Page:Representative American plays.pdf/184



The Triumph at Plattsburg represents the historical play dealing with the war of 1812. Richard Penn Smith, its author, was born in Philadelphia, March 13, 1799, the grandson of Provost William Smith, the patron of Thomas Godfrey. He was educated at Mount Airy, and was admitted to the Bar. He succeeded Duane as Editor of The Aurora, in 1822, but after five years spent in journalism, he returned to the practice of law. According to his biographers he had a wide knowledge of French and English drama which indeed is shown directly in several of the plays. He died August 12, 1854, at the family seat at the Falls of Schuylkill, near Philadelphia.

He wrote twenty plays, fifteen of which were performed. His first play to be acted, Quite Correct, was produced at the Chestnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia, May 27, 1828. It is a farce altered from the French, as was also Is She a Brigand, played at the Arch Street Theatre, in 1833. The largest group of Smith's plays may be called romantic comedy or melodrama. The most important plays in this group are The Disowned, a melodrama, played first at the Baltimore Theatre, March 26, 1829, and printed in Philadelphia in 1830, A Wife at a Venture, an oriental comedy, played first at the Walnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia, July 25, 1829, The Sentinels, or the Two Sergeants, a clever play on the theme of fidelity, adapted from the French, performed at the Chestnut Street Theatre, December, 1829, and The Deformed, a verse play, based on Dekker's Honest Whore, played first at the Chestnut Street Theatre, February 4, 1830, and printed the same year. According to Durang and Rees, The Disowned and The Deformed were afterwards acted in London.

Smith also wrote a blank verse tragedy, Caius Marius, for Edwin Forrest, which the latter produced at the Arch Street Theatre, on January 12, 1831, and later in other places. It has not survived, except in fragments.

Smith did his most significant work, however, in the field of historical drama. The Eighth of January, in which General Jackson is the central figure, was played at the Chestnut Street Theatre, January 8, 1829, and was very popular, being repeated in New York, Baltimore and Washington, and, as late as 1848, being put on at the Broadway Theatre, New York. It was printed in Philadelphia in 1829. William Penn, a play in three acts, has as central theme the intervention of Penn to save the life of an Indian chief, Tammany, by name. It was first played at the Walnut Street Theatre, Dec. 25, 1829, and seems to have been revived as late as 1842.