| “ | There's a hole in the world like a great black pit, and it's filled with people who are filled with shit and the vermin of the world inhabit it. | „ |
| ~ Sweeney Todd |
Sweeney Todd is the titular tragic villain protagonist of the 1979 musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and the 2007 Tim Burton film of the same name.
History
Sweeney Todd's story begins in Victorian London, his given name is Benjamin Barker and he lives with his wife Lucy and year-old daughter Joannah. A local judge by the name of Turpin grows jealous and lusts for Todd's wife, leading him to frame Todd for a crime and send him away to Australia, then a British penal colony. In this time, he invites Lucy to a formal party at his manor where he rapes her. Lucy, filled with grief, poisons herself with arsenic, however fails to kill herself and subsequently goes insane. Joannah is adopted by the judge as his ward.
Fifteen years later Todd manages to return to London with the help of a merchant sailor, and reopens his business as a barber under his new alias. He vows revenge against Judge Turpin and begins a plan to kill him in the barber shop. As Todd is about to slit the judge's throat with a razor while giving him a shave, the sailor who helped him escape enters the shop announcing that he and Joannah are in love. An enraged Turpin leaves, leaving Todd with an unsatisfied vengeance.
In desperate anger and sorrow at society, Todd begins a rampage, killing numerous innocent customers by cutting their throats while shaving them, and dropping them down a trapdoor to the bakehouse of his neighbor and co-conspirator, Mrs. Lovett, who uses them to bake into meat pies which she sells at her shop, which are wildly popular due to the public being oblivious to the truth.
In the story's climax, Todd lures the Judge back to his barber shop and murders him. On running down to the pie shop bakehouse to help Mrs. Lovett dispose of the bodies of the Judge and a beggar woman he hastily killed as the judge approached, he discovered the woman is actually Lucy, his wife whom he thought to be dead. He then becomes enraged and accuses Mrs. Lovett of hiding the truth, whom claimed to be protecting Todd by keeping Lucy's fate unknown. He then puts on a facade of forgiveness and compassion, then waltzes Lovett over towards her large pie oven, where he throws her into the fire and slams the door shut. Todd then holds Lucy's body in his arms while Tobias Ragg, who was nicknamed Toby, a boy who worked for Mrs. Lovett in the pie shop appears, he had been locked in the bakehouse with many murdered bodies after he became suspicious of Todd's actions and consequently went insane. Todd allows Toby to pick up a razor and kill him out of mercy. He dies in his wife's dead arms.
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