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Lafitte, a play in prologue and four acts cover

Lafitte, a play in prologue and four acts

Chapter 2: CHARACTERS
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About This Book

The play charts the transformation of Jean Durand into the pirate leader Jean Lafitte, interweaving a romantic subplot between him and Mariana D’Acosta with family obligations, inheritance conditions, and political exile. Scenes alternate between a French prologue, New Orleans salons, ships at sea, and the Red House at Barataria, bringing together nuns, voodoo practitioners, merchants, and naval officers as competing authorities. Tensions among loyalty, honor, law, and survival escalate through duels, schemes, and shifting alliances involving American and British officers and local officials. The work contrasts intimate personal loyalties with larger questions of national allegiance and the ambiguous morality of privateering and piracy.

CHARACTERS

JEAN DURAND, afterwards Jean Lafitte.
MARQUIS D’ACOSTA, belonging to the court of Ferdinand VII.
DON MANUEL D’ACOSTA, his son.
MARIANA D’ACOSTA, his niece.
PEDRO D’ACOSTA, Mariana’s brother by adoption.
BELUCHE, a soldier in Napoleon’s army.
DELLONNE, a sentry.
LEON DUVAL, a wealthy Louisianian.
BELLA CARDEZ, his step-daughter.
DARBLEE, proprietor of l’hotel des Exiles.
DOMINIQUE YOU, his nephew.
BAPTISTE, his negro servant.
A STRANGER
MOTHER AUGUSTUS, an austere, elderly nun.
LIZBETTE, a voo-doo of Barataria.
FATHER POULARDE, a rubicund, self-confessed optimist.
DOCTOR BORDE, the Pride’s doctor.
FATHER CUTHBERT, the priest of Barataria.
CAPTAIN LOCKYER, of the British navy.
CAPTAIN McWILLIAMS, of the British navy.
GOVERNOR CLAIBORNE, Governor of Louisiana.
CHAIRMAN, on the Committee of War Measures.
SHIP CAPTAIN, of American vessel.
OFFICERS, PASSENGERS, of American vessel.
MATE, of the Creole.

Politicians and legislators, two roysterers, Spanish merchants,
nuns, pirates, hunters, grave-diggers, ladies and gentlemen,
soldiers, servants, guards, and a messenger.