History Headscratchers / SweeneyToddtheDemonBarberofFleetStreet

** Todd basically makes sure to kill foreigners and other folks who weren't well known around London, and those who didn't have families. His first few victims are a traveling salesman and then several men that we can assume fit the descriptions above. It's only on the last day of his life he kills anyone well known in the city: the Beadle and Turpin]]

* Why is the Beggar Woman looking for the Beadle? Given that the Beadle betrayed Lucy and in the stage show held her down so the Judge could rape her why does she trust him to believe her? Does she not remember the rape? Furthermore, why does Toby want to report to the Beadle? Is there nobody in law enforcement more trustworthy than the Beadle and Judge Turpin, or is the Beadle just really good at being a VillainWithGoodPublicity ?

** No, no you aren't. Antony may naively believe that they will have anything but a happy ending or that Johanna's clearly crazy out-of-her-mind (and even she expressed concern over their plan). So no, you aren't suppose to believe that they'll be completely happy.

** Even if you don't forsee a happy ending, Johanna would be grateful for Antony saving her and this would at least give them a small window of time to be happy together (even if it doesn't last).

*** I agree with this. I think Antony and Johanna are meant to seem like characters who've wandered onto the stage from a completely different musical -- they're naive enough to think that they can have a happy ending because they're WrongGenreSavvy. They don't realise how screwed up the world they actually live in is.
** They had to leave a ray of hope... and besides, with Judge Turpin dead and the whole pie shop deal blown right open, they might escape in the confusion. Antony probably has enough brains to get the hell out of London and start somewhere else with a clean slate.

*** They portray Johanna like this in the Hearn/Angela version too. Antony may just be hopelessly naive, but Johanna is clearly crazy (beautiful and pure, but crazy). As someone above said, they make for a nice parallel to Todd and Lucy.

*** They're probably alking about, why didn't the Judge talk to the Beadle in the months between the first Antony incident and Sweeney's note? Beadle came to the shop before the Judge even got the note, so he couldn't have known that Sweeney was going to rat Antony out.

** It’s also possible that the Judge really did mean the sense of “before Monday morning”, but something came up. Mrs. Lovett could then be pointing out that someone having to delay a relatively non-urgent errand a day or two is not an indication they won’t complete it at all.

* Why is the Beggar Woman looking for the Beadle? Given that [[spoiler: the Beadle betrayed Lucy and in the stage show held her down so the Judge could rape her]] why does she trust him to believe her? Does she not remember [[spoiler: the rape]] ? Furthermore, why does Toby want to report to the Beadle? Is there nobody in law enforcement more trustworthy than the Beadle and Judge Turpin, or is the Beadle just really good at being a VillainWithGoodPublicity ?
** To put it simply, the beadle was one of the highest forms of office in any given parish; one of the very few offices that was more important in terms of law enforcement was, you guessed it, the local magistrates and judges. A beadle was basically part town crier, part police officer, part church warden, part schoolteacher, and part head of the 19th century Neighbourhood Watch. It was essentially a beadle's job to oversee pretty much ''everything'' that went on within that parish - from organising a church's charitable events to overseeing workhouses to dispersing troublesome street urchins to investigating complaints brought against members of the parish to [[MurderArsonAndJaywalking making sure everyone was properly observing the Sabbath]] - and, where they could, they tended to deal with matters entirely personally and maybe bring along a couple of constables for backup if they felt they really needed to. Even if you initially only went and got a constable to help, if the issue was substantial enough (as smell complaints and missing persons reports would be), it would inevitably end up being the beadle's responsibility anyway and you'd save a lot of time and effort by cutting out the middle man and going straight to him. It's not that there's no one more trustworthy than either Turpin or Bamford, it's that they're the ones with the specific jobs to deal with these things. Toby has no reason to ''not'' trust the beadle - again, it would be known to be a part of the beadle's job to look into the sudden disappearance of Pirelli if it were brought to his attention; and the Beggar Woman...[[spoiler:well, she's calling for ''someone else'' to tell the beadle about Mrs Lovett's bad kitchen smells, not running off to find him herself despite her concerns about Mrs Lovett...]].

** Todd basically makes sure to kill foreigners and other folks who weren't well known around London, and those who didn't have families. His first few victims are a traveling salesman and then several men that we can assume fit the descriptions above. It's only on the [[spoiler: last day of his life]] he kills anyone well known in the city: [[spoiler: the Beadle and Turpin]]

* Does anyone actually, truly believe that Todd would have been ''happy'' knowing [[spoiler: Lucy was still alive, given her present condition? I mean, she was 1) crazy, 2 ) having sex with anybody who'd give her money (and you can't possibly believe that every single donor was self-respecting enough to turn her advances down like Todd and Anthony did), and 3) not the gorgeous young trophy wife he married. I think Mrs. Lovett really did do him a favor, it just got revealed at the worst possible time.]]
** Doubt it. Todd might have believed it, but I don't think the audience is supposed to. [[spoiler: Really, by the time the story starts he's already a soulless, bloodthirsty nutcase obsessed with revenge, and he just gets worse as it continues. It didn't matter to him what Lucy was (which he didn't realise anyway); Mrs. Lovett lied, her lies led to Lucy's death, and thus Todd kills Lovett like he killed everyone else he held responsible. She may have done him a favor, but there is no way in hell you'd get him to realize that given, as you said, the circumstances.]]
** He wasn't exactly happy thinking [[spoiler: she died, either.]] The man was going to be miserable either way.
** Todd probably figured either [[spoiler: his love and caring could have helped to restore her sanity (even when insane she was the first person to recognize him, whereas Judge Turpin had to be prompted) or in a worse case scenario he could have put her out of her misery. By not being told, Todd never had an opportunity to help her get better while she spent the rest of the play being left to the mercies of those self-respecting donors.]]
** Actually, and this may be a bit much character-empathy on my part, ''I'' believe that. [[spoiler: They had both been shattered by their fifteen years apart and suffering, but we've seen how ''driven'' Todd was, and I've always found that when one ''can'' be with the one one loves everything tends to turn out for the best very quickly. It's when people remain forcibly separated that things keep going to hell. Of course, they'd still have the problem of how to get Johanna back, but Anthony would surely have helped with that.... It ''could'' have been beautiful, even ''after'' Turpin's initial litany of horrors.]]

** Pretty much the very first thing Todd wants to know when he returns to London is what's happened to his wife and daughter - and while he's misanthropic at that point, he doesn't become ''bloodthirsty'' until Mrs Lovett tells him what happened to Lucy. I can't remember whether the line is in the film, but in the play after Mrs Lovett tells him about Lucy and Johanna, he says "fifteen years of dreaming that I might come home to a loving wife and child" and then ''immediately'' swears his vengeance. It's all but outright stated that his love of Lucy and Johanna is what kept him alive and brought him back to London in the first place, and everything about his rampage is explicitly driven by the belief that his entire family is permanently lost to him and that those responsible for that loss deserve to die for it [[spoiler: eventually including Mrs Lovett and himself]]. No, he may not have been happy [[spoiler: to find out what Lucy had become, but he'd have at least known she was alive and might have potentially either helped her or else put an end to her suffering on their own terms, either of which might have led to a lot less innocent blood being spilt. As others have said, it simply wasn't ever Mrs Lovett's choice to make. And sure, she frames it that she's done him a favour but make no mistake: she didn't care one single jot about "sparing him the pain" or whatever; the ''only'' reason she didn't tell him the truth from the beginning is because she saw an opportunity to get him for herself and decided to take it. It was pure selfishness on her part. And for a healthy dose of FridgeHorror: she's not exactly a reliable narrator and we only have her word for it that she even tried to stop Lucy from taking the arsenic. For all we know, she may have nudged Lucy in that direction to begin with...]]

** I believe it. No doubt they're going to have a hard time. As you said, they don't really know anything about each other. He fell in love with an ideal; she saw a way out of a horrible situation and took it. Still, in the stage musical, it's clear that they like and care about each other. Maybe they won't live happily ever after, but they might be able to get by. That is, if you don't believe they [[spoiler: get arrested]] at the end.

* What was up with Johanna's speech at the end of the movie? All that "I've never had dreams, only nightmares" thing. I don't recall that being in the play, and until she was institutionalized she would have had no reason for it. She couldn't possibly remember either of her parents (we find out for sure she doesn't recognize her father) so the fact that her dad was sent away and her mom [[spoiler: went nuts]] couldn't have caused her supposed nightmares. The man who raised her only ''recently'' became creepy and leering and trying to get with her, so that couldn't be it. She wasn't allowed to leave the house, so that sucks, but she lived in opulence and was given all the material goods she could want. I can understand that leading to her depression (which she expresses in Green Finch And Linnet Bird) but none of this nonsense about nightmares and ghosts that never go away. It rings false, sounds forced and gave me the impression that she was being a drama queen for Anthony's sake. Yeah, maybe you're having nightmares now that you've been through a terrible ordeal, but you've ''only'' ever had nightmares? I'm not buying it.

* Mrs. Lovett seems REALLY distraught at the sight of [[spoiler: Lucy's corpse]]. Exactly how much did she have to do with the poor woman's fate? She has an excuse for her use of ExactWords about Lucy ("Would Sweeney ''really'' want to know that's how she ended up?"). Did she somehow have a hand in Lucy being sent to Bedlam instead of a hospital to [[spoiler: MurderTheHypotenuse?]]
** Her reaction when she sees [[spoiler:Lucy's corpse]] is probably just due to panicking that Todd will recognise it. Still, I don't think it would surprise anyone if she ''did'' have a hand in Lucy being sent to Bedlam (but it's worth bearing in mind that Todd had been transported by that time and no one had any way of knowing that he'd come back).

* Why was Sweeney so freaked out about Pirelli threatening to report him to Beadle Bamford? He had already served his sentence and it's not like using a pseudonym is terribly illegal. Did he think that the Beadle would have him jailed again or killed?
** The Beadle might tell the Judge, the Judge might rightly fear that Barker is back and out for his blood, bye bye revenge plot, hello execution or another sentence on a trumped-up charge.

* Why was Sweeney so freaked out about Perrelli threatening to report him to Beadle Bamford? He had already served his sentence and it's not like using a pseudonym is terribly illegal. Did he think that the Beadle would have him jailed again or killed?