The Lady of Lyons; Or, Love and Pride

About

Bulwer-Lytton's 1838 romantic melodrama was one of the most successful plays of the Victorian stage, running for decades in the repertoire of the great actor-managers and providing some of the era's most beloved roles. The impoverished Claude Melnotte courts the aristocratic Pauline Deschapelles by pretending to be a prince; the deception discovered, he goes to war to win fortune enough to deserve her. The play is sentimentally earnest in ways that Victorian audiences adored and modern audiences find both touching and amusing. Irving and Macready both played Claude to enormous effect.