Last Days of Dion Boucicault . . :(

         "Boucicault died of pneumonia on 18 September 1890.  Dion had many accomplishments over his active career of more than fifty years.  The fact that he was constantly in financial duress actually pushed him to improve the plight of the playwrights' condition. 

          He was a pioneer of sensationalistic scenes and an advocate for fireproofing scenery in the American Theatre.  He can also be credited, "with having written two of the best comedies and three of the best melodramas of the nineteenth century." Dion Boucicault led a highly colored life filled with the melodramatic material that he wrote about in his plays; he was a child without a father, a lover, a spendthrift, poor, rich, arrogant, a philanderer, but above all things he was a dramatist."