ir to remain a stock play for years--the
"Shaughraun." In "Arrah-na-Pogue" he took the old thin story of the
Irish patriot of '98, and achieved an equal success, while in the
"Colleen Bawn" he made a tremendous hit with even poorer materials. The
secret of the success of all three plays is found in _variety_,
produced by contrasting the broad unctuous humor and sharp wit of the
Irish peasant, familiar to the English-speaking world, with the quiet
delicacy and refinement of the Irish upper classes, by using a few
strong melodramatic situations, but nothing very long, the pathos
always relieved by humor before it drags. The whole play--any of the
three--rattles off without a hitch. In the last and most perfect, the
"Shaughraun," a very happy hit is made with the _comic_ villain, a new
creation in the drama, though as old in the pantomime as Clown and
Pantaloon.

If variety be the leading element of success in the "Black Crook" and
the Irish dramas of Boucicault, wherein lies that of Bulwer's trio of
stock plays by which he will be remembered? The first of his successes
was the "Lady of Lyons," and we have already seen how skilful is the
mechanical construction of this play, leading the suspense from act to
act; but that will not account for the whole of the interest. A saying
of Boucicault as to this play gives us also a key to the whole three
Bulwer plays, for we find the same element pervading them all--the
central idea of two, and only slightly modified in the third. Boucicault
has remarked that the interest of the "Lady of Lyons" really depends on
the fact that the completion of Claude's marriage is delayed from the
second to the end of the fifth act; and a little reflection will show
this to be the case. The whole interest of the play before the close of
the second act turns on whether Claude will obtain his lady-love; the
interest thereafter on his resistance to the temptations that draw him
toward Pauline against honor. Look at "Richelieu," and the same element
intensified pervades it. Adrian de Mauprat marries Julie at the close
of the first act, only to be separated from her all the rest of the
play till the climax. Richelieu himself, as far as the main action of
the play is concerned, is secondary to Adrian, the end of all plays
being "to make two lovers happy." In "Money" nearly the same motive
runs through the play. In the first act Evelyn finds that Clara loves
him, and all real obstacle to their marriage is