Rip Van Winkle; or, The Sleep of Twenty Years, dramatised by Dion Boucicault, and first performed at the Adelphi Theatre, London, on September 4, 1865.

   Scenes from Rip Van Winkle; or, The Sleep of Twenty Years, dramatised by Dion Boucicault, and first performed at the Adelphi Theatre, London, on September 4, 1865.  The famous American actor, Joseph Jefferson (1829-1905), played the role of Rip.

   Jefferson’s Rip Van Winkle first appeared at the Adelphi Theatre in London on September 4, 1865. It was not an immediate success, in part because Jefferson’s acting overshadowed the

Joseph Jefferson at the Adelph Theatre, London, in 1865

Mrs. Billington as Gretchen, Miss Buckston as Meenie

At the Adelphi! That brought back the very precious picture of Jefiferson at thirty-five, playing Rip Van Winkle

The new play of "Rip Van Winkle," a dramatised version, by Mr. Dion Boucicault, of Washington Irving's most genial and humorous story--in which, the hero, one of the early Dutch settlers in New York, falls in with the goblins who haunt the Katskill [sic] mountains, and drinks their magic liquor, causing him a sleep of twenty years--is likely to have a long run at the Adelphi Theatre.  The new American actor, Mr. Jefferson, who appears as Rip Van Winkle, seems as though he had created the character himself