Scarab wrote:How IS Sweeny's wife alive anyway? Was it never clear in the original story?
In the story (or at least, the musical) this is what happened to Sweeney's wife:
After being raped by the judge, Lucy takes arsenic in order to kill herself. She doesn't die, but it leaves her insane (although the emotional trauma she'd just gone through likely had a lot to do with that, as well). By the time her husband gets back to London, she's been living as a beggar woman for years. They encounter one another several times without either realizing who the other is, though the beggar woman does comment "Hey, don't I know you mister" but Todd is trying to avoid people recognizing him from before, and writes it off. At the end of the play, Todd kills the beggar woman, only to realize later that she was his wife whom he'd believed dead. Mrs. Lovett knew that Lucy was alive, but mislead Todd because she wanted him for herself.
