Page:Representative American plays.pdf/160



Charles the Second illustrates the Comedy of Manners and represents the influence of the French stage upon ours. It is the brightest and the most finished of Payne's comedies.

John Howard Payne was born in New York City, June 9, 1791. He was brought up in Boston, and was carefully educated under the direction of his father, the head of a school. By the age of thirteen he had decided to go upon the stage and was sent into a mercantile house in New York City by his parents to cure him of the desire. He found time, however, to publish the Thespian Mirror, from December 28, 1805, to May 31, 1806, which contained dramatic criticism of a fair character. He also wrote his first play, Julia or The Wanderer, performed at the Park Theatre on February 7, 1806, and printed in the same year. He seems to have been a charming as well as a precocious youth, and through the interest of friends, especially John E. Seaman, he was sent to Union College, where he remained from July, 1806, to November, 1808, as a private pupil preparing to enter the Sophomore Class, under President Nott's instruction. Owing to a misunderstanding with his patron but also prompted by his continued desire to act, Payne made his debut on February 24, 1809, as "Young Norval" in Home's play of Douglas, at the old Park Theatre in New York. He acted also in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Washington and other cities in 1809 and in 1811 and 1812. He had not been, however, as successful as he desired and in 1813 he welcomed an opportunity to go abroad for a year's study and travel. He did not return to this country till 1832, when his activities among the Indians and later his consulship at Tunis from 1842 to 1845 lie outside of our special interest. He died April 9, 1852, at Tunis.

Payne wrote or adapted over sixty plays. Much of his work consisted in translation from the French drama of his own time, or in the adaptation of English plays. His historical tragedy of Brutus, for example, played first at Drury Lane, London, December 3, 1818, is, according to his own statement, a compound of seven earlier plays on the same theme.

In domestic tragedy, his play of Richelieu or the Broken Heart is of considerable merit, although it is not original, being based on La Jeunesse de Richelieu, of Alexandre Duval. It was played first at Drury Lane, February, 1826, and was performed frequently in this country as The Bankrupt's Wife. In comedy, Charles II is representative. Payne wrote most frequently, however, a form of melodrama, such as Thérèse, or the Orphan of Geneva, produced first