Mary Price; or, The Adventures of a Servant Girl

Mary Price; or, The Adventures of a Servant Girl A domestic drama in two acts adapted from G. W. M. Reynolds's popular work. The play opens in the taproom of the Dog and Duck, where burglars Nick Sawbridge and Bill Bulldog discuss recruiting Robert Price, a runaway apprentice, to assist in London robberies by exploiting his sister Mary's position as a servant in a nobleman's household. Mary arrives and attempts to dissuade her brother from criminal association, pleading with him to return to honest work. The plot escalates when a gypsy woman kidnaps Lord Harlesdon's young daughter Clementina. Mary, learning of the abduction, dedicates herself to the child's recovery. Tommy, a village idiot with surprising cunning, reveals he has tracked the kidnappers to the Trampers' Arms inn and devises a plan: he and Mary will disguise themselves as gypsies to infiltrate the location and rescue the girl. The narrative combines melodramatic domestic concerns with criminal intrigue and rescue plotting.