B. C. Stephenson
[1] Stephenson's first works were collaborations with the composer Frederic Clay in three pieces played by amateurs, The Pirate's Isle, Out of Sight and The Bold Recruit (1868).
[6] Stephenson's first professional success came at the same venue, two years later, with a short operetta, written with the composer Alfred Cellier, Charity Begins at Home.
[8] Stephenson was still using the pseudonym "Bolton Rowe" when he wrote the libretto for Arthur Sullivan's one-act comic opera The Zoo in 1875.
[11] Together, for the Bancrofts at the Prince of Wales's Theatre, they wrote English versions of Victorien Sardou's plays, Nos intimes (as Peril) and Dora (1878 as Diplomacy).
[13] Stephenson and Scott wrote an English version of Halévy and Meilhac's libretto for Lecocq's operette, Le Petit Duc.
The reopened Broadway Opera House was inaugurated with a double bill of Ages Ago and Charity Begins at Home.
[15] Stephenson also supplied the libretto for a three-act grand opera version of Longfellow's The Masque of Pandora, composed by Alfred Cellier, and presented in Boston in 1881.
[16] The next year in London, Stephenson collaborated with Brandon Thomas on a "new and critical comedy", Comrades, for the Court Theatre, with a cast including Arthur Cecil, D. G. Boucicault and Marion Terry.
[17] Writing under his real name for the first time, Stephenson had a great success in 1882–83 with his play Impulse, based on La Maison du mari by Xavier de Montépin, which opened in December 1882 and ran through most of the next year.
[18] In 1886, he adapted Der Probepfeil by Oscar Blumenthal as A Woman of the World, which was staged at the Haymarket Theatre, starring Herbert Beerbohm Tree and Helen Barry.
"[20] Stephenson and Cellier revised the work, and it transferred in December to the Prince of Wales Theatre with new stars, including Marie Tempest.
[21] Some critics reconsidered their earlier condemnation, the work became regarded as a classic Victorian piece,[22] and the initially despised plot was traced seriously back to the Restoration playwrights David Garrick and Aphra Behn, and to Oliver Goldsmith and even Shakespeare.
