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After a season of great success in this country Mr. Jefferson decided to visit England. He appeared at the Adelphi Theater, in London, and at once became as popular as he had been at home. His Asa Trenchard, in "Our American Cousin," was received by the English with delight; but his greatest triumphs were won in Boucicault's version of "Rip Van Winkle," which he has since immortalized.
Escaping from a Dublin jail in woman's clothes, he found his way to Wilmington after adventures like those of Boucicault's heroes; lived here several years in garrets and cottages, carrying fascination and laughter wherever he went among his staid neighbors; and after some years flew back to Ireland, glorious as a phoenix, resuming the habits proper to his income of thirty thousand pounds a year.
The exact reversal of the Lear suggestion in the last act was an inspiration, his own and not Boucicault's. The weird scene in the mountains fell in admirably with a certain weird note in the Jefferson genius, and supplied the needed element of variety. I always thought it a good acting play under any circumstances, but, in his hands, matchless.
A revolt against Boucicault's Irish boys, all fun and frolic, and charming colleens, who could do no wrong, has made our modern playwrights go to the other extreme; so that now we find our stage peopled with peasants, cruel, hard, and forbidding for the most part, and with colleens who are the reverse of lovable in thought or act. Neither picture is quite true of our people.
His earlier works, 'The Gipsy's Warning' and 'The Brides of Venice, are now forgotten, but 'The Lily of Killarney, which was produced in 1862, is still deservedly popular. It is founded upon Boucicault's famous drama, 'The Colleen Bawn. Hardress Cregan, a young Irish landowner, has married Eily O'Connor, a beautiful peasant girl of Killarney.
Two chairs no longer indicated that two persons were to be seated, the two chairs being removed indicating that the two persons were not to be seated." At the first performance of Boucicault's London Assurance, in 1841, a further innovation was marked by the introduction of the "box set," as it is called.
Dion Boucicault's How She Loves Him! were each withdrawn after a run of a very few nights, whereas School Play, an M.P. succeeded each other with undisputed success. At the Haymarket Theatre David Garrick was followed by Home and Birth. The day was won, and the successful author could afford to rest on his laurels. But he was ambitious and a hard worker; so he continued to write and adapt.
The exact reversal of the Lear suggestion in the last act was an inspiration, his own and not Boucicault's. The weird scene in the mountains fell in admirably with a certain weird note in the Jefferson genius, and supplied the needed element of variety. I always thought it a good acting play under any circumstances, but, in his hands, matchless.
It is stagey and melodramatic. But it is so expressed that it touches every heart a little. There is no real life in Smike. His misery, his idiotcy, his devotion for Nicholas, his love for Kate, are all overdone and incompatible with each other. But still the reader sheds a tear. Every reader can find a tear for Smike. Dickens's novels are like Boucicault's plays.
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