Young Sam Johnson

Johnson's brightest prospect of income, when setting off for London in 1737, was to get his tragedy Irene produced, but it would take more than a decade for that to occur. Irene is based on an episode related in Richard Knolles's 1603 The Generall Historie of the Turkes, and tells the story of the Turkish Sultan Mahomet (Mehmed II, 1432-1481) falling in love with a Greek woman, Irene, at the siege of Constantinople. Although the play was substantially completed by 1741, Johnson continued to revise it, as this manuscript shows. David Garrick, having taken over the management of the Drury Lane Theater, was able in 1749 to give his friend's play a fairly successful nine-night run, providing Johnson with nearly £200 in much-needed income.