SOURCE: "It is Never Too Late to Mend and Prison Conditions in Nineteenth-Century England," in Theatre Research International, Vol. 18, No. 1, 1993, pp. 4-15.

In the following excerpt, Barrett discusses the controversial premiere of Reade's play It is Never Too Late to Mend.

The première of It Is Never Too Late to Mend at the Princess's Theatre on 4 October 1865 marked the appropriately tumultuous return of Charles Reade to the London stage after an absence of nine years. That night, one of the most memorable disturbances in the nineteenth-century theatre occurred when the drama critics in attendance, led by Frederick Guest Tomlins of the Morning Advertiser, demanded that the play be halted because of its offensive subject matter and one particularly shocking scene. The dispute became a cause célèbre among critics, dramatists, and the general public and was recalled (with varying degrees of accuracy) years later by its...