The herald and mail. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1873-188?, 1874-12-11
Boucicault's New Irish Drama.

| Inc action OF BOuc1cauIE'6 new drama,
"The St1aughrun, passes in ireland,
in the County Sligo, at the present
day. The persons represented are
mostly Irish. It has much that is COM
mon, and much that is not common,
with the Irish plays familiar to people
who frequnnt theaters. What is has in
common with these plays is it's skele-
ton. Instead of the "troubles of '98,"
the Fenian troubles are the source of
the leading incidents. The principal
personages are an English officer whose
duty it is to discover and arrest young
Irish gentlemen under sentence as
Fenian, but who has escaped from the
penal colony; this young Irish gentle
man, who, of course, has an Irish sweet
heat; parish priest, kindhearted and
faithful !; rascally squirreen, who op-
presses the young Irish gentlemen, his
sister and his sweetheart a police
agent, who is the squirreen's agent also,
and does the dirty work of the agent in
older Irish dramas the Irish peasant,
who is "the soul of every fair, the life
of every funeral - this Irish peasants
sweetheart; other peasants, some SOL
diers. OF course the English officer falls
in love with the sister of the convicted
/ Fenian, and of course also the go d
are made happy and the wicked pun
| ished. But this familiar skeleton has
been SO cleverly incarnated by the
| author that the whole body seems to be
new and fresh. The incidents are very
ingeniously conceived and skillfulIy
Wrought together, following each other
in quick logical succession, SO that the
auditors interest is never allowed to
TIa 1o1O al b.
and sparkles with wit and humor. In
the character of the Irish peasant,
the widest departure is made
from the familiar standard. He is the
"The Shaughraun," has no shillilla,
dance, is supposed to fiddle but for all
that, is just as faithful and devoted to
"the young MASTER" and just as useful
in bringing to naught the wiles and de-
vices of the adversary as was his prede-
cessor of the club, the dance, and the
howl.
Death of Dickens Lascar Sal"
There have been many women for
whom a stanZa of poet has been a
brevet of perpetual fame, and some |
times, as in the case of Mrs. Black, of
Athens, provision of more substan-
tial kind from the pockets of the poets
admirers. The same can hardly be said
of the personages who sat for their pic
lures to our great novelist Dickens, who |
often thought fit to reverse the princi- !
pie of "aaihil tetigit qxod non Or'aav1,
and "touched nothing" without making |
it more grotesque. Among the charac-
ters whom he appears to have drawn |
&--1 oIL IoTx
cOlors, was the wretched creature called |
"Lascar Sal," described in edwin
brood" as the female purveyor of !
opium, and herself a smoker of the
drug, This miserable woman, it ap-
pears, died recently of scarlet fever, in
a fFightful condition of neglect aud des-
titution in a court in Bluegate Fields,
in st. Georges. in the East. Naturally
the vice to which she had addicted her
self, and the effects of which, the Lancet
remarks, are frequently seen in all their
hideousness by medical practitioners in
the east end, left her in a state of low
vitality unfit to contend with the dis
ease to which she Immediately sue
cumbed. In her filthy and miserable
room we are informed that white mice
were found running about to the num-
Der of d" several hundred" Making al
lowance for exaggeration, and suppos-
ing the poor woman to have fed some
dozens of the little animals in her ex-
treme poverty, we have a curious and
not unaffecting picture of human be-
ing ruined by soul-and- -bodydestroy-
yet retaining so much of
gentleness in her isolation and degrada-
ton as to care for these minute friends
the only creatures in the
world who did not shrink from Las
car Sal. ."-LOndO71 Echo.