The Shaughraun

Shaughraun, The (1874), a play by Dion Boucicault. [ Wallack's Theatre, 143 perf.] Robert Ffolliott (J. B. Polk) is a rich young Irishman who is under sentence of death for his Fenian sympathies. Robert's fiancée, Arte O'Neal (Jeffreys Lewis), lives on one of his estates with his sister Claire Ffolliott (Ada Dyas). Corry Kinchela (Edward Arnott), who hopes to win Ffolliott's lands, plots to have him captured, but his plans are momentarily frustrated when Captain Molyneaux (H. J. Montague), the British officer sent to arrest Robert, falls in love with Claire. When Robert is eventually arrested, Kinchela learns that a pardon is in the offing, so he suggests to Robert that he flee, planning to kill him during his escape. Robert's best friend, Conn, the Shaughraun (Boucicault)—“the soul of every fair, the life of every funeral, the first fiddle at all weddings and parties”—helps Robert make good his escape. Kinchela shoots Conn, leaving him for dead, and takes Arte and Claire captive. Playing dead, Conn learns the girls' whereabouts. They are rescued and Kinchela arrested. Robert and Arte, and Molyneux and Claire, are free to wed. Called by Odell “that best of all Boucicault Irish plays,” it was also his most financially successful and enjoyed the longest run of any play at Wallack's in the 1870s. Boucicault and others revived it regularly. Historian Jack A. Vaughn has written, “It is skillfully structured to provide its implausible, sensational situations with a maximum of credibility, and it contains several scenes of genuine humor and Gaelic charm. The role of Conn is one of the better acting parts of the period.” A “shaughraun” was a wanderer or vagabond. The show was revived with tremendous success in London in 1988 by the National Theatre.

Shaughraun, The (1875), a political melodrama set on the west coast of Ireland, in which Dion Boucicault's sympathetic version of the stage-Irishman stereotype has advanced to the title-role. Conn the Shaughraun, a good-hearted wanderer, helps Robert Ffolliott to escape from Australia where he had been transported as a Fenian rebel.