The same secret of _variety_ accounts for the great success of Boucicault's Irish dramas as compared with those of other dramatists, and even with his own plays on other subjects. The regular old-fashioned Irish drama had interest only to an Irishman. It dealt with rebellions of half a century and more gone by, stamped out, and in which few took interest outside of Ireland. A certain element, that of traditional abuse of the traditional Briton, who was supposed to be always wandering over the United States with his pockets full of _Berrritish gold_, trying to corrupt patriotic Americans and regain King George's colonies, gave a certain interest to the Irish drama in America for the half century before the dedication of the Bunker Hill monument, but that faded out as time obliterated early jealousies. Then came Boucicault and did a wonderful thing, taking hackneyed and ridiculous Fenianism and making out of it one of the greatest successes of modern times, that bids fair 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 removed by his sudden accession to fortune; yet all the rest of the play sees them kept apart by the most flimsy obstacles, just to tantalize the audience, and make them wonder if those two fools will ever come together. The means are very simple, and yet quite powerful enough, as much so as the first part of "Romeo and Juliet," where, by the by, almost all the interest dies out after the balcony scene. The main secret of Bulwer then reveals itself, like that of flirtation, to reside in the _art of tantalization_.