thumb|[[Joseph Jefferson as Asa Trenchard, the titular American cousin]]

Our American Cousin was a three-act comedy play by the English playwright Tom Taylor. It is a farce about an awkward, boorish American man named Asa Trenchard who is introduced to his aristocratic English relatives when he goes to England to claim the family estate. The play premiered with great success at Laura Keene's Theatre in New York City in 1858, with Laura Keene in the cast, the title character played by Joseph Jefferson, and Edward Askew Sothern playing Lord Dundreary. The play's long-running London production in 1861 was also successful.

The play quickly rose to great renown during its first few years and remained very popular throughout the second half of the 19th century. Despite achieving critical and audience acclaim throughout its production history, Our American Cousin became notorious as the play that U.S. President Abraham Lincoln was watching at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. when he was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, a Confederate sympathizer and stage actor who attempted to time his gunshot with the audience's laughter on a particularly famous line.

Theatrical acclaim and "Lord Dundreary"

thumb|[[Edward Sothern as Lord Dundreary, sporting his iconic "Dundrearies"-style sideburns]]

Among Our American Cousins cast was British actor Edward Askew Sothern, playing Lord Dundreary, a good natured but brainless English aristocrat. Sothern had already achieved fame on the New York stage in the play Camille in 1856, and had been reluctant to take on the role because he felt that it was too small and unimportant.

Our American Cousin premiered in New York on 15 October 1858. After several weeks of performances, Sothern began portraying the role more broadly, as a lisping, skipping, eccentric, weak-minded fop prone to nonsensical references to sayings of his "bwother" Sam. His ad-libs were a sensation, earning good notices for his physical comedy and spawning much imitation and mockery in both the United States and England. Sothern gradually expanded the role, adding gags and business until it became the central figure of the play. The most famous scene involved Dundreary reading a letter from his even sillier brother. The play ran for 150 nights, which was very successful for a New York run at the time.

Sothern made his London debut when the play opened at the Haymarket Theatre on 11 November 1861. Reviews were mixed. The Morning Post praised Sothern, but said that the play could scarcely be said to be worthy of his talents; The Athenaeum found the piece humorous and outrageous, and Sothern's performance "certainly the funniest thing in the world ... a vile caricature of an inane nobleman, intensely ignorant, and extremely indolent"; The Era thought the play "a hasty work, manufactured to suit the American market ... a sort of dramatic curiosity". The play closed on 21 December 1861 after 36 performances; after this inauspicious start it was revived at the same theatre on 27 January 1862 and ran uninterruptedly until 23 December for 314 successive performances. Sothern successfully revived the play many times, making Dundreary by far his most famous role.

"Dundrearyisms", twisted aphorisms in the style of Lord Dundreary (e.g. "birds of a feather gather no moss"), enjoyed a brief vogue. And the character's style of beard – long, bushy sideburns – gave the English language the word dundrearies. In his autobiography, writer George Robert Sims recalled that "we went Dundreary mad in '61. The shop windows were filled with Dundreary scarves, and Brother Sam scarves, and there were Dundreary collars and Dundreary shirts, and Dundrearyisms were on every lip."

It was not long before the success of this play inspired an imitation, Charles Gayler's Our Female American Cousin, which opened in New York City in January 1859. None of the characters from the original play appeared in this comedy. A number of sequel plays to Our American Cousin were written, all featuring several characters from the original, and focusing on the Lord Dundreary character. The first was Gayler's Our American Cousin at Home, or, Lord Dundreary Abroad, which premiered in Buffalo, New York, in November 1860, and had its New York City debut the following May. Later sequels included Henry James Byron's Dundreary Married and Done For, As production resumed, the cast modified a line of the play in honor of the president: when the heroine asked for a seat protected from the draft, the replya pun on draft evasion scripted as, "Well, you're not the only one that wants to escape the draft"was delivered instead as, "The draft has already been stopped by order of the President!" Halfway through Act III, Scene 2, the character of Asa Trenchard, played that night by Harry Hawk, utters this line, considered one of the play's funniest, to Mrs. Mountchessington:

thumb|1900 drawing of the assassination during the play

During the ensuing laughter, Booth, a famous actor and Confederate sympathizer who was not part of the play's cast, entered Lincoln's box and shot him in the back of the head, mortally wounding him. Familiar with the play, Booth had chosen that moment so that the audience's laughter would mask the sound of his gunshot. Booth stabbed Major Henry Rathbone as Rathbone came at him, then leapt from the box onto the stage and made his escape through the back of the theater, en route stabbing orchestra leader William Withers Jr., to a horse he had left waiting in the alley. That night, the remainder of the play was suspended. Another performance eight days later, for the benefit of the investigation into the killing, was the last performance of any play at Ford's Theatre for 103 years. Since reopening, the theatre has not restaged Our American Cousin, and has said that it never will out of respect for the assassination.

In 1862 Charles Kingsley wrote a parody, the "Great Hippocampus Question", in the style of Lord Dundreary, and incorporated parts of this in The Water-Babies published in 1863.

Our American Cousin was adapted for the radio anthology program On Stage in 1953. In a move that earned him a rebuke from CBS management, director, producer, and actor Elliott Lewis aired it in the same hour as his show Crime Classics episode "The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln".

In the 1961 episode of The Twilight Zone "Back There," a man travels back to April 14, 1865, and tries to prevent the assassination.

Charles Busch's 2007 play Our Leading Lady follows Laura Keene in the events leading up to and immediately after the assassination. Lynne Meadow directed its world premiere production at Manhattan Theatre Club, in which Kate Mulgrew starred as Keene.

Eric W. Sawyer's 2008 opera Our American Cousin presents a fictionalized version of the night of Lincoln's assassination from the point of view of the actors in the cast of Taylor's play.

In 2023, Tyrants, an original musical about the life of Edwin Booth, was presented at the National Archives Museum in Washington, D.C. With music and lyrics by Alexander Sage Oyen and a book by Nora Brigid Monahan, the musical's opening scene depicts the moments before the Lincoln assassination, including several lines of dialogue from Our American Cousin.

References

  • Our American Cousin – The Script, Cast and Lincoln Assassination
  • The history of Our American Cousin and the legal issues surrounding its ownership.
  • Modern look at the play, written to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth.
  • Audio recording of the play (from archive.org) by professional actors at LostPlays.com, including a recreation of the assassination moment
  • Lincoln's last play; or, the continuing fascination with Our American Cousin from the Museum of the City of New York Collections blog