Boucicault, Dion(ysius Lardner)

Boucicault, Dion[ysius Lardner] (1820?–90), playwright and actor. Named for his parents' friend, Dr. Dionysius Lardner, who may have been his natural father and who was known to have taken a paternal interest in the boy, he left his native Dublin to study in London. He started acting and writing in 1836, making his name in 1841 with his brilliant comedy London Assurance. Boucicault made his American acting debut in Boston in 1854 and two months afterward gave his first New York performance as Sir Charles Coldstream in his own play, Used Up. He is said to have written at least two hundred plays, many of them during his stays in America from 1853 to 1860 and from 1870 to 1890. Among these plays were The Poor of New York (1857), adapted from the French and frequently revived as The Streets of New York; Jessie Brown; or, The Relief of Lucknow (1858); The Octoroon (1859); two Charles Dickens adaptations: Dot (1859) and Smike (1859); Jeanie Deans (1860), taken from The Heart of Midlothian; The Colleen Bawn; or, The Brides of Garryowen (1860); Arrah Na Pogue (1865); Rip Van Winkle (1866); the Irish melodramas The O'Dowd (1873) and The Shaughraun (1874); the Civil War play Belle Lamar (1874); and his last play of any importance, The Jilt, which was mounted in San Francisco in 1885. After the opening of The Poor of New York Boucicault commented, “I can spin out these rough‐and‐tumble dramas as a hen lays eggs. It's a degrading occupation, but more money has been made out of guano than out of poetry.” He also observed, “Sensation is what the public wants and you cannot give them too much of it.” “Sensation scenes” were frequent in his works: the rescue from the burning building in The Poor of New York, the blazing ship in The Octoroon, and an underwater rescue in The Colleen Bawn are but three examples. In the long run, his successful struggle to secure passage of a copyright law may have been as important to the development of American drama as his writings. Recalling indignities an author such as Robert Montgomery Bird suffered at the hands of Edwin Forrest, he and George Henry Boker lobbied arduously until the Copyright Law of 1856 was passed. Not only was Boucicault the most successful and popular playwright of his era, he also remained widely admired as an actor, especially in his Irish plays. His personal reputation was seriously hurt late in life when he was involved in a messy divorce case and he spent most of his last years teaching at a drama school established by A. M. Palmer and serving as that producer's play doctor. William Winter wrote of his acting that it was “all intellect . . . but he knew the emotions by sight, and he mingled them as a chemist mingles chemicals; generally with success.” That his best plays still have theatrical validity was demonstrated when the Phoenix Theatre revived The Octoroon in 1961. Richard Watts Jr. wrote in the Post, “Some of its theatrics do seem excessive to us now . . . but, on the whole, it is still a play of sturdy dramatic values and it deserves to be seen far more for its intrinsic merits than for its occasional sins of innocence against modern sophistication.” Boucicault's London Assurance has remained stage worthy with New York revivals in 1937, 1974, and 1997. His son Aubrey Boucicault (1869–1913) was also a noted actor who made his American debut in 1887 and appeared in many roles associated with his father and also played in numerous musical comedies and in vaudeville. Biography: Dion Boucicault, Richard Fawkes, 1979.