Ruddygore

In the Cornish fishing village of Rederring, during Napoleonic times, a troupe of professional bridesmaids awaits employment. Dame Hannah tells them of the witch’s curse, placed on all baronets of Ruddigore, that they must every day commit a crime. Each one has at last tired of the life and died in agony. To escape this fate, Robin, the genuine baronet, had absconded with his servant Adam, leaving his younger brother, Despard, to inherit the title and bacome bad in his turn. Rose and Robin have been courting, but are too diffident to take things further, Richard, Robin’s foster-brother and newly returned from sea, offers to help, but ends up proposing to Rose himself and being accepted. Mad Margaret has been driven to insanity because she was jilted by Sir Despard when he inherited the title. He, meanwhile, gets his daily crime out of the way and spends the rest of the day doing good to compensate. When Rose returns to Robin, Richard reveals the secret that Robin is in fact Despard’s elder brother, and therefore the true baronet, who is now obliged to assume the title.

Up at Ruddigore Castle, Robin, now in proper character as Sir Ruthven, is not enjoying his new role, because the crimes he commits, such as forging his own will, do not pass muster with his ancestors, who, led by Sir Roderic, emerge from their portraits at regular intervals in spectral form. They order him to do something serious – abduct a lady from the village. Adam goes off to do the deed. Despard and Margaret arrive, dressed soberly and leading a life of good works in the education sector. They want Ruthven to see the error of his ways. When Adam returns with his victim in a sack this turns out to be Dame Hannah. The resultant noise arouses Sir Roderic from his portrait. As with Margaret, Hannah had been jilted a generation earlier when he inherited. The solution arrived at by Ruthven is that to fail to commit a daily crime was tantamount to suicide, but that suicide was (at least in Victorian times), itself a crime, and that therefore Sir Roderic should not have died at all. Restored to life and property, he is reunited with Hannah, and Ruthven can marry Rose. Richard ends up with the lead bridesmaid.