Our American Cousin — Story, Setting & Ideas

Servants as Social Barometers

The play opens not with the titled family but with servants arranging furniture and complaining. Buddicombe, Skillet, and Sharpe voice grievances about missing bed curtains, inferior wine, and unpaid milliner's bills. Binny, the upper servant, rebukes them: "Mind your hown business instead hof your betters." This hierarchy among servants mirrors the class structure above stairs. The lower servants are instructed to deflect creditors—the wine merchant, the milliner—by claiming Sir Edward has been "pressing" for payment. The play thus establishes economic strain before any aristocrat appears, using the servants' gossip to expose the family's financial troubles.

Asa Trenchard's Language as a Dramatic Device

Asa Trenchard's American speech is the play's central comic engine. He calls a woman "a regular snorter" and a "squeeler," and describes Lord Dundreary's refusal to help as dropping "like a smoked possum." Florence Trenchard, the English cousin, finds his language refreshing: "And they call that man a savage; well, I only wish we had a few more such savages in England." Asa's directness contrasts with the circumlocutions of the English characters. When he asks to see "how they make cheese in this darned country," the stage direction has him exit into the dairy—a mundane curiosity that deflates the romantic setting. His possession of Old Mark Trenchard's will, which he carries in his pocket, becomes the plot's hinge.

Lord Dundreary's Diminished Role

The catalog subjects list "Comedy plays" and "Americans -- England -- Drama," but the excerpts suggest Lord Dundreary is less central than his later fame implies. His dialogue consists of labored jokes: mistaking a pigeon house for a dairy, asking "What do they keep in dairies?" and then confusing cows with horns. The transcriber notes that this version "contains very few 'Dundrearyisms' such as 'birds of a feather gather no moss' for which the play gained much of its popular appeal." The character as printed is more buffoon than wit, and his scenes with the delicate Georgina feel perfunctory. Readers should note that the surviving text may not represent the performance version that made E. A. Sothern's Lord Dundreary a sensation.

Inheritance and the Will

The excerpts reveal that the plot turns on Old Mark Trenchard's will, which leaves the property to Asa rather than to Mary, the "only relation in the direct line." Asa shows the will to Florence, who refuses to look at it, saying she lacks the heart to tell Mary of her misfortune. Asa's possession of the will gives him leverage, but his motives remain unclear. Florence accuses him of keeping Mary "out of her fortune," and Asa's response—"darn me, if you didn't show your good sense"—suggests a pragmatic rather than villainous character. The will is a physical object ("this bit of paper") that Asa carries openly, a contrast to the secret debts the servants are told to hide.

Because the surviving text is based on a single flawed printing and lacks many of the Dundrearyisms that defined the play's stage life, readers should treat it as one version among many. The play's historical notoriety—Lincoln was watching it when assassinated—should not be confused with its literary qualities. Pay attention to the servants' scenes, which offer the most direct commentary on class and money, and to Asa's language, which carries the play's critique of English manners.

I remember sitting in a dark theater, the hush before laughter, and thinking how a play is never just its words. Reading about Asa Trenchard’s blunt honesty against British airs stirred that familiar ache—how class pretense hides so much loneliness. The same feeling surfaced once with Penelope: A Comedy in Three Acts — Themes and Context, where a woman’s quiet rebellion felt less comic, more a fragile mirror of everyday survival.