Far from the Madding Crowd thank him, he asks if she needs a shepherd. She uncovers her face and reveals herself to be none other than Bathsheba. She has recently inherited her uncle's estate and is now wealthy. Though somewhat uncomfortable, she employs him. Meanwhile, Bathsheba has a new admirer: the lonely and repressed William Boldwood. Boldwood is a prosperous farmer of about forty, whose ardour Bathsheba unwittingly awakens when – her curiosity piqued because he has never bestowed on her the customary admiring glance – she playfully sends him a valentine sealed with red wax on which she has embossed the words, "Marry me".
Far from the Madding Crowd (1998 film) Far from the Madding Crowd (1998 film) Far from the Madding Crowd is a 1998 drama television film adaptation of the Thomas Hardy novel of the same name. Will Joyner of "The New York Times" wrote a positive review of the adaptation: "Strangely, and to its great credit, this new "Far From the Madding Crowd," which was produced by Granada Television in Britain and WGBH-TV in Boston, does not simply survive the viewer's tendency to compare and second-guess; it thrives upon it. At almost every turn of the deliciously gradual tale of romantic chaos, the new version is just as