This is the most famous play to have come out of Manchester, well Salford to be exact.
The plot revolves around Willie Mossop, a gifted, but unappreciated shoemaker employed
by the domineering Henry Horatio Hobson. Semi-literate and content with his lot,
he is bullied by Hobson's eldest daughter, Maggie (over the hill by Victorian terms
at the ripe old age of 30), into marrying her and setting up in a shop of his own.
Maggie and her two younger sisters Alice and Victoria (Vickey) have worked most of
their lives in their father's store without wages and are eager to be married and
out of the shop. Alice is engaged to Albert Prosser, a young up-and-coming solicitor,
and Vickey to Fred Beenstock, son of a respectable corn merchant.
Between her sales skill and his shoemaking talent, the enterprise is very successful
and, within a year, he's taken nearly all Hobson's trade. At Maggie's urging, Mossop
goes into partnership with Hobson, now an almost-bankrupt alcoholic, on condition
that Hobson take no further part in the business.
