Richard Penn Smith

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Smith, Richard Penn (1799–1854),Philadelphia playwright, grandson of provost William Smith, was significant for introducing romantic tragedy in the U.S. and using foreign sources. Of his plays on American historical themes, William Penn; or, The Elm Tree (1829) and The Triumph at Plattsburg (1830) were original, while The Eighth of January (1829), although indebted to a French melodrama, dramatized political feeling at the time of Jackson's election as President by celebrating his victory at the Battle of New Orleans. Most of his other plays were adaptations of foreign works; among those suggested by French models are The Disowned (1829), a melodrama; The Sentinels; or, The Two Sergeants (1829); Is She a Brigand? (1833), a farce comedy of mistaken identities; The Daughter (1836); and The Actress of Padua (1836), based on a tragedy by Victor Hugo. The Deformed (1830), a verse drama, a revision of his own play The Divorce (1825), owes a debt to both Dekker's The Honest Whore and Dunlap's The Italian Father; while Caius Marius (staged 1831, published 1968) is an original blank‐verse romantic tragedy, produced by Forrest. He dramatized two novels by Cooper, The Water Witch (1830) and The Bravo (1837). His fiction includes The Forsaken (1831), a novel of the Revolution; The Actress of Padua and Other Tales (1836), containing a revision in narrative form of his play; and Col. Crockett's Exploits and Adventures in Texas (1836), which is generally considered to be Smith's work, although purporting to be by the frontiersman.

Smith, Richard Penn (1799–1854), playwright. The grandson of the provost of the University of Pennsylvania and the son of a noted minister, he was a distinguished Philadelphia lawyer and the most active of the gentlemen playwrights who comprised the Philadelphia School of Dramatists. His playwriting covered the period 1825–36, his first play to reach the boards being Quite Correct at the Chestnut Street Theatre in 1828, followed by The Eighth of January (1829); The Disowned; or, The Prodigals (1829); A Wife at a Venture (1929); The Sentinels; or, The Two Sergeants (1829); and William Penn (1829). Many students consider his The Triumph at Plattsburg (1830) the best play about the War of 1812, although it seems not to have been a success. Smith's other works included The Deformed; or, Woman's Trial (1830); The Water Witch (1830); Caius Marius (1831); Is She a Brigand? (1833); The Daughter (1836); and The Actress of Padua (1836). Although he was highly respected by contemporaries, even the discovery of the complete text of Caius Marius cannot change the judgment of his modern editors, Ralph H. Ware and H. W. Schoenberger, who concluded, “Smith was a practical playwright who always wrote with a view to stage presentation. A fairly competent craftsman, he had little originality, for thirteen of his plays are based upon either native or foreign inspiration.” Biography: The Life and Writings of Richard Penn Smith, Bruce W. McCullough, 1917.

Smith, Richard Penn (1799–1854), American dramatist, born in Philadelphia, a lawyer by profession, and the author of some 20 plays, of which 15 were acted. They are of all types, ranging from farce to romantic tragedy, and represent the transition in the American theatre from the play imported or inspired by Europe to the true native production of later years. Most of Smith's comedies were adaptations from the French, while his romantic plays were based mainly on incidents from American history. What is believed to have been his best work, a tragedy entitled Caius Marius, has not survived. It was produced in 1831 by Edwin Forrest with himself in the title-role, and proved extremely successful. It was possibly Forrest's aversion to the printing of plays in which he appeared that caused it to be lost. Another interesting play, also lost, was The Actress of Padua (1836), based on Victor Hugo's Angelo, which marks the first appearance in American theatrical history of French Romanticism. It was revived by Charlotte Cushman in the early 1850s, and was seen in New York as late as 1873, probably with some alterations by John Brougham, to whom it has been attributed.