Chapter Summary.

Weeks pass by as Pip anxiously waits for Wemmick to signal when he can take Magwitch down the river to escape abroad. Having stopped spending Magwitch’s money, Pip’s debts mount and he is chased by creditors. One cold evening, with foggy weather hampering Pip’s return to the Temple, he decides to stop off and visit a local theatre and watch a play in which Mr. Wopsle is performing. Pip takes dinner in a local chop-house, before heading to the theatre where he sees two shows, a nautical melodrama followed by a pantomime. After the shows, Wopsle is waiting for Pip as he comes out and tells him that one of the convicts they had seen in the marshes many years ago was sitting behind him during the play. Asking which of the convicts he recognised, Mr. Woplse confirms Pip’s fears that he is being followed, and that the person is Compeyson.

Quotations.

Condemned to inaction and a state of constant restlessness and suspense.

Great Expectations (Chapter 47).

I could have wished his trousers not quite so tight in some places, and not quite so loose in others.

Great Expectations (Chapter 47). Pip is alarmed by the costume of a theatrical boatswain.

It was an unhappy life that I lived; and its one dominant anxiety, towering over all its other anxieties, like a high mountain above a range of mountains, never disappeared from my view.

Great Expectations (Chapter 47).