On Sunday, December 8, 1872, the manager of the Theatre Comique on Broadway took the unusual step of buying up almost the entire front page of the New York Herald to puff the triumph of his latest presentation. It was called Africa or Livingstone and Stanley, and, to judge from the ecstatic reviews that were quoted, the show was a ringing success. The popular comedy team of Harrigan and Hart had been lured away from their previous engagement at a rival theatre in order to play the leads, and as the Comique was making an all-out attempt to broaden its audience appeal, the Herald’s lady readers were particularly assured that the theatre and its program offered an enjoyable evening that no well-bred lady need shun.

The theme of the entertainment was, of course, the spectacular rescue of Dr. David Livingstone in Central Africa by Henry Morton Stanley, though the tale had been enlivened by such extra stage characters as “the Congo Dancers of the Land of Crocodiles” and a cast-away Irish lady, Mrs. Biddy Malone, who in Scene vin taught the Africans an Irish war cry. The pièce de résistance of this light-hearted farrago was, to the delight of the audience, the inevitable tableau as Stanley strode on stage in his African kit with an enormous Stars and Stripes to discover a wilting Livingstone at his last gasp. Raising his hat, Stanley uttered the immortal phrase “Doctor Livingstone, I presume,”a remark that sent the Comique’s audience into guffaws of delight.

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