Hugh the Drover (or Love in the Stocks) is an opera in two acts by Ralph Vaughan Williams to an original English libretto by Harold Child.
[1] Contemporary comment noted the use of humour and the role of the chorus in the work, in the context of developing English opera.
A showman presents an effigy of Napoleon Bonaparte and rouses the crowd to a fever-pitch of patriotic zeal.
He threatens her in turn, but when a troop of morris men passes through, the crowd follows along and John is pulled along with them, leaving Mary alone with her aunt.
As Mary sings of her dreams of freedom, a young man appears and tells her of his life on the open road.
He is Hugh the Drover, a driver of animals, who makes his living by providing horses for the army.
The crowd returns and the showman organises a prizefight, inviting all the men to challenge John the butcher.
Each refuses to leave without the other, and they both get into the stocks (which are large enough to hold two), draping Hugh's cloak over their bodies.