Page:Representative American plays.pdf/448



The Octoroon is a play of singular interest. Dealing with the slavery question in 1859, it represented so truly the actual conditions in Louisiana that it won the sympathy of Northerners and Southerners alike. It represents also the genius of Boucicault in its maturity.

Dion Boucicault was born in Dublin, Ireland, upon either December 26, 1820, or December 20, 1822, though the evidence seems to point to the earlier date. He was educated at private school, at London University, and at a collegiate school at Brentford, and after having been apprenticed to a civil engineer, he broke away from that calling and devoted himself to the stage. His first appearance on the stage seems to have occurred in the spring of 1837, and in the same year he probably wrote his first play, A Lover by Proxy, which was not accepted by Charles Mathews, the manager of Covent Garden Theatre. Mathews did, however, accept his. next play, the comedy of London Assurance, played March 4, 1841, which proved to be a great success and which has been revived as late as 1913.

According to his latest biographer, Boucicault wrote or adapted one hundred and twenty-four plays. We are concerned most with those he wrote upon American soil. Having married Miss Agnes Robertson, to be so long associated with leading roles in his plays, he came to New York in 1853. He may be said to have soon dominated the American stage. His significant works during the periods of his American residence, 1853 to 1860, and again from 1872 to his death, fall into several groups. From the point of view of American drama, such plays as The Octoroon, and The Poor of New York (1857), an adaptation of Les Pauvres de Paris, of Brisebar and Nus, to conditions of the panic of 1857, are most interesting. Interesting also is his share of Rip Van Winkle, although this was not first produced in this country, but was first played in London on September 4, 1865.

The second group includes the Irish plays. The earliest of these, The Colleen Bawn, was performed first at Laura Keene's Theatre, New York, March 29, 1860. It was founded on Gerald Griffin's novel, The Collegians, which had first been dramatized by J. E. Wilks in London in 1831. Later in 1842 a version by Louisa Medina was played in New York. Boucicault painted the Irish character truly and sympathetically and followed his first success with many others, the best of which were Arrah Na Pogue (1864), The O'Dowd (1873) and The Shaughraun (1874).

Another group would include his dramatization of the greater English novels;