Foul Play

Foul Play is a drama in four acts by Dion Boucicault (1820-1890) and Charles Reade (1814-1884).

Also found as Foul Play, or The Scuttled Ship.

The original text
A nautical melodrama telling of innocence, transportation and the infamous practice of scuttling ships, the play is based on a plot in part taken from the French Le Portefeuille Rouge by Fournier and Meyer, and initially used to write a 3 volume novel called Foul Play by Charles Reade and Dion Boucicault. This appeared in instalments in the literary magazine Once a Week, from January to June 1868, with illustrations by George du Maurier, and was first published in 1868 by Bradbury, Evans and Co., London, and Ticknor and Fields, Boston, in the same year.

In 1868 Boucicault adapted the novel for the stage as Foul Play (though ascribed to Dion Boucicault and Charles Reade), and first performed at the New Holborn Theater, London, under the management of Miss Fanny Josephs on 28 May 1868 for  not too successful run. This text was also published in London by Bradbury, Evans and Co. in 1868.Published in and by The Dramatic Publishing Company, Chicago as no 368 of Sergel's Acting Drama.

In 1876 Charles Reade undertook his own adaptation of their novel, now called The Scuttled Ship (or A Scuttled Ship), first performed on 2 April 1877 at the Olympic Theatre, London, where it was a critical failure.

Performance history in South Africa
1878: Performed as Foul Play or The Scuttled Ship (ascribed to Boucicault and Reade) as a part of benefit for Mr Tom Paulton and his wife (Mrs Tom Paulton) by an anonymous company in the Theatre Royal, Cape Town, with the "Burlesque Pantomime" of Bluebeard (Planché and Dance).

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