| Collection | Calthrop Boucicault Collection |
| Description | Boucicault's four-act play After Dark : a Drama of London Life was an authorized adaptation of Adolphe Dennery's 1854 play Les oiseaux de proie. The play has much in common with W. T. Moncrieff's Scamps of London, itself an adaptation of Dennery and Eugène Grangé's Les Bohémiens de Paris. However, the most important instance of unoriginality in relation to this play is Boucicault's plagiarism of the sensation scene from Augustin Daly's melodrama Under the Gaslight (1867), in which a character is placed across a railroad track and rescued at the last moment from an oncoming train. After Dark was first performed at the Princess's Theatre, London, August 12, 1868.
Material held on this play includes letters, music, illustrations, posters and programmes. There is material from nine productions of the play, dating from 1868-c 1929. |