SOURCE: Gallagher, Kent G. “The Tragedies of George Henry Boker: The Measure of American Romantic Drama.” ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance 20, no. 3 (1974): 187-215.

In the following essay, Gallagher discusses Boker's development as a playwright and describes his plays as departures from a specifically American brand of romantic tragedy that celebrated the democratic principles of the new nation.

Despite the efforts of Arthur Hobson Quinn, Joseph Wood Krutch, and E. Sculley Bradley early in this century,¹ George Henry Boker (1823-1890) has not attained a high place in the history of American letters. His many articles, lengthy sonnet sequence, numerous poems, and ten complete plays remain material mainly for those who would satisfy their literary curiosity about one American Romanticist of the nineteenth century. Only through Francesca da Rimini, Boker's single outstanding accomplishment, has his fame reached the permanently anthologized state.² And there it rests, represented by a...