The Poems and Verses of Charles Dickens

About the year 1834, when the earliest of the Sketches by Boz were appearing in print,

a young composer named John Hullah set to music a portion of an opera calledThe

Gondolier, which he thought might prove successful on the stage. Twelve months later

Hullah became acquainted with Charles Dickens, whose name was then unknown to

those outside his own immediate circle, and it occurred to him that he and ¿Boz¿ might

combine their forces by converting The Gondolier into a popular play. Dickens, who

always entertained a passion for the theatre, entered into the project at once, and

informed Hullah that he had a little unpublished story by him which he thought would

dramatise well¿even better than The Gondolier notion; confessing that he would

rather deal with familiar English scenes than with the unfamiliar Venetian environment

of the play favoured by Hullah. The title of The Gondolier was consequently

abandoned, and a novel subject found and put forward as The Village Coquettes, a

comic opera of which songs, duets, and concerted pieces were to form constituent

parts. Dickens, of course, became responsible for the libretto and Hullah for the music;

and when completed the little play was offered to, and accepted by, Braham, the

lessee of the St. James¿s Theatre, who expressed an earnest desire to be the first to

introduce ¿Boz¿ to the public as a dramatic writer. A favourite comedian of that day,

John Pritt Harley, after reading the words of the opera prior to its representation,

declared it was ¿a sure card,¿ and felt so confident of its success that he offered to

wager ten pounds that it would run fifty nights!¿an assurance which at once decided

Braham to produce it.