Neither Don Boucicault (1820-1890) nor Tom Taylor (18817-1880) could satisfy this

requirement. Boucicault whose first successes were in the eighteen forties, fixed the type of
Victorian melodrama, adapting plots from foreign writers, and in The Colleen Bawn (1860) and
later plays exploited Irish subjects. Taylor’s talent was facile, though he was a prolific writer. In
Our American Cousin (1858) the ‘character-part’ of Lord Dundreary points the way towards
the individualisation as opposed to reliance upon conventional stage types. The Fool’s Revenge
(1859), adapted from Victor Hugo, is the best of Taylor’s pseudo-historical plays, and The
Ticket-of-Leave Man (1863) is the best of his melodrama.