Playbill Royal Queen's Theatre and Opera House Edinburgh, February 1862

Playbill Royal Queen's Theatre and Opera House Edinburgh, February 1862

Just months after the London premier of Boucicault's "rewritten" version where Zoe survives, this playbill announced "[t]he great sensation drama in five acts entitled the Octoroon." This playbill features an account of a purported "true story" of a Miss Winchester who, like the fictional Zoe, was described as "the natural child of the planter by a quadroon slave; she was inventoried in chattels of the estate and sold; the next day her body was found floating in the Ohio river." The playbill declared, "[s]uch is the truth which underlies the story of the Octoroon." Presumably, the production of The Octoroon advertised in this manner would feature a mixed-race heroine who commits suicide but the scenes listed on the same playbill also include the duel that Boucicault introduced in the final act in the version in which Zoe survived.