Writer Margaret Williams called it "a five-act Elizabethan drama with a heavy overlay of full-blown romanticism in its brigands, haunted forests, pastoral youth and maiden, and touch of the Gothic horrors.
It was originally based on the life of Jack Donahue, a prominent bushranger who had murdered William Clements in 1828.
[5] Harpur continually revised the play, however, and in later versions he renamed the protagonist "Stalwart" and his victim "Abel".
[6][7] The play's complex textual history began in 1834, when Harpur presented a manuscript to Edward Smith Hall, the editor of The Sydney Monitor.
[13][14] According to Leslie Rees "at first glance, The Bushrangers (1853 version) is the usual studied attempt at a drama mainly in blank verse as conscientiously undertaken by any and every ambitious poet.