Robert Emmet

Despite several successes through his career, Dion Boucicault found himself in dire financial straits in 1884. While in London that summer, Boucicault was given a manuscript for a play which had been commissioned for another playwright to produce, but ultimately had been abandoned given the political climate in Britain and Ireland. He took the manuscript and “Boucicaulted” it, offering a play that was certainly no original, but had many of his trademark moments of clever dialogue and melodrama.

“Robert Emmet” opened at McVicker’s Theatre in Chicago on 5 November 1884 (coinciding with the election of President Grover Cleveland) and had a disastrous opening. Boucicault himself writes that actors were coming on and off the stage at the wrong times, cues for gunfire came at the wrong time, props were missing, and pregnant pauses were common between scene changes and acts. Needless to say, “Robert Emmet” was a financial failure and was withdrawn after only three days. Upon closer inspection, the writing of the play itself does not seem to be the cause for the failure, but rather a culmination of these many external factors which ultimately doomed the effort. In any case, Boucicault never tried to open the play again.

“Robert Emmet” was new for Boucicault, as he was not used to writing or even adapting straight historical plays. He himself noted that the play was simply composed of the incidents that occurred during the sixty-nine days between Emmet’s planned rebellion and his execution on 20 September 1803, and he attempted to preserve the language and known utterances of Emmet as much as possible. It is a pity that Boucicault never tried his hand at completing a fully original drama centered on one of Ireland’s greatest heroes and martyrs.

The prompt book seen here clearly shows Boucicault’s addition of certain scenes of dialogue that enhance the action, many of them related to the character he played, Michael Dwyer.