Note 163 — Chapter VI · : EMILY JANE BRONTË

Although Jane Eyre has been dramatised by several hands, the play has never been as popular as one might suppose from a story of such thrilling incident. I can find no trace of the particular version which is referred to in this letter, but in the next year the novel was dramatised by John Brougham, the actor and dramatist, and produced in New York on March 26, 1849. Brougham is rather an interesting figure. An Irishman by birth, he had a chequered experience of every phase of theatrical life both in London and New York. It was he who adapted ‘The Queen’s Motto’ and ‘Lady Audley’s Secret,’ and he collaborated with Dion Boucicault in ‘London Assurance.’ In 1849 he seems to have been managing Niblo’s Garden in New York, and in the following year the Lyceum Theatre in Broadway. Miss Wemyss took the title role in Jane Eyre, J. Gilbert was Rochester, and Mrs. J. Gilbert was Lady Ingram; and though the play proved only moderately successful, it was revived in 1856 at Laura Keene’s Varieties at New York, with Laura Keene as Jane Eyre. This version has been published by Samuel French, and is also in Dick’s Penny Plays. Divided into five Acts and twelve scenes, Brougham starts the story at Lowood Academy. The second Act introduces us to Rochester’s house, and the curtain descends in the fourth as Jane announces that the house is in flames. At the end of the fifth, Brougham reproduced verbatim much of the conversation of the dialogue between Rochester and Jane. Perhaps the best-known dramatisation of the novel was that by the late W. G. Wills, who divided the story into four Acts. His play was produced on Saturday, December 23, 1882, at the Globe Theatre, by Mrs. Bernard-Beere, with the following cast:—