Pauline

“Pauline” was first staged at the Princess’s Theatre in London on 17 March 1851. Acclaimed stage manager Charles Kean had tasked Boucicault, his new ‘house dramatist,’ with writing a play that would feature Kean and his wife in the lead roles. As he often did at the time, Boucicault looked to the French for source material, and adapted Alexandre Dumas père’s Pauline for the stage. The play initially followed Boucicault’s original comedy ‘Love in a Maze’ and was well received by the public.

Boucicault later revived the play in New Orleans as a vehicle with his wife Agnes Robertson and himself in the starring roles. “Pauline” was later staged at the Boston theatre in March 1857 and then at the Washington Theater in Washington, DC, in February 1858, again with Boucicault and Agnes in the leads.

But Boucicault could not let “Pauline” rest. In 1879, after a string of failures at Wallack’s Theatre in New York City, Boucicault reworked the play into a ‘new’ drama entitled “Spell-bound.” The play was widely panned, however, and Boucicault was realizing that he was hopelessly out of fashion as a dramatist.

The handwritten prompt book for ‘Pauline’ found here was professionally copied for Boucicault on 16 October 1866, and is a near identical copy of the script published in 1852. Boucicault has occasional marginal additions throughout, and notes on the front page that this is indeed the version that played at the Princess’s Theatre in March 1851.