Show EXIT boulicault BOUCIC AULT at the advanced age of seventy seven dion boulicault Boucic ault has passed fro from this stage of action lie ile was undoubtedly the most prolific and sod in some respects the cleverest of modern playwrights the ability which he possessed as a producer of dramatic fiction developed in him at a very early age its ita first outward raan manifestation ife being in tho the onca once popular but now neglected comedy london assurance which he informed the writer was finished and performed during his eighteenth year ian and d yet it is a pon ponderous dirous literary production containing five long acts with breezy dialogue ludicrous situations eions 9 and none of the evidences of immaturity customarily displayed in the work of novices however precocious they may be he ile had bad a net nervous ap apprehension regarding the fate late of this play way and eaid said be he stayed away from the theatre when it was produced until a self constituted committee hunted him up and dragged him before the ai al miring and auditors it appears that play writing was with him a perfect intuition ion requiring requiting none of the experience peri ence and much less of 0 the toil of any y of his contemporaries one one of Boucic aulls aults last and in many respects his best beat production was arrah na no pogue this was an instantaneous and phenomenal su crees and enjoys the rare rate tion of having had an incessant run of several months entirely circling tho the globe when the tower was sinking in the last lafit act in london the curtain was rising in new now york k where the piece ended about as it was beginning in san francisco it had bad not concluded there when it began I 1 in n Honolu luand was scarcely more than over in the latter place when it was about to begin in tokio and eo so on around the world A wonderful record truly when the story of sir mr Boucic Boucle aults life comes to be written esya america it ft will probably be found that bis his earls early ambitions were napoleonic otherwise who can explain the motive that led this young irish boy to pore over and congreve when other boys were at their latin and greek I 1 too young to gain admission to the british ho he had to be content with the dramatic accumulations of the london university uni venity eity which gave him bis his education this authority however differs from the author himself in that it confers tho the honor of having brought him before the footlights on orl that fateful evening upon charles matthews and pule puts his age at twenty one this latter would all the more appear erroneous from the fact that Boucic boulicault ault must hive have had a very early start to havo have produced acting plays playa ai well as omo some which have hava not yet seen daylight during daring a period which practically ended a score of years alo abot I 1 latterly ha he had become quite obscure in fact he had faded from the public gaze entirely and from its mind nearly so rumors went around that his hand had lost its cunning and the old man did nothing to disprove them lie ile seemed to be out of touch with the people among whom he had cast his lot the vast mass of dramatic lore which he bad had accumulated lay jay idle in the storeroom of his brain it Is related of him during this time that he offered a play to mrs langtry doubtless an attempted renaissance renai nance but our lady would not have it because the dialogue was old fashioned and the plot out of date she was apparently oblivious at the time to the fact that nearly everything she plays playa or rather tries to play is described by that very quotation and iho the circumstance most likely is 13 a vivid illustration of liow how meretricious and inadequate Ss Is I 1 alii a wit I 1 11 7 1 77 T I 1 the new school of art when gauged by I 1 the standard of the old school of genius I 1 i Boucic aults middle life was not in to 1 omo some respects na an exemplary the french system cf morality having gradually grown upon and at last made madea a victim of blin bat but he be had generous im impal pulson soi wag wes always ready I 1 with excellent advice for any one who desired it and with his vast fund of information and experience set forth in the moat most vivid spir spiraling kling and voluminous mauner manner was capable of making the molt indifferent listener a good one at once he waa was an actor acor of ability and had law few enemies in the 1 amadio profession it is BO so rarely that world produces to Boucic aults like that 1 it seems almost a duty to miss him as it certainly Is one to wish him and peace in the land of shadows |