Actor, playwright, manager, producer—the Dublin-born Dion Boucicault was one of those impresarios of the theater who juggle the whole shebang. Boucicault is perhaps most known for his melodrama of 1874, The Shaughraun, but the comedy London Assurance, first produced in 1841, in London, was his first big success. With it subject of marriage and money, and its stylish twists and turns, the play points the way to Oscar Wilde and The Importance of Being Earnest. —L.J.