Transcriber’s Note

This transcription is based on the text printed, presumably soon after the first production in 1859, by Webster and Co. as number 199 of Webster’s Acting National Drama series. This text was made available as a microcopy by the University of California, Davis. However, because of the imperfections of the microcopy, the transcription was checked against a copy of an American Samuel French edition, number 287 of French’s Minor Drama, The Acting Edition series. Scans of this copy have been made available through the Internet Archive:

[ archive.org/details/WebsterOneTouchofNature]

The Samuel French edition is essentially a reprint of the Webster edition with minor changes to punctuation.

The 1902 edition published in Philadelphia by the Penn Publishing Company was also reviewed, but because of textual changes this edition was not used. Some of these changes corrected the grammar of the original. For example, Holder enters saying “It’s me, sir” in the Webster and French editions, but says “It’s I, sir” in the Penn. Some of the changes attempted to make the language more acceptable to American sensibilities. For example, in the Webster and French editions, Fletcher enters saying, “The devil take the theatre, and all the actresses into the bargain!” In the Penn edition, he enters saying, “The mischief with the theatre, and all the actresses into the bargain!” Similar changes were made throughout the text.

In general, this transcription attempts to retain the formatting, punctuation, and spelling of the source text. Stage directions were punctuated three different ways: with parentheses without a period, with a period within the parentheses, and with a period immediately following the closing parenthesis. No attempt was made to make the punctuation of stage directions consistent.

The following changes were made to the text: