Sweeney Todd

Un article de Vev.

Modèle:Otheruses2 Sweeney Todd, aka Benjamin Barker, is a fictional villain/antihero appearing in various English language works starting in the mid-19th century as a barber and an early example of a fictional serial killer. His weapon of choice is a straight razor, with which he cuts his victims' throats and drinks their blood; in some versions of the story Mrs. Lovett, who is variously his lover, friend, and/or partner in crime—and who is variously Marjorie, Sarah, Nellie, Shirley or Claudetta—bakes the corpses of his victims into meat pies, and serves them to friends and family. He is also assisted by an unwitting servant lad named Tobias Ragg, who later aids in unmasking his crimes. In most versions of the story, Sweeney either helps or hinders (sometimes both) the love affair of a young woman, Johanna, and a sailor named Mark Ingesterie or, later, Anthony Hope.

In two books<ref name=Haining79>Modèle:Cite book</ref><ref name=Haining93>Modèle:Cite book</ref>, the horror and crime story writer Peter Haining argues that Sweeney Todd was a historical figure who committed his crimes around 1800. However, other researchers who have tried to verify his citations find nothing in these sources to back Haining's claims.<ref>Modèle:Cite press release</ref><ref> Duff , Oliver

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   Sweeney Todd: fact or fiction? 
     
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. Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street in Concert
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. Retrieved on 2006-11-15. </ref>

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Early history

Todd's first appearance could have been in a British penny dreadful called The People's Periodical, in issue 7, dated November 21, 1846. The story in which he appeared was titled "The String of Pearls: A Romance," and was written by Thomas Prest,<ref name="PBS">"Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street" PBS.org. URL accessed February 11, 2006.</ref> who created several other gruesome villains. He tended to base his horror stories partly on truth, sometimes gaining inspiration from real crime reports in The Times.

According to the English tale, Todd was tried at the Old Bailey and hanged at Tyburn in January 1802, in front of a large crowd. However, no record of the trial can be found in the Old Bailey sessions papers or the Newgate Calendar, nor are there any contemporary press reports either of the trial or of the hanging. As early as 1878, a contributor to Notes and Queries noted this absence of authentic non-fictional sources.<ref>Modèle:Cite journal</ref> Peter Haining, while arguing for historical reality, does not offer verifiable specifics.<ref name=Haining93/>

Whenever Sweeney Todd himself first made his appearance, the conversion of the unsuspecting into meat pies was urban legend in the early 19th Century. In 1843, Tom Pinch is "particularly anxious ... to have those streets pointed out to him which were appropriated to the slaughter of countrymen" in Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens.

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Adaptations

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The String of Pearls was adapted as a melodrama in 1847 by George Dibdin Pitt and opened at the Britannia Theatre in Hoxton, with the title Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street and billed as 'founded on fact'. It was something of a success, and the story spread by word of mouth and took on the quality of an urban legend. Various versions of the tale were staples of the British theatre for the rest of the century.

In 1936 a film version of the Victorian melodrama was made, called Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street, starring Tod Slaughter in the title role.

"Sweeney Todd, The Barber" is a song which assumes its audience knows the stage version and claims that such a character in real life was even more remarkable, yet it contains most of the story portrayed in the theater and cinema. Stanley Holloway, who recorded it in 1956, attributed it to R. P. Weston, a song writer active from 1906 to 1934.

The duo known as the Two Ronnies produced a musical sketch called "Teeny Todd, the Demon Barber of Queer Street" with Ronnie Corbett in the title role. The sketch features the barber cutting throats with a razor and then pulling a lever to send his victims into the baker's shop below.

A version of Sweeney Todd's story is told in the 1970 horror film Bloodthirsty Butchers, directed by Andy Milligan.

The British playwright Christopher Bond wrote a 1973 play titled Sweeney Todd. This version of the story was the first to give Todd a motive other than pure greed: he is a wrongfully imprisoned barber named Benjamin Barker who returns under the name Sweeney Todd to London after fifteen years in Australia to find that the judge responsible for his imprisonment has raped and murdered his young wife. He swears revenge, but when his plans face obstacles, he begins to slash the throats of his customers. This new element of Sweeney Todd being motivated by vengeance was Bond's way of grafting dramatic themes from The Revenger's Tragedy onto George Dibdin Pitt's stage plot.

In 1979, Christopher Bond's version was adapted by Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler into a hit Broadway musical under the title Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, originally starring Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury as Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett. In 1982, the musical was televised on The Entertainment Channel, starring Lansbury and George Hearn and directed by Terry Hughes and Harold Prince.

In 1998, Ben Kingsley and Joanna Lumley starred in the John Schlesinger-directed The Tale Of Sweeney Todd, a television movie commissioned by Sky for which Kingsley received a Screen Actors Guild Best Actor nomination.

A BBC television drama version with a screenplay written by Joshua St Johnston and starring Ray Winstone and Essie Davis was broadcast on BBC One on January 3, 2006.