and your miserable lyrics ever known such glory? If the
play should take _here_, you benighted New-Yorkers will be
illuminated with it immediately after it has run its hundredth
night in the city which is so proud of its son.

This was the second of his pieces to be given performance, "Anne
Boleyn" never seeing the boards. "The Betrothal" was produced at the
Philadelphia Walnut Street Theatre, on September 25, 1850, and opened
in New York, on November 18 of the same year. Taylor wrote to its
author, on December 4: "I saw the last night.... It is even better as
an acting play than I had anticipated, but it was very badly acted.
I have heard nothing but good of it, from all quarters." It was
Elizabethan in tone, quite in the spirit of that romantic drama
practised by such American authors as Willis, Sargent and others. How
it was received when presented in London, during 1853, is reflected in
Boker's letter to Stoddard, dated October 9, 1853:

I have read the _Times_ notice of the "Betrothal." It is honey
to most of the other newspaper criticisms.... Notwithstanding,
and taking the accounts of my enemies for authority, the play
was unusually successful with the audience on that most trying
occasion, the first night.... The play stands a monument of
English injustice. Mark you, it was not prejudice that caused
the catastrophe; it was fear lest I should get a footing
on their stage, of which "Calaynos" had given them timely
warning.

"The Widow's Marriage," in manuscript, and never published, was
accepted by Marshall, manager of the Walnut, and is noted by Boker, in
a letter to Stoddard, October 12, 1852, the chief handicap confronting