'Is the Octoroon a Typical Victorian Melodrama\r'

'The Oxford English Dictionary defines the music genre of melodrama as, â€Å"a stop play, usually romantic and screaming(prenominal) in plot”, this description certainly applies to The Octoroon. It was an highly popular form of stage drama and what I will discover is whether its themes, content and structure argon typical of the Victorian period melodrama. From the first cartridge clip it was presented at the start of the nineteenth century, melodrama attracted big consultations. It started break through very popular with the lower classes in community but as the century progressed melodrama became appreciated by large sections of society(Leaver,444).\r\nIt usually contained themes of love, murder and honour. Audiences that went to see melodrama’s were looking for cheap entertainment that was accessable for all and didn’t require a knowledge of other more(prenominal) sophisticated modes of drama. As the genre progressed, events on stage became more and mo re sensational, n 1 more so than the burning steamboat picture in The Octoroon(Faulkner,35). Melodrama contains a a couple of(prenominal) characters that are parkland to the majority of plays, the hero, the heroine, an nonagenarian woman, an old man, a humorous woman and a comic man.\r\nThese characters are reproduced constantly(Booth,26). Evidence of these stereotypical characters in The Octoroon is blindingly obvious. A common comp integritynt of melodrama was the upkeep of strict chaste moreoverice, and social and ideological justice aswell. This is evident in the American finising of The Octoroon, when Zoe takes poison to commit suicide, persuasion that because of the society she lives in, she can non be with her beloved George. Maybe Boucicault entangle that the American audience’s sense of moral justice could non allow Zoe and George to be together.\r\nDion Boucicault was atomic number 53 of the most successful and prolific dramatists of the nineteenth century . He produced a huge reduce of plays of which the exact number is between 135 and 400 titles (Kosok,82). He is a prominent figure in Victorian epoch drama and is give tongue to to belong to more than one national literature, Irish, English and the United States. He is said to generate â€Å"combined sentiment, wit and local gloss with sensational and spectacular endings”(Nova). His greatest successes however, were on capital of the United Kingdom’s stages. Only three of his plays were to be in possession of an American setting, The Octoroon is one of these.\r\nThe interpreting of The Octoroon Boucicault used in Britain differs from the pas seul he premiered In the U. S. A. The U. S version had a tragic ending opus the London version had a happy one. At the British premiere in the Adelphi Theatre on November 18th, 1861, to the shock of boucicault and the performers, the 5th act was hailed with boos and jeers from the crowd. Zoe’s suicide angered the Brit ish audience. They had heard that Southerners sometimes found a commission around the problem of mixed- carry marraiges by cutting their veins and mixture blood(Enkvist,167).\r\nSome suggestd that the audience had felt it wasn’t histrionic enough, even though there was a knuckle down sale and a burning steamboat in the play. unrivaled critic said, â€Å"Deep tragedy will not do for melodrama”. The audiences active dislike of the death of Zoe, coerce Boucicault to substitute a more happier ending(Enkvist,170). At the end of the play in the London version, the mixed race couple, Zoe and George are united. The fifth act which shows Zoe’s last(a) agony and death is simply omitted.\r\nBoucicault was perhaps showing that Victorian British audiences harboured less predjudices and could accept the marraige of a young southerner of good birth to a break ones back girl and see nothing unusual in that ending(Degen,76). More likely he was giving the audience what t hey wanted by changing the ending to one that is more appropriate to the melodramas that the Victorian public would have been used to. This ending shows me that boucicault altered his play to fit the British publics preconceptions of what a melodrama should be, therefore making it into a standard melodrama for the time.\r\nThe fact that the plot in The Octoroon is establish around the topic of slavery shows us that it is in someway variant from other melodrama’s of the time. slavery was a hot topic when the Octoroon was produced and some argue that it is emancipationist in its tone. Victorian melodrama’s while sensational, tended to be centered around more common everyday settings and themes. Some argue that the play is abolitionist in its tone but I disagree. Boucicault himself denied the theatrical role was meant to be an anti-slavery statement(Degen,173).\r\nIn a letter to The bare-ass York Herald in December 1859, Boucicault explains that he is not taking sid es, â€Å"I have laid the scene in the South, and, as slavery is an essential instalment of society there, insomuch I have been make to admit it into my scheme. . . .I believe the drama to be a proper and very effective instrument in the discussion of all social matters. . . .It is by such(prenominal) means that the drama can be imposing into the social importance it deserves to enjoy. Therefore I have involved in ‘The Octoroon’ sketches of slave life, truthful I know, and I hope gentle and kind”(NY Times,6/12/1859).\r\nI think that the use and portrayl of slavery in The Octoroon is not Boucicault venting his feelings on slavery, but just the background and setting of the overall text and his in force(p) view of the South. There are no anti-slavery tirades in the play and the villian of the piece, McClosky, is not a Southern slave-owning despot but an Northener(Faulkner,35). I think this shows that The Octoroon is be different from other melodramas of the t ime by containing a divisive topic like slavery but it is too being typical of its counterparts by not being a political piece of drama.\r\n'