Dion Boucicault (1820-1890) was a playwright, actor, theatre manager and (in some eyes) rather a cad.
Born Dionysius Lardner Boursiquot in Dublin, he studied engineering in London and then became an actor and wrote more than 200 stage plays. Touring in Glasgow in 1852 he met and subsequently eloped with Agnes Robertson, the ward of the actor-manager Charles Kean. With Agnes he toured the stages of the world, returning to Glasgow during the 1870s with their long-running success (a play that was said to have made him a fortune of around £500,000), The Shaughraun.
In 1885 Boucicault left his wife for a younger actress, in whose arms he died in New York in 1890.
Reference: Mitchell Library, 920.04BAI
Reproduced with the permission of Glasgow City Council, Libraries Information and Learning
Keywords:
actors, cads, playwrights, The Shaughraun, theatre managers, womanisers