Drama
He found his true vein in drama, and produced over 30 plays, after having his first major success with the The Man of Airlie, which was shown in London and New York. He worked mainly with the Lyceum Theatre. Some of his most notable works were Medea in Corinth, Eugene Aram, Jane Shore, Buckingham, and Olivia, a dramatisation of The Vicar of Wakefield, which had great success. Wills' plays were typically in verse, participating in the revival of verse drama at the time.
Many of his plays were based on historical events. Charles I, about the life of the English king, was one of his major successes. These works has been strongly criticised for their freedom with historical fact. Harold Child in The Cambridge History of English and American Literature commented,
| “ | His caricature of Oliver Cromwell in Charles I (1872) must strike anyone who has seen or read that play not only as ridiculous, but as a sacrifice of dramatic for theatrical effect; and, to judge from contemporary criticism, his treatment of John Knox in the unpublished Marie Stuart (1874) was no better. | ” |
Richard Cordell described Charles I as "an amazing picture of Charles as the guileless prince yoked to a perfect queen, with Cromwell as the heavy villain."
Wills worked regularly with Henry Irving. Irving produced his Vanderdecken in 1878, a version of the Flying Dutchman story. In 1880 he created a revised version of Henrik Hertz's play King René's Daughter under the title Iolanthe. Irving commissioned King Arthur in 1890, but it remained unproduced as Irving was unhappy with the work. He asked J. Comyns Carr to rewrite it. Irving also commissioned a version of Don Quixote but did not produce it.
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