nearly as much surprised and delighted as myself. Of course
he will make good mention of it in his book. It will _sell_
immensely for you, and especially just now, when you are
coming out with "Anne Bullen" [sic.]. I shall not fail to have
a notice of it in to-morrow morning's "Tribune."

Some authorities state that it was given by Phelps without Boker's
consent. Another, who examined Boker's manuscripts, in possession of
the poet's daughter-in-law, Mrs. George Boker, records that Barrett
made cuts in the play, preparatory to giving it, Boker, even, revising
it in part. The American première was reserved for James E. Murdoch,
at the Philadelphia Walnut Street Theater, January 20, 1851, and it
was revived at the same playhouse in April, 1855, by E.L. Davenport.
As Stoddard says of it, one "should know something--the more the
better--about the plays that Dr. Bird and Judge Conrad wrote for
Forrest and his successors, about Poe's 'Politian', Sargent's
'Velasco', Longfellow's 'Spanish Student'."

His choice of subject, in this, his first drama, indicated the
romantic aloofness of Boker's mind, for he was always anxious to
escape what Leland describes him as saying was a "practical, soulless,
Gradgrind age." In fact, Boker had not as yet found himself; he was
more the book-lover than the student of men he afterwards became.

"Read Chaucer for strength," he advises Stoddard on January
7, 1850, "read Spenser for ease and sweetness, read Milton for
sublimity and thought, read Shakespeare for all these things,
and for something else which is his alone. Get out of your age
as far as you can."