Overview
Synopsis
In this high-spirited farce, the vain aging fop, Sir Harcourt, sets off to Oak Hall in the country to marry the beautiful eighteen-year-old Grace, the niece of his old friend, Max Harkaway. In doing so, he will get his hands on her fortune and secure himself a nimble young bride. Sir Harcourt leaves his son, Charles Courtly, at home, little realizing that he is a dissolute man about town and not the hard-working student Sir Harcourt believes him to be. He also does not realize that Charles has followed him to Oak Hall and is simultaneously wooing Grace, under the assumed name of Augustus Hamilton.
However, Sir Harcourt finds himself aroused and distracted by the playful Lady Gay Spanker, who has agreed to help Charles’ romance by distracting his father. With a double courtship, comical deception, and tons of naive vanity, Dion Boucicault’s farce ridicules the tendency to make snap judgments based upon fashion or wealth, town or country, nature or artifice.
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Context
London Assurance was the second play Dion Boucicault wrote, but the first to be produced in 1841. It was originally called “Out of Town” and premiered at the Theatre Royal Covent Garden, proving a major success. It ran for three months with Madame Vestris as Grace Harkaway and Charles Matthews as Dazzle. A few months later, the play opened in New York at the Park Theatre (October 1841), with Charlotte Cushman as Lady Gay Spanker.
In 1970, the Royal Shakespeare Company revived the play, with
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Act One
As the play opens, servants Cool and Martin anxiously await the return of Charles, the son of their boss, Sir Harcourt Courtly. Eventually, Charles returns, still drunk after a night of excess. He has been busy evading his creditors and is accompanied by a man called Dazzle. With the help of Cool, he avoids running into his father (who is in the dark about Charles’s behavior) and disappears upstairs just in time.
Sir Harcourt, a vain fop of sixty-three--who tries to pass for
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Character Portrayals
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Guide Written By:
Alexandra Appleton
Writer, editor and theatre researcher