ABSTRACT
In February 1852 Charles Kean, actor-manager of the Princess’s Theatre, produced Dion Boucicault’s The Corsican Brothers, an adaptation of a popular French melodrama based up a novel by Alexandre Dumas père. The play took London by storm. Among its most ardent admirers was Queen Victoria: she saw it four times in eight weeks, commissioned E.H. Corbould to paint a scene from the production, and drew a sketch of the famous tableau of ‘The Duel’ in her journal. Sheet music for the play’s ‘Ghost Melody’ sold thousands of copies. So popular was The Corsican Brothers that it quickly found its way into the repertoires of minor theatres in London and provincial theatres throughout the country. Although the starring roles of the twins Louis and Fabien dei Franchi were mostly closely identified with Kean—he played the parts more than 250 times before his death in 1868—they were also acted in London by Charles Fechter in the 1860s and Henry Irving in the 1880s.
