The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Indian Princess, by James Nelson Barker

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Title: The Indian Princess
La Belle Sauvage

Author: James Nelson Barker

Editor: Montrose J. Moses

Release Date: June 27, 2009 [EBook #29230]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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TRANSCRIBERS' NOTES

This e-book contains the text of _The Indian Princess_, extracted from
Representative Plays by American Dramatists: Vol 1, 1765-1819. Comments
and background to all the plays and the other plays are available at
Project Gutenberg.

Spelling as in the original has been preserved.

THE INDIAN PRINCESS

_By_ J. N. BARKER

JAMES NELSON BARKER

(1784-1858)

In a letter written to William Dunlap, from Philadelphia, on June 10,
1832, James Nelson Barker very naively and very fully outlined his career,
inasmuch as he had been informed by Manager Wood that Mr. Dunlap wished
such an account for his "History of the American Stage."

From this account, we learn that whatever dramatic ability Mr. Barker
possessed came from the enthusiasm created within him as a reader of wide
range. For example, in 1804, he became the author of a one-act piece,
entitled "Spanish Rover," furnished in plot by Cervantes. In 1805, he
wrote what he describes as a Masque, entitled "America," in which poetic
dialogue afforded America, Science and Liberty the opportunity of singing
in unison. He confesses that this Masque was "to close a drama I had
projected on the adventures of Smith in Virginia, in the olden time." Then
followed a tragedy suggested by Gibbon, entitled "Attila," but Mr. Barker
had advanced only two acts when news came to him that John Augustus Stone
was at work on a play of the same kind.

In his letter to Dunlap, Mr. Barker deplored this coincidence, which put a
stop to "Attila." "But have you never yourself been the victim of these
odd coincidences, and, just as you had fixed upon a subject or a title,
found yourself superseded--a thing next in atrocity to the ancients'
stea