Characters and Original Cast
| Name in play | Name in short story | Play description | Short story description | Originator of role |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sergeant Klooque | Sergeant Brice | A soldier in the King's Hussars, just returned from Johannesburg | A soldier in Her Majesty Queen Anne's Foot Guards, just returned from Malplaquet. | W. M. Terrott |
| Boomblehardt | Verditter | A miser | A miser | Edward Righton |
| Martha | Dorothy Trabbs | Landlady of the Three Pigeons | Landlady of the Three Pigeons | Miss L. Harris |
| Peter | Peter | A young farmer | The landlady's nephew | Maggie Brennan |
| Pipette | Jenny | The landlady's niece | The landlady's daughter | Kate Bishop |
| Jacques | – | A villager | – | Charles Parry |
| A Strange Old Lady | A Strange Old Lady | A strange old lady | A strange old lady | Lucy Franklein |
As was common in Victorian drama, a woman (Maggie Brennan) played a young man (Peter). The play's script assigns dialogue to three numbered villagers in the opening scene. The named character of Jacques has no more lines than any of these and disappears after the first page of the script. Righton, who first played Boomblehardt, portrayed him as a Jewish caricature. Gilbert's script did not use a Jewish dialect, and historian Jane Stedman suggests that Righton's increasingly broad portrayal and interpolations show that Gilbert had little control of Righton's portrayal of the part.
Read more about this topic: Creatures Of Impulse
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