Doctor Bolus

Doctor Bolus is "a Serio-Comick-Bombastick-Operatick Interlude" in one act, written by George Daniel (1789-1864)[1].

(The play's title is often written Dr Bolus.)

The original text

First performed in London at the Theatre Royal (the English Opera House, afterwards the Lyceum) on Tuesday, July 21, 1818, it published soon after the performance in 1818 by W. and J. Lowndes, going into two editions.

Translations and adaptations

Performance history in South Africa

1830: Performed in the Cape Town Theatre, South Africa by All the World's a Stage on 4 September as afterpiece to the tragedy George Barnwell, or The London Apprentice (Lillo), and is referred to as a "bombastic burletta in one act".

A South African note on the name Dr Bolus

In any internet search, the name Dr Bolus crops up surprisingly often as a familiar one in the medical and scientific fields, and - in an interesting South African aside, with a theatrical link. Dr Harry Bolus (1834–1911)[2] was a Cape Town botanist, botanical artist, businessman and philanthropist, who paid for the medical training of C. Louis Leipoldt at Guy’s Hospital in London. Leipold was to become a revered Afrikaans poet, playwright, paediatrician, botanist, journalist, novelist, cook and connoisseur of food and wine . This relationship is reflected in Leipoldt’s published letters to his patron (1897 to 1911), entitled Dear Dr Bolus (Cape Town: A.A. Balkema, 1979).