The Bushrangers

For the 1829 play, see The Bushrangers (Burn play).
The Bushrangers
Written byHenry Melville
Date premiered29 May 1834[1][2]
Place premieredArgyle Rooms, Hobart
Original languageEnglish
Subjectbushrangers
GenreMelodrama

The Bushrangers; or Norwood Vale is a 1834 Australian stage play by Henry Melville. It was the first play with an Australian theme to be published and staged in Australia.[3]

It is not to be confused with the 1829 play The Bushrangers by David Burn. According to Margare Williams, the plays "belong to two very different studies of the bushranging subject, and the immigrant Melville’s is, surprisingly, the less specific of the two. It has about as simple a melodramatic plot as it would be possible to find and seems to confirm the author’s description of it in his foreword to the published text as ‘a theatrical piece, introducing a few Colonial characters’."[4]

  1. ^ "Classified Advertising". The Hobart Town Courier (Tas. : 1827 - 1839). Tas.: National Library of Australia. 6 June 1834. p. 3. Retrieved 7 September 2013.
  2. ^ "Advertising". Colonial Times. Vol. 19, no. 943. Tasmania, Australia. 27 May 1834. p. 3. Retrieved 6 July 2020 – via National Library of Australia.
  3. ^ E. Flinn, 'Melville, Henry (1799–1873)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University accessed 7 September 2013.
  4. ^ Williams, Margaret (1983). Australia on the popular stage, 1829-1929 : an historical entertainment in six acts. p. 9.