Our American Cousin

Our American Cousin is a three-act play by English playwright Tom Taylor. This was the play Abraham Lincoln was watching when he was assassinated. It is a farce featuring awkward, boorish American Asa Trenchard, who is introduced to his aristocratic English relatives when he goes to England to claim the family estate. The play premiered with great success at Laura Keene's Theatre in New York City in 1858, with Keene in the cast, the title character played by Joseph Jefferson, and Edward Askew Sothern playing Lord Dundreary.
The play achieved great renown during its first few years and remained very popular throughout the second half of the 19th century, but it is best remembered in modern times as the play that President Abraham Lincoln was attending in Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., when he was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865's long-running 1861 London production was also successful.