Invading Good Samaritan

TOM TAYLOR — OUR AMERICAN COUSIN — 1865 — LINCOLN’S ASSASSINATION

This play would probably not have survived the 19th century if it had not been made famous by the Assassination of President Lincoln in its third act.

Somewhere it tries to be in the witty style of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest and maybe in the social-cultural style of Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion (to become My Fair Lady on the silver screen). The main characteristic is the play on words, and when I say words, I mean words. Let me give one example, the play-game-competition on the word “draught.”

MRS. MOUTCHESSINGTON: Oh, a very refreshing [night], thanks to the draught you were kind enough to prescribe for [Georgina, Ms. Mountchessington’s daughter], Lord Dundreary.

FLORENCE: What! Has Lord Dundreary been prescribing for Georgina?

DUNDREARY: Yeh. You see I gave her a draught that cured the effect of the draught, and that draught was a draft that didn’t pay the doctor’s bill. Didn’t that draught –

FLORENCE: Good gracious! What a number of draughts. You have almost a game of draughts. (Act 1 Scene 1)

And Georgina will bring the play on this word back into the picture later on in the play (the audience will of course remember):

GEORGINA: If you please, ask the dairy maid to let me have a seat in the dairy. I am afraid of the draft, here.

DUNDREARY: Oh! You want to get out of the draft, do you? Well, you’re not the only one that wants to escape the draft. (Act 3, Scene 2)

The American Cousin is not as witty with words as these English aristocrats. His language is funny because of the American animals, and Indians among other “exotic” references he uses, plus of course the strange language of his. He can even be provocative when he is invited to take part in the archery game in the afternoon and he is provided with an archery suit, and then he retorts that in his country to play with bows and arrows most people — implying those who play those games there, meaning Indians — are dressed only in their Adam-and-Eve skin with some red paint to enhance it, and he even insists that archers there do not want to lend their natural attire or archery…