John Maddison Morton

John Maddison Morton (3 January 1811 – 19 December 1891) was an English playwright who specialized in farces.

Biography

Morton was born in Pangbourne. His father, Thomas Morton, was also a well-known dramatist.

He was the author of "Box and Cox" (1847) and a number of other one-act farces, including "Done on Both Sides" (1847), "Drawing Rooms", "Second Floor", and "Attics" (1864), "Wife's Bonnet" (1865) and "Slasher and Crasher" (1872). He also wrote "Our Wife" (1864), which was made into an 1883 operetta by John Philip Sousa called "Désirée". Other important plays by Morton include "How Stout You're Getting!" and "Waiting for an Omnibus in the Lowther Arcade on a Rainy Day".

"Box and Cox" was inspired by E. F. Prieur and A. Letorzec's "Une Chambre pour Deux" (1839), and started out as "The Double-Bedded Room" (1843), a skit about two men who occupy the same room without being aware of each other's existence, having been tricked by their landlady Mrs Bouncer. It was returned to the French stage by Charles Varin and Charles Lefèvre as "Une Chambre à Deux Lits" (1846). Morton used material from this adaptation and from Eugène Labiche's "Frisette" to create "Box and Cox", which was wildly successful, earning him about £7000, and translated into many European languages. A musical version, "Cox and Box" (1867), was created by F. C. Burnand and Arthur Sullivan, but Morton received no royalties from it.

In 1873, his plays, "A Game of Romps" and "All that Glitters is not Gold" played at the Olympic Theatre.

In later life, Morton failed to maintain his success, and he eventually became a Charterhouse pensioner, dying on 19 December 1891.

References

*Felicia Hardison Londre. "The History of World Theater: From the English Restoration to the Present." Continuum International, 1991.

External links

* [http://www.royalengineers.ca/BoxandCox02.html Full script of "Box and Cox"]
* [http://www.theatrehistory.com/british/box_and_cox.html Details of first productions]