Robinson Crusoe, or The Injun Bride and the Injured Wife

Robinson Crusoe, or The Injun Bride and the Injured Wife is a burlesque written by W.S. Gilbert, Henry J. Byron, and others

Creating the play was obviously a major group effort, as often the case with burlesque, and one is not quite sure of all the authors involved in the project. For example, Andrew Crowther (2000)[1] mentions the following co-authors: Thomas Hood, H. S. Leigh, and Arthur Sketchley, while the Yale University Library's "Guide to the W.S. Lewis Collection of W.S. Gilbert Manuscripts and Letters"[2]) gives the co-authors as Thomas Hood, Henry Sambroke Leigh, William Jeffery Prowse, and George Rose.

The original text

This is one of three works written (or at least co-written) by Henry J. Byron, all based on Defoe's novel Robinson Crusoe. The others are a burlesque called Robinson Crusoe, or Harlequin Friday and the King of the Caribee Islands!(1860) and a pantomime called Robinson Crusoe, or Friday and the Fairies(1868).

First produced at the Haymarket Theatre, London on 6 July 1867.

Translations and adaptations

Performance history in South Africa

Sources

Andrew Crowther. 2000. Contradiction Contradicted: The Plays of W.S. Gilbert'. Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press.[3]

Yale University Library: "Guide to the W.S. Lewis Collection of W.S. Gilbert Manuscripts and Letters"[4]

D.C. Boonzaier. 1923. "My playgoing days – 30 years in the history of the Cape Town stage", in SA Review, 9 March and 24 August 1923. (Reprinted in Bosman 1980: pp. 374-439.)

F.C.L. Bosman. 1980. Drama en Toneel in Suid-Afrika, Deel II, 1856-1912. Pretoria: J.L. van Schaik: pp.

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