The Heiress

The Heiress is a comedy play by the British playwright and soldier John Burgoyne. The play debuted at the Drury Lane Theatre on 14 January 1786. It concerns the engagement of Lord Gayville to Miss Alscrip, a fashionable woman he believes to be an heiress. Gayville later discovers that the woman who really stands to inherit the fortune is his true love Miss Clifford. The play was an enormous success, running for 31 performances in its initial season and revived again at Drury Lane for many seasons afterwards; the theatre historian John Genest called it the best new comedy since The School for Scandal. The play was initially anonymous, but Burgoyne was soon widely reported to be the author and he acknowledged this after the play's debut.