Colleen Bawn, The; or, The Brides of Garryowen

Colleen Bawn, The; or, The Brides of Garryowen (1860), a play by Dion Boucicault. [Laura Keene's Theatre, 38 perf.] Mrs. Cregan ( Mme. Ponisi) and her son Hardress ( H. F. Daly) are impoverished aristocrats who will lose their lands unless Mrs. Cregan marries the corrupt attorney, Corrigan ( J. G. Burnett), who holds the mortgage, or Hardress weds rich Anne Chute ( Miss Keene). But Anne really loves Kyrle Daly ( Charles Fisher), Hardress's classmate, and Hardress cannot marry anyone since he is secretly wed to Eily O'Connor ( Agnes Robertson), a poor maiden known as the Colleen Bawn. Anne discovers a letter from Eily to Hardress, which she mistakenly believes was meant for Kyrle, and disclaims any further affection. At the same time Danny Mann ( Charles Wheatleigh), Hardress's hunchback servant, is prepared to kill Eily if Hardress will give him a glove as a signal. When Mrs. Cregan innocently gives Danny the glove, he takes Eily to a grotto, where he throws her off a rock. A shot rings out, and Danny falls mortally wounded. The shot was fired by Myles na Coppaleen (Boucicault), a roguish bootlegger who has long loved Eily. Danny's dying words implicate Hardress, and Corrigan comes to arrest him; but Myles appears with Eily, whom he has rescued. Matters are then straightened out, with Anne agreeing to wed Kyrle. “It's a shamrock itself ye have got, sir,” Myles tells Hardress, “and like that flower she'll come up every year fresh and green forenent ye.” Adapted from Gerald Griffin's novel, The Collegians, the play was the first of many by Boucicault on Irish themes to win universal acclaim. When Boucicault took it to London six months after its Laura Keene production in New York, it ran 278 consecutive nights. Colleen Bawn (its title means “the fair‐haired girl”) remained one of the most popular of 19th‐century melodramas.