MISS PROSS. I don't know, I'm sure — I am quite bewildered — I rather think it went off by accident,
MADAME DEFARGE. What a dreadful pang! I gasp for breath. Yet it was but fancy — and 'tis past — it is past. I must be quick, or Evremonde will be dispatched. They are calling me. But is this real? Yes, yes! I see the guillotine with a thousand faces gazing upwards at the condemned, as from a sea of dark and troubled water. The Ministers are robed and ready. Crash! A head is held up! 'Tis Evremonde's. I hear them calling, "Therese, you are too late!"
(She starts up, and falls back again in a moment, exhausted.)
LUCY. What agony in that look?
MADAME DEFARGE. (Discovering DARNAY.) Ah! My eyes do not deceive me? Evremonde! Here!
LUCY. Yes, woman! alive and safe! to smite thee in thy guilt.
MADAME DEFARGE. But the guillotine shall not lose its prey — you shall not escape! I will drag you there myself! (Rising with difficulty, and making an effort to reach DARNAY.) I cannot — my limbs are weak and stiff — I die!
(Falls dead.) [Scene 6, pp. 57-58]
Dramatist, actor, director and theatre manager Charles Frederick Fox Cooper was a controversial and colorful character of the Victorian stage who more than once was assaulted by his actors and arrested for causing a riot. Throughout his long career he managed the Dover Theatre, City of London Theatre, and Strand Theatre, among others. [Dramatized Series of Plays. Theatre Arts Press, back cover]
This is the climactic moment in the three-hour production, a melodramatic extravaganza with over forty actors and a sensational death scene. The heightened emotion and hyperbolic and inflated language, as well as the female wrestling match set against an upper-middle-class backdrop, would certainly have appealed to the primarily working-class audiences at The Victoria Theatre, opposite Waterloo Railway Station in London.
The title-page of the double-columned Dicks text is manifestly not about the confrontation of a pair of middle-aged women. And, indeed, the illustrator seems to have conflated young Lucie Darnay with middle-aged Miss Pross, so that the sensational scene is quite at variance with Fred Barnard's rather static Household Edition illustration of the same dramatic moment, "You might, from your appearance, be the wife of Lucifer," said Miss Pross (1874). The picture on the Dicks title-page depicts a rather young Miss Pross (left) blocking the door as she grabs Jacobin-capped, wild-haired beauty Madame Defarge. Thus, the illustrator emphasizes the confrontation of good and evil, and demonstrates how the English woman, though unarmed, is proof against the French woman, even when the villainess wields a pistol in her right hand. The plate implies a commercial exploitation of the female form rather than the Dickensian valorizing of British over French values, although the dialogue is loosely based upon Dickens's text in "The Knitting Done" (Book Three, Chapter XIV). And, of course, to focus on the climactic moment preceding Madame Defarge's death the artist has included none of the other characters in Fox Cooper's kinetic scene.
Cooper turned at least seven of Dickens's novels into theatrical productions, including Master Humphrey's Clock (1840), Hard Times (1854), and Little Dorrit (1856). Davis caustically remarks, "He was not scrupulous in maintaining fidelity to the original text" (76). In fact, for example, Miss Pross is alone in the Manette apartments when Madame Defarge executes her plans to have the doctor, Lucie, and little Lucie arrested as aristocrats and anti-revolutionaries in the 19 November 1859 serial issue.
Bentley, Nicolas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. Oxford and New York: Oxford U. P., 1988.
Bolton, H. Philip. Dickens Dramatized. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1987.
Booth, Michael. English Plays of the Nineteenth Century. Oxford: Clarendon, 1969. Vol. 1.
Colby, Robert A. "Thackeray and Dickens on the Boards." Dramatic Dickens, ed. Carol Hanbery MacKay. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1989. Pp. 139-151.
Cooper, Fox. The Tale of Two Cities; or, The Incarcerated Victim of The Bastille. An Historical Drama, in a Prologue and Four Acts. London: John Dicks, 1860. Dicks' Standard Plays, No. 780. Rpt. Dickens Dramatized Series of Plays. Theatre Arts Press. Acheson, AB: Amazon.ca, 2015.
Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts on File, 1998.
Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities. Illustrated by John McLenan. Harper's Weekly. (26 November 1859): 765.
__________. A Tale of Two Cities. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne ("Phiz"). London: Chapman and Hall, November 1859.
__________. A Tale of Two Cities. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1874. Vol. VIII.
__________. A Tale of Two Cities, American Notes, and Pictures from Italy. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book Company, 1910. Vol. XIII.
Hartnoll, Phyllis, ed. The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1972.
Leech, Clifford, and T. W. Craik, eds. The Revels History of Drama in English, Vol. VI: 1750-1880. London: Methuen, 1975.
MacKay, Carol Hanbery. "'Before the Curtain': Entrances to the Dickens Theatre." Dramatic Dickens, ed. Carol Hanbery MacKay. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1989. Pp. 1-10.
Morley, Malcolm. "The Stage Story of A Tale of Two Cities." Dickensian 51 (1954): 34-40.
Created 6 December 2002
Last modified 22 January 2026