SOUVENIR PROGRAMME: 5000TH PERFORMANCE OF "OUR AMERICAN COUSIN" (LORD DUNDREARY). Thursday Night, May 20, 1909. Majestic Theatre, Boston. Mr. E. H. Sothern as Lord Dundreary.

This souvenir program commemorates the record-breaking five thousandth performance on May 20, 1909 of a revival of English playwright Tom Taylor's comedy "Our American Cousin", more commonly known at this period as "Lord Dundreary". The character of Lord Dundreary was created by E. H. Sothern's father E.A. Sothern in a production which opened in New York at the Laura Keene Theatre in 1858 with Joseph Jefferson as Asa Trenchard. This original production was a huge success for Sothern and Jefferson and received record long runs in New York and London, and was later performed in Paris with Sir Henry Irving in the cast. E. A. Sothern presented the play almost continuously from 1858 to 1877 in America and England. The play was not produced again after E. A. Sothern's death in 1881 until his son revived it. E.H. Sothern, the program notes, "ventures to hope that a new generation may, through his recollections of his father's work, derive some entertainment from this repetition of the character created by him. E. H. Sothern's costumes and make-up were a replica of his father's in the role.

The program gives a brief history of the production and lists both the original cast and the cast of the revival.

"Our American Cousin" is the production that Abraham Lincoln was attending when he was assassinated at Ford's Theatre in Washington.