Brougham, John

Brougham, John (1810–80), actor, playwright, and manager. Educated at Trinity College in his native Dublin, he spent much of his college career participating in amateur theatricals. He made his professional debut in London in 1830, worked under the celebrated Madame Vestris, and became manager of the Lyceum before sailing to America. Brougham made his American debut at the Park Theatre in His Last Legs (1842), then joined William Burton and later James Wallack, acting with both men in important comic roles, such as Sir Lucius O'Trigger, Micawber, Captain Cuttle, and Dazzle. Between 1850 and 1857 he also managed Brougham's Broadway Lyceum and the Bowery Theatre, but the business side of theatre was not his forte. While acting and managing he nevertheless found time to write no fewer than 126 plays, including burlesques, such as Pocahontas (1855) and Much Ado About the Merchant of Venice (1869); adaptations, such as Dombey and Son (1848), a major hit; Jane Eyre (1849); and Vanity Fair (1849); Gothic melodramas, such as The Duke's Motto; or, I Am Here (1863); tear‐jerkers, such as The Dark Hour Before Dawn; Irish plays, such as Take Care of Little Charlie (1858); and social satire, such as The Game of Love (1856). After spending the Civil War years in England, he returned in 1865, acting at the Winter Garden and with Augustin Daly's troupe. When his vogue had faded, he then ventured another unsuccessful attempt at management. His last appearance was in Boucicault's Felix O'Reilly (1879). Brougham was one of the first to bring a bit of the action of his plays into the auditorium. In his popular Row at the Lyceum (1851), arriving playgoers found the cast still rehearsing. When the gaslights were lowered, a Quaker in the audience jumped up and began to yell, “My wife! Come off that stage, thou miserable woman!” A fireman wrestled with the upset man, who got away and ran down the aisle. The Quaker was, of course, Brougham. In his heyday he was one of the most popular of American performers, although his fellow actor Joseph Jefferson regretted that he always “acted a part as though it were a joke.” Other commentators, focusing more on his writings, were less critical. In 1890 Laurence Hutton concluded, “If America has ever had an Aristophanes, John Brougham was his name,” while a modern editor, Richard Moody, described him as “a mid‐nineteenth‐century combination of W. C. Fields and George S. Kaufman.”