Representative American Plays/The Octoroon

by Dion Boucicault

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THE OCTOROON
OR
LIFE IN LOUISIANA
BY
Dion Boucicault

 

THE OCTOROON

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; among them, Dot, a version of The Cricket on the Hearth (1859), Smike, founded on Nicholas Nickleby (1859) and The Trial of Effie Deans (1860), based on The Heart of Midlothian. Other well-known plays which had distinct successes were Jessie Brown or the Relief of Lucknow, acted first at Wallack's Theatre, February 22, 1858, and Led Astray, an adaptation from Octave Feuillet's La Tentation, performed first at the Union Square Theatre, New York, December 8, 1873, which Boucicault wrote while in California.

The Octoroon was first performed at the Winter Garden, New York, December 5, 1859, Boucicault playing "Wahnotee," the Indian, and Mrs. Boucicault "Zoe," and after the play had run a week, Boucicault and his wife withdrew on account of a quarrel with the management and the play was continued without them until January 21, 1860. The Octoroon was advertised widely and it was a daring attempt to place upon the stage material of such an inflammable character. The skill with which Boucicault balanced the abstract belief in the wrong of slavery with the concrete sympathy for Southern characters, satisfied audiences everywhere.

The Octoroon was based on a novel by Mayne Reid, The Quadroon, which had been published in New York in 1856, dramatized in London and played at the City of London Theatre. Boucicault, however, borrowed only the outlines of the plot. In the novel an Englishman under the name of Edward Rutherford saves a beautiful Creole, Eugenie Besauçon, from drowning through the explosion of the river steamboat, and falls in love with her quadroon slave, Aurore. Through the dishonesty of her trustee, the Creole, Gayarre, Eugenie loses her estate which is to be sold. Eugenie loves Rutherford and, in male disguise, aids him in obtaining funds with which he trys to buy Aurore at the slave auction but fails. After kidnapping Aurore he is about to be lynched when he is saved by the sheriff, and at the ensuing trial it turns out that Gayarre has embezzled funds belonging to Eugenie and that Aurore has been freed by her former master. Rutherford and Aurore marry.

It will be seen that the theme of the contrast between North and South is lacking in the novel, that the only characters that have any prototypes, such as "George Peyton," "Dora Sunnyside," "Zoe," and "McClosky," are entirely different in the play, and that characters like "Salem Scudder," "Wahnotee," and "Old Pete" are creations of Boucicault. The very change of title shows Boucicault's sense of the picturesque. It is interesting to note that when The Octoroon was played in London, "Zoe" married "George Peyton," as "Aurore" had married "Rutherford" in The Quadroon. The device of the accidental photographing of the murder of "Paul" is found in The Filibuster, an English novel by Albany Fonblanque (1859).

The following plays produced in America may be obtained in the reprints of Samuel French or of the Dramatic Publishing Company of Chicago:

To Parents and Guardians, Andy Blake, Jessie Brown, Grimaldi or the Life of an Actress, The Queen of Spades, The Phantom, The Poor of New York, The Pope of Rome, Pauvrette, The Octoroon, The Colleen Bawn, The O'Dowd, Led Astray, The Shaughraun.

Among the plays written in England, London Assurance (1841), Old Heads and Young Hearts (1844), Arrah na Pogue (1865), may be read as illustrating his earlier and later period.

For biography see The Career of Dion Boucicault by Townsend Walsh, Series 3, Vol. I, of the Dunlap Society Publications, New York, 1915, to which the present editor acknowledges his indebtedness. Interesting accounts of individual plays are to be found in Plays of the Present, by Clapp and Edgett, Series 2, Extra Vol. of the Dunlap Society Publications, New York, 1902. For the relation of The Quadroon with the play, see the novel itself. The Quadroon, or a Lover's Adventures in Louisiana, New York, 1856, and Mayne Reid, a Memoir of His Life, by Elizabeth Reid, London, 1887, pp. 215-217.

The present text is a reprint of the privately printed edition.