What is your opinion of the scene in which Dr. Manette meets Lucie in the attic room in A Tale of Two Cities?

While Chapter 6 of Book the First, "The Shoemaker" seems
rather contrived and melodramatic.  For instance, when the demented Dr. Manette begins
to recognize the golden hair of Lucie as similar to that which he carries in a dingy
little packet, Lucie falls upon her knees as his tone of voice softens in remembrance of
his wife.  In a Victorian melodramatic line--one that Dickens's audiences would have
enjoyed--Lucie utters her maudlin plea, 

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"If you touch, in touching my hair,
anything that recalls a beloved head that lay in your breast when you were young and
free, weep for it, weep for it!...If I bring back the remembrance of a Home long
desolate, while your poor heart pined away, weep for it, weep for
it!"

This passage is one that
critics point to as how Dickens has a very stylized nature that demonstrates the
influence the Victorian stage.  As one writes,

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Throughout the novel we see Dickens managing his
characters like a theater director, emphasizing the dramatic gesture, the physical
trait, the coincidence, as though his tremendous energy must inevitably explode into
action, whether comic or melodramatic.  Even in his grotesque moments such as Mr.
Lorry's questioning of the dead man in his dreams, Dickens converts the morbid into
somehting spirited and
purposeful.

This melodrama
does, however, afford Dickens a scene in which he can depict the horrors of Doctor
Mannette's imprisonment, the inner strength of Lucie Mannette as the Victorian heroine,
as well as introduction of the motif of "the golden thread."  As such, this chapter is
rhetorical in its use of metaphoric language with Lucie's hair as "the golden thread,"
returning Dr. Manette's memory to him; and with the metaphor of the shoemaker indicating
the destruction to the pride and person of the
physician. 

Of course, this chapter is pivotal as it
initiates the development of the theme of Resurrection.  In addition, it is the catalyst
for the action between London and Paris.  Certainly, there is much foreshadowing in this
dramatic chapter.