Inkle and Yarico

A comic opera in three acts, with music by Samuel Arnold and a libretto by George Colman the Younger.

The original text

Though billed as a "comic opera", the story is tragic, one of the betrayal of love by Inkle, an English trader, who is shipwrecked in the West Indies, and survives with the help of Yarico, an Indian maiden. They fall in love, but he ultimately sells her into slavery to cover his losses and enable him to marry well. Actions which he justifies to the West Indian chieftain in the end.

First staged at the Haymarket Theatre in London, England in August 1787, going to 98 performances there. Hugely successful, it saw a total of 164 performances on London stages by 1800.

Printed from the prompt book under the authority of the managers of the theatres royal Covent Garden and Haymarket by T. Davison, Whitefriars, London; for the publishers Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orm. Contains introductory remarks by Mrs. Inchbald.

Translations and adaptations

Translated into Dutch as Incle en Yariko

Performance history in South Africa

1824: Performed on 11 September by the English Theatricals company in the African Theatre Cape Town , with The Spoiled Child (Bickerstaff) as afterpiece. It was done as a benefit for Mrs Black.

1835: The Dutch text performed in the Liefhebbery Toneel, Cape Town, according to Bosman p.271 with the title Incle en Yariko, by the children's company Kunst en Smaak on 24 October, with De Dronkaard (Von Kotzebue). Both plays repeated on 30 October.

Sources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inkle_and_Yarico

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Inkle and Yarico[1]

Bosman, 1928: 199, 271,

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