Led Astray

Led Astray (1873), a drama by Dion Boucicault. [Union Square Theatre, 161 perf.] Armande ( Rose Eytinge) marries widower Count Rudolphe Chandoce ( C. R. Thorne Jr.) but he proves an indifferent and faithless husband, soon enmeshed in an affair with the calculating Suzanne O'Hara ( Elizabeth Weathersby). Although Armande loves both the Count and his daughter, Mathilde ( Kate Claxton), she is eventually driven into an affair of her own with the poet George de Lesparre ( McKee Rankin). When the Count learns of their relationship, he challenges George to a duel, but he purposely shoots to miss and then promises Armande he will be faithful thereafter. Based loosely on Octave Feuillet's La Tentation, the play was described by the Times critic as “told with cleverness and a thorough knowledge of dramatic effect; its personages are not so conventional as to be absolutely commonplace; and the language assigned to them is generally appropriate and often impressive.” It soon became, as Odell noted, “one of the most famous dramas of its decade in America.” The French novelist and playwright Octave FEUILLET (1821–90), who wrote sentimental romances and highly charged melodramas, was frequently adapted to American tastes. Not only were his plays translated but his novels dramatized as well. In addition to Led Astray, three of his other works enjoyed relatively long careers on American stages: The Sphinx (1874), The Romance of a Poor Young Man (1874), and the play that gave Richard Mansfield his earliest fame, A Parisian Romance (1883).