Britannia Prompt Book, Costume Page

Britannia Prompt Book, Costume Page

The Octoroon promptbook belonging to Frederick Wilton is held at the Univeity of Kent’s Templeman library. Wilton's promptbook is playfully inscribed, "F. Wilton hys boke July 5 1871," and it consists a copy of the published four-act script of The Octoroon, (in which the heroine neither kills herself, nor marries her white suitor, George, but appears silently in his arms in a concluding tableau), into which numerous pages of handwritten annotations are added. In this printed four-act version, the printed pages of the script conclude with stage directions that merely state that "George enters, bearing Zoe in his arms--all the characters rush on." Characters watch as the steamboat Magnolia explodes onstage, along with this spectacular stage effect, they form a "grand tableaux," that is followed by the "Curtain."