ABSTRACT
Charles A. Somerset’s The Fall of Algiers, By Sea and Land, recounts the tale of Europeans kidnapped into slavery by Barbary pirates and their eventual release by Harry Helm and the British navy. At the height of his popularity in the 1830s, Somerset had plays produced at the Adelphi, Coburg, Olympic, and Sadler’s Wells, but the low pay that dramatists received led to the financial difficulties that plagued him. The Fall of Algiers dramatizes a variety of orientalist stereotypes: cruelty and cowardice, despotism and sensuality. It begins with a highly racialized scene, in which Muslims enslave Europeans as their ship sinks. Somerset’s Algiers presents a stereotypical vision of North Africa, one commonly accepted by theatre audiences, who made his play a success. The play received praise from Dramatic Magazine, which described Act One’s shipwreck as “managed with great ingenuity” and the concluding scene as “a grand attack by sea and land,” with “extremely correct” views of Algiers.
