The Story: Act Two, 1891 to 1901
Act Two of The Empress runs from 1891 to Queen Victoria’s death in 1901, tracking two lives moving in opposite directions: Rani rising from abandoned mother to teacher, and Abdul Karim falling from trusted teacher to exile. A stage direction placed before Scene One tells the company that, across the second half of the play, the audience sees Hari travelling the Empire — visual glimpses of his work as a sailor, not full scenes with dialogue.
Rani and Queen Victoria never share a scene in The Empress. The closest the play comes is Act Two Scene Ten, where Rani sees Victoria pass in the Diamond Jubilee procession — a glimpse across a crowd, not a meeting.
Docks, Diamonds and a Name Called Hope (1891–1892)
Scene One returns to Tilbury docks in 1891. Lascar Sally waves off her latest lascar lover while Firoza, now walking with a stick after being struck by falling ship’s masonry, teases her gently. The two women find Rani frozen beside the baby she has left on the ground. Firoza scoops the child up and, when Rani says she does not want her, names her Asha — meaning hope. Sally reports that Hari, heading for Africa a year earlier, was still asking after Rani and left a letter behind. Scene Two shows Hari nailing up a handwritten notice for lascar crewmates who cannot read it themselves, demanding equal pay with white sailors, equal food and water rations, no more beatings, rest periods between heavy labour, and, placed last and given the most weight, recognition as members of the human race.
Hari’s notice in Scene Two turns personal grievance into collective demand: equal pay, equal rations, no more beatings, rest periods, and recognition as members of the human race.
The Ayahs’ Home and a Voice in Parliament (1891–1892)
Scene Three opens the Ayahs’ Home in Aldgate. English missionaries Mary and Charlotte host the opening before Victorian visitors, with Dadabhai making a speech and Firoza telling her own story of early marriage, a lost child and years of unpaid crossings — to applause.
Once the visitors leave, the ayahs drop their composed, grateful performance at once — laughing, singing and dancing together — before snapping back to demure silence the instant visitors return, staging two audiences for the same women. A lighting operator might hold an even wash for the “performance” moments and shift to a warmer, informal state the moment visitors exit, while sound swaps a restrained underscore for a livelier soundscape. Dadabhai recognises Rani from the ship, and she asks to work for him, taking notes and making appointments, because the ayahs need a voice in the political conversations being had about them.
Scene Four returns to Osborne House. Abdul poses for his portrait and asks for a book, then a quill, so the finished image suggests a man of learning rather than a servant. Lady Sarah reads aloud a letter from Cecil Rhodes claiming racial superiority for the English, and reports the fighting in Uganda and Lugard holding firm; it is Abdul who points out that this was down to his possession of a Maxim machine gun and that many innocent lives must have been lost in hours. Abdul presses Victoria on how a monarch can remain untouched while her subjects suffer such hardship, unsettling her without providing an answer.
Scene Five is brutal for Hari: the Serang throws him off the ship at the Cape, calling him a troublemaker, though he still wishes him luck as he goes. Rani, meanwhile, reads Dadabhai a pamphlet attacking Indian law students in London, which he mocks as an overreaction to a mere handful of young men. Testing her reading, writing and dictation, he offers Rani and baby Asha a trial month in his household, listing her in his notes as a widow. Scene Six then delivers a parcel of Hari’s letters to Sally’s yard, passed hand to hand until they finally reach Rani, who sits down to read.
Scene Seven celebrates Dadabhai’s election as Member of Parliament for Finsbury in 1892. Telegrams of congratulation arrive from well-known reforming figures, while an opponent’s newspaper attack dismissing Dadabhai as fundamentally foreign is read aloud alongside a more sympathetic piece that Rani reads out in his defence.
Dadabhai Naoroji is elected MP for Finsbury in 1892 by a majority of only five votes — one of the play’s clearest examples of political change arriving by the narrowest possible margin.
Jubilee, Betrayal and Reunion (1897–1901)
By Scene Eight, in 1897, the royal household refuses to travel to Nice if Abdul comes too, and the Prince of Wales insists the Munshi is not their equal. Victoria is furious and insists character matters more than social position, but the household threatens to have her declared unfit for office unless she backs down. She keeps Abdul as her Munshi but retracts his higher honour, so he must now travel only as a royal servant.
Scene Nine sits Rani and Firoza on a park bench as Rani reads aloud from Hari’s letters — a fever at sea, a friend who died from wounds caused by iron manacles, years spent digging in African diamond mines, then silence. Firoza asks pointedly why Rani ever wanted to meet a queen who is doing nothing to stop the famine spreading through India, while in a separate space Victoria quietly apologises to Abdul for what her household has done to him.
The 1897 Diamond Jubilee fills Scene Ten with Kipling’s verse set to music and archive projection of the royal procession. Hari steps off a returning boat in ordinary dress rather than sailor’s clothes, and a stage direction notes that Rani sees Victoria pass in the procession — the single moment the two women’s lives visibly cross.
Scene Eleven uses a split scene to devastating effect: Victoria is dressed in diamonds for her Jubilee dinner while Dadabhai, in Parliament, describes famine and plague sweeping India and condemns the Raj’s inadequate response, branding the celebrations a tribute to an empire built on hunger and disease.
By 1900, Scene Twelve finds Dadabhai packing to return to India, disillusioned after years believing in British fairness and horrified by the Boer War’s concentration camps. He arranges a teaching post for Rani through his ally William rather than taking her with him. Hari then appears, well dressed and now running a furniture business in Whitechapel. Their reunion is awkward at first — thirteen years have passed, and Rani challenges him over abandoning her — but the two reconcile and embrace.
This reunion rewards performers who work in contrast. Rani’s delivery might move from clipped, guarded lines to softer, slower phrasing once she calls Hari back; physically, holding him at arm’s length before the embrace lets the audience feel the thirteen years close in real time. Designers can support the same shift: Hari now wears a brown suit rather than sailor’s rags, a costume choice signalling his new independence, while a lighting operator might lift a cold, functional general wash into a single warmer special the moment the couple embrace.
Scene Thirteen, also set in 1900, shows a frail Victoria recalling the conquest of Benin and refusing to accept she is dying. Abdul tells her a story about a rich man warned of his death by the Angel of Death, then produces his real comfort: because the Queen can no longer travel to India, he brings a troupe of costumed Indian musicians and dancers to perform for her at Osborne House.
Victoria dies on 22 January 1901 in Scene Fourteen, lying in an open white coffin as the household files past. Abdul is allowed to lay a single white rose on her and weep before the coffin is nailed shut. Lady Sarah then delivers the new King’s instructions: Abdul’s letters from the Queen are to be gathered and burned under supervision, his royal livery stripped from him, and he is to be returned to India with his family.
After Victoria’s death, Abdul is stripped of his royal livery and his letters from the Queen are burned under official supervision before he is sent back to India — a clear sign his status depended entirely on her personal protection.
The play’s final scene returns to Tilbury docks in 1901. Rani, wearing a red bridal sari, and Hari come to see Dadabhai off as he sails home to India. Abdul passes under official escort and briefly reunites with Rani and Hari, who greet him with namaste. Rani presses his father’s silver compass — the very object he gave her as a good-luck charm in Act One — back into his hand before the guards lead him away.
The final stage direction is simple and quiet: lights fade as Rani and Hari laugh together. After fourteen years of separate, unequal struggles, the play chooses to end not on the Empire’s grand ceremonies but on two ordinary people who have found each other again.