Oliver decides to run away to London to seek a better life. After an incident in which Oliver punches the apprentice, Mr Sowerberry is forced by his wife to whip Oliver. Mrs Sowerberry favours Mr Sowerberry’s apprentice in the confrontational relationship that exists between the two boys. The Sowerberry household is very complicated and Oliver becomes a victim of the Sowerberrys’ unhappy marriage.

Bumble for another helping of gruel with his famous request: “Please, sir, may I have some more, please?” Mr Bumble and the Parish Board are enraged by the audacity of a child of no consequence daring to confront the beadle and they sell Oliver to an undertaker, Mr Sowerberry. Oliver is the loser and at the next meal he comes forward and begs Mr. They decide that they will draw lots and the loser must ask for another portion of gruel. Nine years after Oliver’s birth the desperately hungry workhouse boys decide to do something about their plight. Oliver, near to starvation during all his time in the workhouse lives there for six months before events intervene to change his life. At the age of nine Mr Bumble removes him from the baby farm and puts him to work picking and weaving oakum – a tedious and painful job – at the main workhouse. He spends those first nine years of his life at a baby farm, looked after by a woman named Mrs Mann, with little food and few comforts. For the first nine years of his life, Oliver is perpetually hungry. Under the terms of the Poor Law, Oliver is guaranteed nourishment but he is in reality underprovided for. Mr Bumble, a beadle, and the head of the workhouse, gives the new workhouse children names. She does not have a chance to explain who she is, and before she can name the infant she dies. Each Shakespeare’s play name links to a range of resources about each play: Character summaries, plot outlines, example essays and famous quotes, soliloquies and monologues: All’s Well That Ends Well Antony and Cleopatra As You Like It The Comedy of Errors Coriolanus Cymbeline Hamlet Henry IV Part 1 Henry IV Part 2 Henry VIII Henry VI Part 1 Henry VI Part 2 Henry VI Part 3 Henry V Julius Caesar King John King Lear Loves Labour’s Lost Macbeth Measure for Measure The Merchant of Venice The Merry Wives of Windsor A Midsummer Night’s Dream Much Ado About Nothing Othello Pericles Richard II Richard III Romeo & Juliet The Taming of the Shrew The Tempest Timon of Athens Titus Andronicus Troilus & Cressida Twelfth Night The Two Gentlemen of Verona The Winter’s TaleĪ young pregnant woman named Agnes Leeford enters a workhouse after a long walk and delivers a baby boy. This list of Shakespeare plays brings together all 38 plays in alphabetical order. Plays It is believed that Shakespeare wrote 38 plays in total between 15.

Oliver twist sparknotes