Cirrus@Austlit

Black-Eyed Susan; Or, All in the Downs is a comic melodrama in three acts. The story concerns a sailor, William, who returns to England from the Napoleonic Wars and finds that his wife Susan is being harassed by her crooked landlord uncle and later by his drunken, dastardly captain, who tries to seduce her. Although William is later court-martialled for attacking a senior officer, the play ends happily. Much of the humour in the piece centers on the sailor's nautical dialect. Aspects of the story were later parodied by Gilbert and Sullivan in their operetta H.M.S. Pinafore (1878). The play was also popular in Australia, both in its original form and in burlesque form.