Lyon County times. [volume] (Silver City, Nev.) 1874-1907, 1875-08-19
Dion Boucicault.


At the close of a recently published
article on plays, the writer says:
Wa have now reached the man of
men. the ablest, theatrically, that
our language has produced since
shakespeare. The best hated man,
the best literary thief, the most or
iginal plagiarist, the least original
ofall men who ever wrote for the
stage, and the man who has done
the most for it-Dion Boucicault,
the son of the astronomer Lardner,
and of a French miller in Dublin.
IF the stage had not existed before
Boucicault was born, it would have
to be created for him, if he had not
created it for himself. Except Lope
de Vaga, no man has ever furnished
the stage with so much material
worth putting on it. From 'London
Assurance" 1881, to "The Shau-
graun," 1874, wherever the English
tongue is spoken, no theatrical sea-
son ever commenced or ended with
out using some of his work; and, on
one particular date that has escaped
us, plays by Boucicault we're being
played simultaneously in every city
of the United States, OF Australia, of
England, of Ireland and of Scotland.
Actor, author, poet, novelist, painter,
he unites in himself all the various
abilities that combine to make the
dramatist. Yet, in the sense of
Shakespeare, of Knowles, of Dumas.
of De Vega, he is not dramatist at
all, for he is wholly unable to origi-
nate either plot or a character. But
given both, he will present them in
combinations as harmonious, as sud
den and as effective as a kaleidoscope
furnishes in the way OF print pat
terms. This worker in theatrical
mosaics has done the most and the
best tor the stage Irishman. Myles
ma Copaleen and Danny Mann,
Father Tom, and, finally, the Shau-
graun, arc not his in inception.
They are wholly his children in per-
fection. They are breathing, living
entities, aud purely Irish. The
smack of the soil, not of the books
where he found them, is on them
all. His magic hand took the
brown, dried shamrock from be-
tween the covers, blew upon it, and
beneath his breath it opened again,
green as on its mother sod, and
sparkling with the due of its native
skies. As an actor of the Irish parts
he creates, none save John Drew can
be compared To Boucicault. His re-
fashioned, reinspired Irishmen are
natural. He acts them naturally,
having received them so in their re-
creation. A literary trickster is
Boucicault, yet great literateur.
A heart of brass he has, but by some
crank of nature bis bowers of sym
pathy seem almost unbounded. To
all the legion OF French plays, and
plots from French novels that he has
stolen 80 unblushingly, and so ly-
ingly claimed as his, he has impart-
ed an interest to the different modes
of thought of the Anglo-Saxon mind
that savors of the miraclous power
of Shakespeare treating an Italian
story for a London audience He
was baffied alone by the intensity OF
Henri Murger's Gallic wit and Gallic
pathos. Boucicault is now an Old
man. Yet his mental vitality seems
as strong as ever, and we may yet
have from his combining and plastic
hand comedies as good as "London |
Assurance" Irish Dramas as good
as the Colleen" scenes as absorb
ing as that OF the telegraph Office in
"The Long Strike, and adaptations
"a skillful as "The Willow Copse."
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