Dion Boucicault

Dionysus Lardner Boucicault (known as Dion Boucicault, also sometimes spelt Bourcicault) was a prolific playwright and a successful actor and manager. Active between about 1840 and 1890, he was most prominent and popular in the years 1850–1880. He was born in Dublin, but he spent his heyday shuttling between London and New York; he also toured Australia and New Zealand, and spent seasons in California, Chicago, and New Orleans. As a writer, Boucicault was identified most closely with adaptation from the French, translating the plots of Parisian boulevard melodramas into British or American settings. At the same time, he achieved a string of massive commercial hits, and is credited with importing to London the sensational melodrama that became the theatrical hallmark of the 1860s. Sensation drama combined high production values with violent and exciting plots; while these had once been associated with working-class theatres, Boucicault fused sensation with comedy and sentiment to mesmerize prosperous audiences and even the Queen. His creations underpinned the rise of London’s West End as a pleasure district, and they helped establish long runs and touring productions. Boucicault also contributed to the extension of theatrical copyright and performance rights, through campaigns and litigation. As an academic subject, Boucicault has traditionally interested quite distinct constituencies. He has long held a place in the Irish canon, although it has sometimes been a slightly dubious one; popular in the nineteenth century, he fell out of favor after the founding of the Irish Literary Theatre. Then he was rediscovered in the 1960s, and returned to the fore in the 1990s, as transnational approaches recognized his significance for the Irish diaspora. In American Studies, Boucicault tends to be remembered for plays set in the United States, above all for his ‘race’ play, The Octoroon, which takes place on a Louisiana plantation. Critics have discussed its racial politics, its attitude to slavery, and its representations of photography, law, and the frontier. Outside academia, The Octoroon found a new prominence in 2014 when Branden Jacobs-Jenkins adapted and analyzed it in An Octoroon. Victorianists have analyzed Boucicault’s plays in relation to railways, sport, cities, prostitution, and the Indian Rebellion of 1857; theatre and film historians have been drawn to Boucault’s inventive staging, his legal and business innovations, and his contribution to the narrative techniques of the early motion picture.