Dion Boucicault

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Dion Boucicault (1878)

Dion Boucicault , maiden name: Dionysius Lardner Boursiquot (born May 26, 1820 , according to other sources, 1822 , in Dublin , † September 18, 1890 in New York City ) was an Irish - American playwright , writer and actor .

biography

The son of the physicist and writer Dionysius Lardner and Mary Boursiquots made his debut as a playwright on March 4, 1841 with the world premiere of his play London Assurance in Covent Garden , with the roles of well-known theater actors Charles Matthews, William Farren, Mrs. Nesbitt and Madame Vestris . In quick succession he wrote a number of other successful pieces such as Old Heads and Young Hearts (1844), Louis XVI. and The Corsican Brothers (1852). In June 1852 he made his stage actor debut in the melodrama he wrote, The Vampire , which was performed at the Princess Theater in London .

Between 1853 and 1859 he lived in the United States , where he wrote popular plays such as The Poor of New York (1857). On his return to England he wrote The Colleen Bawn (1860), a dramatic adaptation of the novel The Collegians of Gerald Griffin , and also produced the premiere of the play in the Adelphi Theater London . This play, one of the most successful dramas of the time, was staged in almost every city in the United Kingdom and the United States. However, Boucicault lost the fortune he acquired through his poor management of some London theaters.

Poster for the performance of The Contempt of Court (1879)

His next play, The Octoroon (1861), followed the success of The Colleen Bawn . In the play Arrah-na-Pogue , which premiered at the Princess Theater in 1865 , he took on the role of a coachman from County Wicklow . The play, which tried to include the politico-military conflict between England and Ireland, was so popular that Charles Henry Webb brought a parody to the theater stage in San Francisco in 1865 under the title Arrah-na-Poke . George Bernard Shaw copied an entire scene from Arrah-na-Pogue in The DeviL's Disciple in 1897 . In 1866 he made a notable adaptation of Washington Irving's story Rip Van Winkle . After the play The O'Dowd (1873) he wrote the drama The Saughraun in 1874 . When it premiered in 1875 at the Theater Royal Drury Lane , he took on the role of "Con" and gained the reputation of the best Irish stage actor of his time , as well as through his appearance in Arrah-na-Pogue . The protagonist in The Saughraun is a leader of the Fenian Brotherhood , a secret society who wanted to build an independence movement in Ireland after the Great Famine with the help of the Iro-Americans.

In 1875 he returned to New York City and eventually settled there, paying occasional visits to London and having his last stage appearance there in his play The Jilt in 1886 . His latest published dramas include The Streets of London and After Dark . In New York City he also ran an acting school , whose students included Maxine Elliott .

From his first marriage to the actress Agnes Robertson, an adopted daughter of Charles Kean , the actress Nina Boucicault , the actor, writer and poet Aubrey Boucicault and the director Dion G. Boucicault emerged.

His pieces are still performed today, such as London Assurance in 1998 in Paris with Marina Hands and The Corsican Brothers in Dublin in 2008 with Vincent Riotta .

literature

  • RG Hogan: Dion Boucicault , 1969

Web links

Commons : Dion Boucicault  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ entry on Lardner; Dionysius (1793-1859); Scientific Writer in the Archives of the Royal Society , London
  2. ^ Dionysius Lardner in the Electronic Irish Records Dataset. Retrieved December 27, 2010.
  3. ↑ The Octoroon (Google Books)
  4. ↑ Cf. Heinz Kosok: History of Anglo-Irish Literature . Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 190, ISBN 3-503-03004-2 , p. 138.
  5. ↑ Cf. Heinz Kosok: History of Anglo-Irish Literature . Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 190, ISBN 3-503-03004-2 , pp. 139f.
personal data
SURNAME Boucicault, Dion
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lardner Boursiquot, Dionysius (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Irish-American playwright and actor
DATE OF BIRTH May 26, 1820
PLACE OF BIRTH Dublin , Ireland
DATE OF DEATH September 18, 1890
Place of death New York City , United States