Dion Boucicault

“ The Octoroon is a play of singular interest. Dealing with the slavery question in 1859, it represented so truly the actual conditions in Louisiana that it won the sympathy of Northerners and Southerners alike. It represents also the genius of Boucicault in its maturity. ”

“ The Octoroon was based on a novel by Mayne Reid, The Quadroon, which had been published in New York in 1856, dramatized in London and played at the City of London Theatre. Boucicault, however, borrowed only the outlines of the plot. In the novel an Englishman under the name of Edward Rutherford saves a beautiful Creole, Eugenie Besauçon, from drowning through the explosion of the river steamboat, and falls in love with her quadroon slave, Aurore. Through the dishonesty of her trustee, the Creole, Gayarre, Eugenie loses her estate which is to be sold. ”

“ Eugenie loves Rutherford and, in male disguise, aids him in obtaining funds with which he trys to buy Aurore at the slave auction but fails. After kidnapping Aurore he is about to be lynched when he is saved by the sheriff, and at the ensuing trial it turns out that Gayarre has embezzled funds belonging to Eugenie and that Aurore has been freed by her former master. ”