THE JOURNAL OF

AMERICAN DRAMA AND THEATRE

Volume 13, Number 2 Spring 2001
Editor: Vera Mowry Roberts
Co-Editor: Jane Bowers
Managing Editor: Kimberly Pritchard
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Martin E. Segal Theatre Center
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OF THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
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Ruby Cohn Bruce A. McConachie
Margaret Wilkerson Don B. Wilmeth
Robert Vorl icky
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2001
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THE JOURNAL OF AMERICAN DRAMA AND THEATRE
Volume 13, Number 2 Spring 2001
Contents
WALTER MESERVE AND MOLLIE ANN MESERVE, 1
Aspirations, Challenges, and Accomplishments:
America's Literary Dramatists of the 1850s
VINCENT lANDRO, 23
Media Mania: The Demonizing of
the Theatrical Syndicate
MAURA CRONIN, 51
The Yankee and the Veteran:
Vehicles of Nationalism
ALICE PETERSEN, 71
"Wishing on the Eye of the Horse": The
Concept of "Entity" in Gertrude Stein's Listen to Me
JULIAN MATES, 85
William Dunlap's A Trip to Niagara
CONTRIBUTORS 97
Journal of American Drama and Theatre 13 (Spring 2001)
ASPIRATIONS, CHALLENGES, AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS:
AMERICA
1
S LITERARY DRAMATISTS OF THE 1850s
WALTER J. MESERVE AND MOLLIE ANN MESERVE
In any generation an amazing number of people with literary
pretensions will attempt to write for the theatre. There seems
always to be that certain fascination with "the stage." Clearly,
during the decade of the 1850s-when Nathaniel Hawthorne derided
his competition as "a damn'd mob of scribbling women"-the number
of playwriting efforts thrust hopefully into the faces of American
theatre managers illustrates this point. Those aspiring dramatists
who were essayists or editors of periodicals frequently exploited
contemporary issues in their plays; others displayed an awareness
limited to the classical literary world and echoing a traditional voice
that brought satisfaction mainly to a few reclusive scholars.
Surprisingly, however, a large number of both these types of writers
received public hearings in theatres - even if each play occupied a
select audience for a single evening. In fact, during this decade
such writers were actively encouraged to create for the theatre - as
successful writers would be throughout the nineteenth century
(Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, Henry James, Hamlin Garland,
Stephen Crane, to name a few) and are encouraged even today.
Laura Keene, managing her own New Theatre in New York, was
both daring and shrewd in making the following announcement in
her playbill for 31 August, 1857:
It will be the study of this management to produce in rapid
succession, such a series of excellent plays as will sustain
the high reputation this establishment has already achieved
by the production, during the past season, of fifteen pieces
by New Dramatists, besides the numberless dramas of
English authorship . . . While selecting such pieces as have
been stamped with trans-Atlantic success/ the management
will also endeavor to present such American plays, of
2 MESERVE
modern and historical nature, as will tend to the
establishment of a truly American drama.
1
It should be pointed out, of course, that the financial panic of
the same year ushered in a critical time for theatres, and Laura
Keene was forced to promote her offerings in any way she could.
Her own productions of G. P. Wilkins's The Siam Light Guard in
September had limited success with Joe Jeferson in a comic role,
but her presentation of Charles T. P. Ware's Splendid which
made use of topical humor and the current financial crisis, failed in
October. Miss Keene's nationalistic ploys, however, seemed
admirable, and others obviously tried the same technique. Mrs.
David P. Bowers, manager of Philadelphia's Walnut Street Theatre,
announced in the Philadelphia Daily News, 12 December 1857, that
she would produce the best new plays by native dramatists, but
there is no evidence that she made good her promise. Still, her
idea held merit. Meanwhile, journeymen playwrights were churning
out amusements with reckless haste. More serious writers needed
encouragement - and more experience.
Among those journal writers and editors who with varying
degrees of success also contributed to the theatre was Oliver Bell
Bunce (1828-1890), for several years editor of Appleton's Journal.
For Bunce playwriting seemed to be an early love, and his first play,
The Morning of Life, had been produced at the Bowery Theatre in
New York in 1848. In 1850, his second effort, Marco Bozzaris,
dramatizing the recent revolt in Greece with a highly patriotic
interpretation of the hero, played by James Wallack, was also
staged at the Bowery. Although The Spirit of the Times was
favorably disposed toward this tragedy, the play did not last.
2
Presumably Wallack, who, in distinct contrast to his nephew, Lester
Wallack, deserves commendation for his support of works by
American playwrights such as Nathania! Parker Willis, Robert
Conrad, and Bunce, also appeared in Bunce's play entitled Fate/ or
the a romantic tragedy in blank verse, published privately
in 1856.
This Gothic drama, with its images and impassioned,
extravagant speeches, is well plotted but peopled with stereotypical
and rapacious characters whose unrelieved excesses become quite
dull. Rupert, banished by his father the Duke, returns home to see
Corinna and in so doing spurns Lady Catherine, whose jealous
revenge brings death to Corinna. Only at the end of the play does
1
George C. D. Odell, Annals of the New York Stage 7 (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1927-49), 29.
2
The Spirit of The Times_ 15 June 1850, 204.
ASPIRATIONS
3
Catherine repent: "Remorse doth shake my nature" (V,v). But it is
too late. Rupert, now gone mad from the strains of imbalance
inherited from his insane mother, kills Catherine's co- conspirator
and, in the act receives a mortal wound. Although Fate - with its
foreign setting, poetic imagery, and Gothic atmosphere - did not
play to the tastes of many audiences of the 1850s, Bunce's
approach was typical among literary figures who tried to impose
their traditional standards upon theatregoers. No matter that
audiences craved light and extravagant amusement from their
playwrights and spectacular performances by actors and actresses,
whatever the vehicle might be.
Bunce found moderate success on the stage only once -and this
by the force of his own good writing. Love in 76 was first produced
at Laura Keene's Theatre, 28 February, 1857, with Miss Keene cast
as the heroine, Rose Elsworth. Based on "an incident of the
Revolution" and taking place at the Elsworth home during a single
afternoon and evening, the play provided lively entertainment.
Laurence Hutton, writing later in the century and with limited
information which has helped distort the modern reader's
understanding of nineteenth-century American drama, called it the
"only play of that period which is entirely social in its character; and
a charming contrast to its blood-and-thunder associates."
3
Hutton
was seriously wrong on the first count, right on the second, and
only too shrewd in his observation that the play "was too pure in
tone to suit a public who craved burlesque and extravaganza." In
any event, it held the stage only two weeks.
In Love in 76, Rose, a rebel in love with Captain Armstrong of
the American army, controls the action of the play with her quick wit
and determination, while Bunce supports his plot with some of the
worn conventions of nineteenth-century comedy. As the daughter
of a staunch Tory and the sister of a soldier in the British army,
Rose encounters the obvious problems which create great comedy.
The villain of the play, Major Cleveland of the British army, wants to
arrest Armstrong as a spy and would rather enjoy taking Rose as his
mistress; but he is no match for her cleverness. Having hidden
captain Armstrong in the house, Rose feigns an interest in British
captain Arbald and extracts a promise from Major Cleveland to
protect "her captain," a promise she later holds Cleveland to when
he catches Armstrong and Rose together. The persistent Major
Cleveland then arranges a "military joke" and persuades Bridget, the
maid, to disguise herself as Rose in a marriage to Armstrong.
Always at least one step ahead of Cleveland, however, Rose
3
Laurence Hutton, Curiosities of the American Stage (New York: Harper &
Brothers, 1891), 20.
4 MESERVE
disguises herself as Bridget, marries Armstrong, "her and
threatens Major Cleveland with loss of honor if he does not free her
husband. Although somewhat stilted and burdened with
innumerable asides, the dialogue is remarkably clever and the plot
effective in spite of its traditional curtain lines to the audience: "Do
you approve the whiggish maid, and sanction her schemes so badly
played? The heart of love is heroic in every age; and after all
What difference can we affix,
'Twixt love to-day, and love in '76?"
No fool in life, Bunce learned something from this and his other
limited experiences in the theatre: no tangible rewards! He gave up
writing plays and revived his earlier interest in other literary genres:
stories such as A Bachelor's Story ( 1859) and The Opinions and
Disputations of Bachelor Bluff (1881); a book on etiquette and
grammar entitled Don't (1884); and two picture volumes,
Picturesque America (1872-74) and Picturesque Europe (1875-79).
A playwright of some potential, yet one clearly limited by the only
literary conventions he understood, Bunce could not hope to please
pre-Civil War audiences for long. After the conflict, theatre
management and the structure of acting companies changed with
the arrival on the scene of Augustin Daly and others, and with the
subsequent changes in theatre fare, Bunce did not accept the
challenges.
During the 1850s a few of the more traditionally and classically
oriented plays written by some of the moderately successful
dramatists from the previous decade appeared on American stages.
These writers, boasting major reputations in neither the literary
world nor the theatre world, could not succeed in bridging the two,
especially in light of the unsettled and uncertain condition of
American literature and a highly fractious environment in the
theatre. In the fall of 1850 the American actor McKean Buchanan
purchased a revision of Isaac C. Pray's 1837 play entitled Poetus
Caecinna; or, the Roman Consul, and The Spirit did its best to
promote his efforts on the stage.
4
The play did not appeal. Nor did
Joseph S. Jones's play Zafari the Bohemian, produced at the Boston
Theatre in the winter of 1856, although Jones's reputation was still
strong in spite of his being past his prime. During the fall of 1853
audiences in and around Cincinnati were thoroughly entranced
5
by
Cornelius Mathews's poetic tragedy Witchcraft (1846) while his
4
The Spirit of The 5 October 1850, 396.
5
The Spirit of The Times, 24 September 1853, 374.
ASPIRATIONS
5
Jacob Leister (1848) played in California in 1854.
6
In Boston
"Acorn" (James Oakes), the celebrated critic for the Spirit, did his
utmost to raise an audience for Epes Sargent's tragedy entitled The
Priestess (1855) based on Bellini's Norma. Calling it "an effective
acting tragedy, "Acorn" quoted passages from the play and declared
it marked by "a strength of language, beauty of diction, as well as
by the true soul and inspiration of poesy"
7
He hailed the production
of this five-act tragedy in late March 1858, as a "great theatrical
event." Spectacle though it was, however, The Priestess did not
last in Boston on any other stage.
The mid-nineteeth century American audience demanded
spectacles. Many plays, of course, were light romantic
extravaganzas that managed to stimulate only the slightest of
emotions. Others were spectacles that might provoke thought and
suggest the "moral convulsions of the earth" that shocked Walt
Whitman as he wrote his essay on "The Eighteenth Presidency" in
1856. Meanwhile, many among the literati persisted in their
attempts to write plays in a traditional mode - sometimes with the
tastes of the audience in mind but more frequently interested only
in appealing to a reading public. Andrti A tragedy in five acts by W.
W. Lord, was described by the critic of The National Magazine,
"Devoted to Literature, Art and Religion"(November 1857, 186), as
"an attempt to contribute something to our legitimate American and
national literature," while "the only stage on which he [Lord]
contemplates the representation of his drama is the mind of the
reader." Chronicles, by Josiah P. Quincy, who based his work on
the life of Tiberi us, Emperor of Rome, was reviewed by The National
Era (30 October 1856, 174) as a poetic drama "modelled on the
plan of Greek tragedy." Tan-Go-Ru-a, a historical drama (1856) by
H.C. Moorehead, a man of considerable experience with American
Indians, explored in a quasi- dramatic form their problems with the
white settlers of the Province of Pennsylvania at mid-eighteenth
century. A story in dialogue, the play gave even the kindly disposed
reviewer for Godey's Magazine (September 1856, 276) little
opportunity. He found it undistinguished and lacking a "dramatic
spirit." Such playwrights might argue that their grand
configurations suggested events related to contemporary public
outcry, but they seriously misunderstood the interests of America's
theatregoing public.
6
The Spint of The Times, 27 January 1854, 600.
7
The Spirit of The Times, 24 February 1855, 19; 17 March 1855, 493; 31
March 1855, 74.
6 MESERVE
Louisa Susanna McCord (1810-1879), generally associated with
Charleston, South Carolina, where she was born and died, has held
a reputation as a poet and essayist who tackled social problems.
Her criticism of Uncle Tom's Cabin in the Southern Quarterly Review
for January 1853, for example, justified slavery as a humanitarian
institution. Her five-act tragedy, Caius Gracchus, 1851, exposed her
severe classical education as well as her disdain for acquiring the
skills necessary for creating acceptable drama for contemporary
theatre.
McCord was not alone in her elitist approach to the theatre,
however, and a perceptive reviewer of her play in The
Knickerbocker (January 1853, 69-72) attempted to explain a
problem relevant to mid-nineteenth century American literature and
theatre that she and others faced: "The drama is no a favorite form
in the poetical literature of the day; perhaps because the fashion is
rather to deal with the general. and abstract, or to take a wider
range in view of humanity than belongs to the expression of
individual feelings, or the portraiture of individual character." The
reviewer went on to suggest that "female writers" in particular
tended to avoid the drama, a view which seems to be supported by
the abundance of women novelists of the period.
The reviewer's observation regarding the "poetical literature of
the day" is clearly bolstered -as it would today-by the great
popularity of light-hearted "local" and topical farces and
melodramas in contrast to the limited public appeal of serious
drama of historical and philosophical intent. Both forms, however
disparate their contemporary reception, have been equally ignored
by most modern scholars -to the detriment of a comprehensive
understanding of American culture and society of the period.
Plays featuring Mose the Fire B'hoy, the Yankee, or the stage
Irishman, were legion at this time. Fewer extant plays provide
evidence of more literary ambitions. Cortez., the Conqueror,
published in 1857, was written earlier in the decade by Lewis F.
Thomas (1808-1868), a poet and Journalist in and around Baltimore
who later in life practiced law in Washington, D.C. In 1855 The
National Era published a scene from this tragedy founded, as its title
suggests, on the early conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards. History
inspired Thomas to dramatize his own opinion of the contemporary
issue of slavery. Hassan, Cortez's Moorish slave, questions a
Christian gentleman's advice that Hassan take his liberty and kill the
tyrants, all in "Heaven's name!" Hassan, however, sees "another
master-nothing more" and vows to report the incident. "If I must
ASPIRATIONS 7
be a slave, I 'll prove, at least ,/Myself, a faithful, honest and true
man."
8
Another Maryland poet, George Henry Miles (1824-1871), also a
lawyer and a professor of English literature at Mount St. Mary's
College in Emmitsburg, wrote at least four plays that were
performed in New York. Upon receiving commendation from actor
Edwin Forrest for his first tragedy, Michael di Lando, Gonfalonier of
Florence, in 1847, Miles immediately submitted Mohammed, the
Arabian Prophet to a contest for which Forrest offered a prize of
$1,000 "for the best original tragedy in four acts." Although Forrest
never produced the winning play from this contest, he sent the prize
money to Miles-because his play most nearly met the conditions of
the award. Brougham's Lyceum eventually produced the play on 27
October, 1851, with J.A. Neafie in the title role.
Meanwhile, Miles wrote DeSoto (1852); a comedy entitled Blight
and Bloom (1854); Mary's Birthday (1857); and Senor Valiente
(1858)-all of which were produced in New York theatres. After
receiving his appointment to the faculty of Mount St. Mary's College
in 1858, he continued to write plays, some of them adapted from
popular novels: Oliver Afraja the Sorcerer, The Parish
Clerk, Emily Chester, Love and Honor, The Old Curiosity Shop,
Thiodolf the Icelander, and a play called The Seven Sisters, which
symbolized the Southern states that agitated for withdrawal from
the Union. Miles evidently did not fight in the Civil War, although his
hymn, "God Save the South," was very dear to Southern hearts
during the conflict, and was sung in schools throughout the
Confederacy.
9
During the last five years of his life Miles devoted his
energies exclusively to literature and especially to the study of
Shakespeare's major plays.
Miles studied his resources thoroughly before writing
Mohammed and explained his thesis in a preface to the published
play: "The lesson conveyed by the life and death of the Arabian
imposter is the inability of the greatest man, starting with the purest
motives, to counterfeit a mission from God, without becoming the
slave of hell." Mohammed first bullies his wife into accepting his
dream that "there is no God but one-Mohammed is his prophet,"
and then believing himself a prophet, embarks upon his mission: to
assert his presumption by imposture. Throughout the play, by
willful deceit and cunning, he converts some and enrages others,
makes many enemies, uses Ali to assume his guise in order that he
may escape (III, ii), leads the forces of Medina against the people
8
The National Era IX (28 June 1855), 101.
9
See P. L. Duffy, "George Henry Miles" in Edwin Alderman, ed., The Library
of Southern Literature (Atlanta: Martin and Hoyt Co. , 1907): 3641-43.
8 MESERVE
of Mecca as an act of vengeance toward his enemies (IV, v) and
finally succumbs to poison administered by the wife of a man he
had killed. In his long death scene Mohammed shows his
impossible arrogance:
.. . a pen and a parchment!
I'll write a book as much above the Koran,
As Heaven above the sea that mirrors it !
Oh! -this is death! Now, angel, take my soul!
(He extends both arms, fixes his eyes above,
and leans forward.)
Pardon my sins, 0 God! I come! I come-
Amony my fellows-citizens on high! (V, iv)
In spite of some impassioned speeches, Mohammed did not
provide the great role that Forrest required. There is nothing of
Metamora or Sparticus in his make-up. He is not a noble character;
he has few strong lines and no spectacular or grand actions. Only a
few scenes, in fact, are well dramatized-such as the climax of Act
III, when Mohammed escapes his enemies disguised as a Bedouin
and vows vengeance by the crescent moon. The play offers no
humor, no change of pace-a fault shared by many literary plays of
this period-only love and heroics opposed to villainy in long and
talky scenes. Forrest knew what he wanted-and, perhaps more to
the point, did not want-when he chose not to produce this play,
but another good actor could find something there, as Mackean
Buchanan later proved. After receiving permission from Miles, who
had published the play in 1850, Buchanan reduced the play to three
acts and reconstructed it with "such dramatic situations as I thought
it needed" and performed the work successfully in London and other
English cities.
10
Miles's drama, DeSoto, the Hero of the Mississippi, first
produced by James E. Murdock in Philadelphia on 19 April 1852,
enjoyed considerable popularity among theatre audiences during
the 1850s. The imagery and the language of the play were
frequently praised, but the spectacular scenery depicting Florida and
the banks of the Mississipi River, along with the beauty of the
Indian girl Ulah, added to an audience's pleasure. In his search for
the great river, DeSoto doubts the fidelity of his Indian guides and
seized Ulah, the daughter of the chief, as a hostage to insure their
loyalty. At one point in his journey DeSoto must reinspire the
dedication of his own soldiers, who show increasing signs of
weariness and rebellion. Of far greater danger to DeSoto, a
10
The Spirit of The Times, 22 October 1853, 422.
ASPIRATIONS 9
devoted husband to his wife in Spain, is the undisguised adoration
of his lovely captive. Complicating the plot, Ulah is betrayed by one
of DeSoto's soldiers and carried off by the Indian chief, Tuscaluya.
When the Chief reveals to Ulah that she is not his daughter, but of
Spanish blood, and then offers his love, she spurns him. DeSoto's
dramatic rescue attempt ends as Ulah dies in his arms, a victim of
Tuscaluya's dagger. At the Mississippi River where "the commerce
of the world is riding," DeSoto stakes his claim in the name of Spain,
pursues and gains revenge upon the Indians, and, as he hears of
the death of his wife and child, receives a poisoned arrow in his
breast. Bereft of hope and life, he speaks of the "everlasting
waves" of Mississippi River as "my monument." In at least one
production the tableau of DeSoto's death is described by a reviewer
as imitating William H. Powell's painting of the "Burial of DeSoto in
the Mississippi." Although the love of Ulah for DeSoto brings some
sense of humanity to the play, and the spectacular scenery excited
audiences, the unrelieved seriousness of the dramatist exposes his
main purpose.
11
With Mary's Birthday, or, the Cynic (1857) Miles evidently tried
to lighten his approach and suggest that he did, after all, possess a
sense of humor. He could not, however, avoid the contrived and
sentimental melodrama which was the mode of the day. George
Lordly is the cynic whose ward, Mary, is engaged to his brother,
Vernon. One of the few bright sentiments expressed in the play is
George's declaration that he keeps an English butler "because your
English flunkey has a genius for being kicked and cuffed about, and
I never could find an American with the least talent that way" (III,
1). Mary is despondent on her birthday because Vernon not only
loves another but realizes that Mary loves George. Such gloominess
might prevail, but the dramatist manipulates events to permit not
only two happy marriages but a joyous birthday as well. Although
Laura Keene's acting the part of Mary Stillworth helped the play's
brief run in New York, it was never popular. Even the kindly critic
from The Spirit of the Times (14 February 1875, 21) found the
dialogue preachy- certainly a lamentable weakness of many of the
literature-oriented dramatists.
For his last produced play, Senor Valiente (1858), a comedy in
five acts, Miles set the action in New York City, where he placed a
thoroughly modern character-a lawyer appropriately named
Chiselby who charged exorbitant fees, rubbed his hands together
11
See reviews for productions in Boston, Baltimore and New York: Spirit, 2
April 1853, 73; Spint, 19 January 1855, 577; Spirit, 25 April 1857, 132. Powell's
1853 painting is entitled "Discovery of the Mississippi by DeSoto, 1541." A
frieze in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington entitled "Midnight Burial of DeSoto
in the Mississippi" was created late in the decade of the 1850s.
10
MESERVE
gleefully, gulped his wine, hated all libraries, and spoke very rapidly.
Miles also resorted to the tired boy-gets-girl formula, with the aid of
much intrigue of plot and frequent disguise changes by Harry
Clinton, who portrayed Valiente. Moderately successful for his day
but distinguished by his peers as neither poet nor dramatist, Miles
was granted an exposure that suggests both the hope of some
theatre managers and the despair they must have endured.
Two well-known literary figures from the 1850s whose few
dramatic efforts were produced on the commercial stage, Julia Ward
Howe and William Gilmore Simms, stand in sharp contrast to such
minor writers as Laughton Osborn, George H. Calvert, and Charles
James Cannon, all of whom wrote with an eye toward publication
rather than production in the theatre. Employing traditional
dramatic form, whether for the closet or the stage, both major and
lesser authors uniformly considered their works as contributions to
the generally neglected genre of American dramtic literature. Julia
Ward Howe (1819-1910) had from childhood enjoyed writing plays.
Far from the mainstream of contemporary theatre, she was neither
sufficiently knowledgeable nor skillful enough to imitate the classical
traditions with any degree of success. Without diminishing the effect
of Lenora; or The Worlds Own, her greatest dramatic achievement,
this play probably owed its run of nights at Wallack's Theatre late
March of 1857 to the difficulties theatre managers were facing
during this year of financial panic. A plethora of novelties,
spectacles, and poetic experiments by well-known literary figures
found their way to the stages of New York and other cities during
the lean years of 1857 and 1858.
Best known for her stirring "Battle Hymn of the Republic" and
her anti-slavery endeavors with her husband Samule Gridley Howe,
whose energetic knight-errantry led him also to spectacular work
with the blind and the dumb at the Perkins Institue, Julia Ward
Howe maintains her position in the history of American poetry. She
placed her romantic tragedy in the early eighteenth century, when
Lenora, the queen of the village and loved by the artist Edward, is
swept off her feet by Lothair, a nobleman in disguise. Her dewey-
eyed admiration, however, quickly turns to hatred when she
discovers that he is married; and the play follows her road to
revenge and ultimately death by her own hand. Edward, while cast
aside during much of the action of the play, mourns his loss in the
curtain line:
The wreck of all that's fair and excellent;
A thing of tears and tenderness forever.
ASPIRATIONS 11
In spite of a lavish production at Wallack's Theatre, featuring
the admired efforts of Matilda Heron as Lenora, and certain
passages of graceful and passionate poetry, the play did not please
all critics. One confessed to losing "all sympathy for Lenora" after
the first scene and to being repelled by a "society even worse than
we had ever conceived that it could be."
12
Another reviewer
commented on Mrs. Howe's lack of knowledge of the stage, her
"straining for picturesque expressions," such as "chain of perfurmed
breath, padlocked with kisses" and paving stones described as the
"bosom of the street."
13
The withdrawal of the play from the stage
before the production could become an embarrassment was
accepted by The Spirit as a shrewd move.
14
With his reputation as a popular novelist, controversial essayist,
critic, and political writer, William Gilmore Simms (1806-1870) might
have been expected to try his hand at writing for the theatre.
Having aligned himself with the "Young America" movement in the
1840s, Simms grew increasingly politically oriented, until politics
completely dominated his life and work. After 1855 he found less
and less time for writing, although his enthusiasm for the drama
clearly revealed a lifelong interest in reading plays and attending the
theatre.
15
In his novels he often quoted liberally from plays; he
reviewed contemporary theatre productions, and he compiled and
edited A Supplement to the Plays of William Shakespeare ( 1848).
Thoroughly consistent in his action, Simms had no interest in writing
closet drama and when he started to write plays immediately
thought of Edwin Forrest. Forrest, however, did not find Simms's
work sufficiently developed or stageworthy, and Simms was forced
to become aware of his dramaturgical weakness-ineffective
situations, for example, and lagging action.
16
Stubbornly, he
persisted, but his lack of success made him take a more realistic
look at his work, and when in 1852 he published Michael Bonham;
~ the Fall of Bexar (written in 1843-44) in the Southern Literary
12
The Spirit of The Times_ 21 March 1857, 72.
13
The Spirit of The Times_ 28 March 1857, 74.
14
The Spirit of The Times_ 4 April 1857, 96.
15
See Jon L. Wakelyn, The Politics of a Literary Man, William Gilmore
Simms(Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1973).
16
See Edd Winfield Parks, William Gilmore Simms as Literary Critic
(Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1961): 68-71.
12
MESERVE
Messenger, he admitted that he had first written the play for the
stage but later found that it read better as a story.
17
Succeeding in having only one play produced-and this twelve
years after he wrote it-Simms's career as a dramatist illustrates the
unrelenting demands placed upon American playwrights before the
Civil War, all of which he could have anticipated. As a literary man
and never a stranger in the theatre, Simms wrote opening
addresses and criticism for the Charleston stage, particularly the
New Charleston Theatre in 1837 and the Academy of Music in 1869.
He wrote essays on the drama and commented in particular on
Southern playwrights, such as Isaac Harby and William Ioor. At one
time he wrote to a friend that "dramatic writing was my first
passion, and I believe it to be my forte.'
118
The passage of time has
proven him mistaken in this self analysis.
After trying to sharpen his fledging skill with various dramatic
sketches written between 1825 and 1835, Simms looked for help
from Edwin Forrest with his major plays: Michael Bonham (1834-44)
and Norman Maurie; or The Man of the People (1847). Forrest,
however, had numerous playwrights vying for his favor, among
them the excellent writer and successful novelist and dramatist,
Robert Montgomery Bird, whose experiences with the actor soured
his enthusiasm for the theatre and sent him back to writing fiction.
In any event, Forrest could afford to be unimpressed by Simms's
efforts. Perhaps unfortunately, Simms did have the loyal support of
friends. Evert Duychinck, a "Young American" and one of two
brothers who compiled the Cyclopedia of American Literature,
praised Simms's work in the 1875 edition and stated, falsely, that
"both of these [plays] have been acted with success." Meanwhile,
Simms continued to turn out his poetic dramas. George Henry
Boker, another unhappy but far more talented dramatist, told
Simms in a letter in 1869 that he had just handed Simms's drama,
The Peace of Elis, to the editor of Lippincott's Magazine, without
effect.
19
While Simms lacked the skills necessary for writing for the
stage and ignored the demands of contemporary theatre, his plays
were nonetheless relevant to the period in which he lived. As
strong political statements, they echoed the public voice in a far
more substantial manner than the work of the numerous
17
Noted in Quinn, A History of the American Drama from the Beginning to
the Civil War(New York: Appleto-Century-Crofts, Inc, 1943), 285.
18
Charles Watson, Antebellum Charleston Dramatists (University of
Alabama Press, 1976), 119.
19
Jay B. Hubbell, "Five Letters from George Henry Boker to William Gilmore
Simms," Pennsylvania Magazine LXIII (January 1939): 66- 71.
ASPIRATIONS 13
journeyman playwrights who frequently mouthed the ideas of
popular writers.
Michael Bonham follows the expolits of the title hero through
the Battle of the Alamo to his successful courtship of the governor's
daughter. Love and honor, however, were in Simms's mind
secondary to certain points of view he espoused. He energetically
preached in favor of the annexation of Texas by the United States
as a Southern response to the anti-slavery movement and
considered his play a very "Texan" drama to which, when it was first
produced at the Charleston Theatre in March of 1855, he added an
"Ode to Calhoun" as a tribute to the man whose strong support of
Texan annexation Simms greatly admired.
In Norman Maurice; or, The Man of the People Simms
advocated the admission of slave states from the West and
attempted to portray the ideal leader of the people as one who
would follow Simms's own principles. A physically powerful man, a
fine orator, and a person of high standards, virtue and intergrity,
Maurice, a young lawyer from Philadelphia, is living happily with his
wife, Clarice, in St. Louis. There he is confronted by a villian from
back East who, for no clear reason, would possess Clarice at any
cost. Having consented to run for the Senate in Missouri, Maurice is
challenged by his opponent's trumped-up charge of forgery, a
charge supported by the villain. Clarice's struggle with this villain
when he gives her the forged document, and her attempt to stab
him, result in a false report of the villain's death at Maurice's hand-
and Clarice's own death. When Maurice is finally absolved of both
forgery and murder and elected to the legislative body, he returns
home to find his wife dying. A major inspiration for Maurice as a
true man of the people was Edwin Forrest himself, whose one
venture into politics in 1838 reveals some similarity to Simms's hero.
But despite its provocative subject matter, Forrest would not be
persuaded to add this play to his repertoire.
The highly melodramatic triangle energizes the basic plot of
Norman Maurice, while politics controls its atmosphere. In Simms's
mind the seriousness of his theme did allow for light intrusions,
while his ponderous blank verse added to the uncomprmising
impression of the drama. Although some critics admired the
attempt to treat a contemporary political situation as tragic drama,
Paul Hamilton Hayne, writing about "The Dramatic Poems of W.
Gilmore Simms" for Russell's Magazine, declared that any "attempt
to elevate the ordinary phases of political and sordid life, in our
time" could not approach "the grave dignity of tragedy."
20
Writing
earlier in the decade, a reviewer for Sartain's Union Magazine had
20
Russel/'s Magazine, II (December 1857): 240-59.
14
MESERVE
found the plot simple and effective and the "language distinguished
... for terseness of expression" but complained of "broad defects"
in the play.
21
Simms may have been more determined than many
of his fellow literary playwrights to see his work on the stage, but,
during this period of American theatre history, failure was virtually a
foregone conclusion.
Most authors of plays in verse wrote a few dramas and,
apparently satisfied to see their plays in print, moved on to other
pursuits. Some, however, created for themselves a considerable
body of dramatic work. Charles James Cannon (1810-1860), while
not a literary man by profession, published four volumes of his
collected works in 1857 (Volume IV consisting of Dramas), following
his Poems Dramatic and Miscellaneous, 1851. An aspiring writer, he
felt neglected by critics who allowed him only a slight reputation as
a promoter of polite literature for American Catholics.
22
Certainly,
Cannon's classical training and his religious beliefs are evident in all
that he wrote. Nonetheless, his great ambition, it seems, was to be
a dramatist, and his plays-weak as they are in dramatic action and
in general lacking theatricality-are not unlike and no worse than
many poetic dramas which did appear on the stage during the
1850s. Not alone in his lack of knowledge of the contemporary
stage nor his presumption that the playwright need not attempt to
please a particular audience, Cannon had something to say to the
people of America, and he was not without wit and a thoughtful
frame of mind.
Cannon's Rizzio explores the influence of the martyred David
Rizzio upon Mary Stuart, Queen of the Scots, whom he served as
secretary. It is a comment more than a play, however, as Cannon
attempts to enliven his excessively romantic and image-ridden
poetry with music and spectacular scenes. The Sculptor's Daughter
is set in Italy, where a young woman whose father, furious with the
improper advances of a suitor, stabs the man and flees the scene
with his daughter. The melodramatic plot develops as the daughter
becomes involved with a militant robber chief. Much of the last half
of his five-act play-particularly Act III, Scene i and Act IV, Scene
i-reveals cannon's sense of humanity, as the robber chief's
decision to become the good man his poetic nature dictates
determines the climax of the play. These scenes are also far more
compelling than those dramatizing the sculptor's spiritual renewal
and the daughter's reunion with her presumedly murdered lover.
21
Sartain's Union Magazine IX (1851): 277-8.
22
"C. J. Cannon's Works," Bronson's Quarterly II (October 1857): 503-27.
ASPIRATIONS 15
Dolores: A Tragedy takes place in Spain during the Spanish
Inquisition. Actually writing a morality play rather than a tragedy,
Cannon portrays Dolores as a "thoughtless prodigal " constantly
tested by a Stranger (the Devil in disguise) whose duty is to bring
her to ruin. The tests mount in intensity until finally, accused of
sorcery and imprisoned, Dolores hears a voice from above-"On the
Lord lay all thy care"(V). Instantly sustained, she conquers the
Stranger with her crucifix and, on the road to her execution, dies "a
glorified spirit." More overtly than his other plays, Dolores explores
the intellectual and moral precepts found in Cannon's prose and
poetry.
Cannon's two most interesting plays are Better Late Than
Never, published in 1854 and described as "an attempt at comedy,"
and The Oath of Office, a tragedy, 1850, published in 1854 with a
dedication to Franklin Pierce:
As thou the power but lent to thee-not given-
Shall use to bless or curse thy native land.
The time of Better Late Than Never is mid-nineteenth century,
the scene New York. The characters include Allsides, a merchant
running for Congress who tries to assure his victory by pledging
himself to three different and opposing political parties; Scape, a
money-lender, Sir Bryan O'Fallon, an Irish Baronet; Windfall, an
actor; Tag, Rag and Bobtail, as political leeches, and Allsides's wife
and daughter. Although the blank verse does not help this slight
farce, the action is frequently humorous, the dialogue witty, and the
characters, if hardly original, become at least interesting toward the
ending, which is more amusing than didactic.
Cannon's observations as expressed through his characters are
clearly an echo of the confused, and confusing, "public voice" of this
period. Allsides must be opposed to monopolies, commonalities,
carriages, transportation at public expense, and any man who owns
more than one coat. Theatres must be open and free to the
public-day and night. People have the "right of universal
suffering", Allsides's theory of the "grand education of salaries"
determines that everyone, the President included, shall have one
dollar a day. He is "opposed to all leveling tendencies," and he
supports the gallows and perpetual charters for all banks. Another
politician wants to keep all foreigners out of the country, which will
thus rise "as a nation to a rank but little inferior to that of the great
empire of China itself" (II, iii). As the plot unfolds, Allsides's
duplicity is exposed; and, in traditional farce fashion, Scape reforms
and the appropriate characters discover that they are mother and
16
MESERVE
son, contriving a happy ending. With his infusion of irony and
humor into much of the dialogue, Cannon may well have intended a
similar ridiculing of society in his conclusion. His comments on
money, banks, foreigners, China, suffrage and transportation were
well echoed in contemporary newspapers, and the play, lacking any
recorded performances, had it ever been staged, might well have
been successful.
The Oath of Office was produced at the Bowery Theatre in New
York on 18 March, 1850. A weak play, it nevertheless conveyed a
strong message, presumably directed at President Franklin Pierce.
The scene is fifteenth-century Ireland, and the plot is evidently
founded on a historical event. In a jealous fury the son of the
mayor of Galloway kills his friend, at the time a guest in his father's
house. As the sitting judge, the mayor sentences his son to be
hanged. When no one else will do the deed, this honorable man
feels obligated by his oath of office to perform the hanging himself:
"The law is satisfied-it has his life-"(V, iii). But the mayor still has
his own life to live. Despite the potential for powerful drama in
Cannon's thesis, his blank verse was unequal to the challenge, as
were his dramatic skills. The reviewer in Bronson's Quarterly was
revolted even by the written word and found the unrelieved horror
too horrible for the stage. More than his other plays, The Oath of
Office reveals the unrelenting force of Cannon's opinions and
provided a view of the author himself as a resolute man who,
regardless of the attitude of others, wrote what he believed.
George Henry Calvert (1803-1889), poet, essayist, dramatist,
biographer, critic, and popular lecturer, was born into a wealthy and
politically influential Maryland family, and grew up with all the
advantages: private schools, a Harvard education, and travel in
Europe. Having met Goethe and enjoyed the theatre in Berlin,
Paris, and London, he returned home, evidently to enjoy life in
Newport, and decided to pursue a literary career. The fact that he
had once been dismissed from Harvard for rebelling against the
college government may suggest something of his motivation at this
point in his life. His interest in writing for the theatre having been
inspired by his experience both in the library and among theatre
audiences, Calvert may well have been fascinated by the challenge
facing an American playwright at his time in history. His first effort
was a translation of Don Carlos, his second a tragedy in blank verse
entitled Count Julian, which he published in 1840. An inauspicious
beginning, Count Julian illustrates the youthful playwright's
dependency on Gothic horror and a habit of summarizing life in
soliloquies. Another early effort, associated with American history,
Arnold and Andre, was not published in its completed form until
1864 and is easily dismissed.
ASPIRATIONS 17
By mid-century Calvert had become more serious in his
playwriting endeavors and in establishing himself in the field of
American drama. Showing a lighter side to his artistry than
previously exposed, Calvert completed The Will and The Way in
1854 and sent it to an actor friend who tried without success to get
it produced. But this gentleman subsequently seized an opportunity
to read the play when asked to speak to the Mechanics Association
at the First Baptist Church in Newport. To his gratification, the
audience enjoyed the reading immensely.
A five-act comedy in blank verse set in the fifteenth-centruy
Syracuse, The Will and The Way, published in 1856, seems a
harmless play about a prince who falls in love with Rosalie-"a witty
wench, with will to match her beauty" (III, I)-and is confined to his
room at his home for refusing to marry Matilda, the choice of his
family. All things end happily, of course, and there is one fine and
intellectually provocative scene in which the prince's friend returns
from temporary banishment disguised as a clown to deliver a
message to Rosalie: "Despised symbol of folly, how I honor thee!
Badge of lowness, how I love thee! ... What a heels-over-head
world it is, where contempt can be turned into a handle of strength,
where a mask is the best wedge to gain entrance for truth, where
deceptions become honest and folly wise. But for weeping, I could
be the happiest man in the world by doing naught but laugh at it"
(V, i). Although the plot is worn and common-place, Calvert gives it
freshness with witty dialogue and an assortment of ideas worth
pondering. Unlike the audience at the reading, however, the
respected fathers of the First Baptist Church in Newport responded
differently: they were insensed at the idea of a play being read in
their church. A week later (30 December, 1854) Calvert published
an apology in The Mercury, while defending American drama and
his own attempt at comedy.
In 1856 Calvert published Like Unto Like, a three-act comedy
set in early sixteenth-century Florence and dramatizing the plight of
the daughter of a wealthy man who wants her to marry a title
rather than the man she loves. An unimpressive play, in both
concept and treatment, it did nothing for Calvert's reputation. The
following year he wrote an essay on "A National Drama" which was
published in Putman's Magazine (February 1857, 148-51). Calvert
saw a great future for American and English theatre, and he
staunchly defended the kind of drama he was writing. Theatre, he
contended, should be approached only with intellectual and political
freedom, and good plays should depend less upon "native material
than on universality of theme." Nevertheless, about 1859 he wrote
a satire on contemporary hotel life, entitled The Gatch; or, Three
18 MESERVE
Days at Newport The play is lost/ as he never published it
1
but he
did leave a comment
1
for what it is worth: "On reading it over I find
it full of fun
1
good hits
1
variety
1
rapidity
1
a good plot
1
a thoroughly
American character .... The dialogue is spirited and generally
progressive."
23
Calvert continued to write throughout his long lifer
but none of his plays were produced. More philosophical in nature
than keyed to contemporary American events/ he never appealed to
the popular theatrical appetite. Mirabeau, a historical drama (1873)
or The Maids of Orleans/ that same year
1
dealing with the hypocrisy
and worldliness of a priesthood that was deaf to a spiritual
message-these subject interested him. After his attempts failed to
gain a production for The Maids of Orleans
1
Calvert complained
about the "difficulty'/ of getting "a woman with both the soul and
the body needed for the Maid."
24
In 1868 he wrote Brangomar, a
tragedy concerned with the busy and vivid career of Napoleon
1
which he published in 1883.
Considering the number of poetic dramas performed in America
during the 1850S
1
Calvert perhaps had as much right as any to
expect a production/ but he lacked the reputation of the better
known literary figures. More significantly/ Calvert lacked friends in
the theatre who might have helped him gain experience in writing
for the stage.
Laughton Osborn (1809-1878) was another hopeful dramatist of
independent thought and action who wrote a great many plays
1
none of them performed in the theatre. Born into a wealthy New
York family/ he graduated from Columbia University and after a year
of foreign travel settled into a life of comfortable retirement in
Manhattan
1
where he attempted to penetrate the literary world.
Aggravated by the unfavorable reception of his early writing/ he
began to attack other writers in fierce reviews; he warred against
his critics andr at his own expense, issued successive and severely
critical publications, sometimes unsigned. In his work on The
Literati: Some Honest Opinions about Authorial Merits and Demerits
(1850), Edgar Allan Poe spoke favorably of Osborn as a person
1
but
even Poe thought that Osborn carried his ideas of "independence to
the point of Quixotism/ if not of absolute insanity" (p. 56).
Frustrated
1
Osborn published a volume of comedies in 1868 and a
volume of tragedies in 1870, which carried such titles as The Heart's
Sacrifice
1
Matilda of Denmarck, Bianco Capello/ and Mariamne/ a
Tragedy of Jewish History.
23
Ida G. Everson, George Henry Calvert, American Literary Pioneer(New
York: Columbia University Press, 1944), 170.
24
Everson, 203.
ASPIRATIONS 19
These published versions of Osborn's plays indicate that he
wrote with a theatre audience in mind. On occasion, for example,
he clarified upstage and downstage positions of the characters and
even suggested that certain lines should be omitted in the staged
version. Among his comedies are The Silver Head (1845); The
Double Deceit (1856); The Montanini (1856); and The School for
Critics; or a Natural Transformation (1867-68)-all in blank verse of
an undistinguished quality. In The Silver Head, the hero, Manfred,
is in love with Helen, a poor girl whose father's white hair "shall be
to-night a veil/Between your beauty and my passion." Oscar, the
hero's brother, whose love for his Creole mistress-the most
interesting character in the play-is intended to show his base
nature, tries to destroy the relationship between Manfred and Helen
but fails when it is discovered that Helen is high born and her
marriage to Manfred is appropriate after all. It may reveal a
politically cynical quirk in Osborn's nature that at the end of the play
he contrives for the villainous Oscar to depart the scene to become
governor of Texas-with his mistress as his Secretary of State.
Other than this stratagem, which has less to do with the play than
with the situation in Texas in 1845, the play is long and dull.
Hair again plays an important role in Osborn's Uberto (1859)
whose hero, with his "disfurnish'd crown/and faded cheek," trades
"a dozen years or more" to Lucifer for his soul-in order to win the
hand of the lovely Gismonda. Ten years later Uberto, repenting his
folly, decides that Gismonda should marry the young man who has
been waiting all of these years. On a stormy night he stabs himself
and dies, but because he was good and prayed on occasion, he is
saved from Lucifer by the Archangel Michael. With his emphasis
upon plot rather than character and a dramatis personae mixing
mortals and immortals, Osborn wrote an interesting morality play in
rather smoothly flowing blank verse. A later work, Ugo da Este
(1861) a five act tragedy, is unfortunately, typical of the worst plays
contributed by the literati of the period-poor plotting, weakly
drawn characters, no confrontation or climax.
The American theatre at mid-nineteenth century boasted a
limited number of distinguished actors-such as Edwin Forrest and
Charlotte Cushman-who, bolstered by the traveling English actors
who came to America, brought Shakespeare and the classics of the
theatre to enthusiastic audiences across the country. But a great
deal more theatrical activity occurred in America than these "stars"
provided, and the public appetite for new plays seemed almost
insatiable: an evening's entertainment might easily demand as
many as three plays. It was to this audience that American
playwrights had to tailor their offerings.
20
MESERVE
Social awareness-or the practiced avoidance of it-permeates
the kinds of dramas written by Americans during the 1850s. As
always, the writer's approach to his material and the times could
determine a play's success or failure. There were playwrights
whose careers depended upon their knowledge of what was
happening around them. Then there were those who made it a
point to consider nothing that was not at least a century past,
although they might relate past themes to present day events.
Those dramatist who made it their business to show their sensitivity
to the mounting tensions of the 1850s had the best chance of
seeing their plays performed, even briefly, on the nation's stages,
and in large part they were the journeymen playwrights of the type
who amuse every generation. Some were quite successful-Charles
W. Taylor, John Brougham, H. J. Conway, Clifton W. Tayleure, John
Poole, and Thomas De Walden. Others, less prolific yet with some
interest in a reading public, who achieved moderate success include
Edward S. Gould, E. P. Wilkins, Henry Clay Preuss, William Henry
Hulbert, Thomas Dunn English, Oliver S. Leland, and Oliver Bell
Bunce. And then there were the staunchly literary writers who
viewed the theatre mainly through the library door and resolutely
believed in the poetic beauty of classical drama, the theories of
Aristotle, and the dicta of Horace-which they aspired to follow.
They wrote for those among the mid-nineteenth century audience
who enjoyed seeing starring actors in classical plays, but their
attempts seldom attracted the attention of those stars.
It remains an irony in the history of American drama that the
two best remembered and most appreciated dramatists of the
1850s represent the extremes of the demanding theatre of the time.
One was a visitor from across the Atlantic Ocean who was to spend
the better part of his remaining years in America, writing scores of
plays and trying to catch the public fancy. The other was a
respected native poet who wanted desperately to write for his
contemporary stage and contribute to the literature of the American
theatre. The first was extraordinarily successful during the 1850s
but suffered a weakening of his professional reputation toward the
end of his life, although his good name as premier creator of
melodrama remains secure in theatre history; the other failed to
please the mid-century theatre audiences and had to wait nearly
thirty years for a new generation of theatregoers to recognize his
dramatic skills-skills still admired by historians of the theatre.
Considered together, the careers of these two dramatists-Dian
Boucicault and George Henry Boker-clearly illuminate the problems
and idiosyncratic demands that any dramatist must accept.
"Who goes to an American play?" British critic Sydney Smith
asked this question in a derisive fashion in 1820. Thirty years later
ASPIRATIONS 21
it was still a good question, although by this time a substantial
number of people were trying to provide the means to answer it.
As the question implied, however, the answer assumed a theatre,
actors, and a performance-a logical assumption for the nineteenth
century, but one not uniformly held throughout history. Samuel
Johnson, for example, declared that one should read Shakespeare's
tragedies and see his comedies in the theatre. In late nineteenth-
century America, David Belasco insisted on being called a playwright
because he wrote his plays to be acted, not read. About this same
time, William Dean Howells, novelist, critic, and playwright,
approved of Augustus Thomas's work because he could enjoy
reading his plays as well as seeing them on stage.
Although his single-mindedness has ceased to be so deeply
approved, Sydney Smith's assumption was valid in the 1850s.
Actors fiercely exploited themselves, and the stage technician's
genius was a major attraction of the evening. As the century
progressed, both styles of acting and the kinds of plays presented
changed: Ibsenism had its influence; dramatists had ideas to
promote; the craft of theatre presentation advanced with scientific
innovations; criticism of the theatre became a valid rhetorical genre.
Yet throughout, commerce controlled the theatre. To be successful,
a dramatist must write for and please his own generation. He or
she must work with theatre people and have knowledge of their
requirements. In the main, the literary dramatists of the 1850s
lacked these relationships, and in spite of the resourcefulness of
Laura Keene and a few others, the result was a void in the
development of American drama and theatre that would not be
filled until the Little Theatre Movement of the twentieth century.
In contrast to the journeymen American playwrights who
worked diligently to supply actors with an ever-changing fare of
light comedies exposing current absurdities and frivolities of
everyday life, were the serious writers, interested in language and
the traditional characteristics of drama and theatre. It their use of
poetic form was not satisfying to the hoi polloi, it was the accepted
metier of such dramatists as Julia Ward Howe and Louisa Susanna
McCord, who believed in the traditions of great drama to which they
felt they were contributing. There were writers of social
consciousness: George Calvert with The Will and the Way, Lewis
Thomas with Cortez, the Conqueror, Laughton Osborn with The
Silver Head. They held strong ideas about current political situations
(William Gilmore Simms with Norman Maurice), the inhuman
assumptions of man (George Henry Miles with Mohammed), and the
moral world (James Cannon with The Oath of Office and Dolores).
There were writers of wit and intelligence: Oliver B. Bunce with Love
in 76 and Cannon with Better Late Than Never.
22 MESERVE
These are not writers to be dismissed lightly simple because
they lacked an opportunity, overtly denied almost all aspiring
serious dramatists by an arrogant theatre world determined to
produce on American stages, as Washington Irving pointedly
expressed through Andrew Quoz, "all the enjoyments in which our
coarser sensations delighted." The fact that each play offered was
or was not produced in the theatre, reveals something about the
arts in America and the society which fostered them. Whether
written for the armchair or the box seat, intentionally or by default,
these plays of the 1850s are relevant to any cultural or social history
of America.
Journal of American Drama and Theatre 13 (Spring 2001)
MEDIA MANIA: THE DEMONIZING
OF THE THEATRICAL SYNDICATE
VINCENT lANDRO
The 1890s experienced a watershed in the business practices of
the American theatre. Faced with chaotic and outdated booking
practices that no longer matched either the volume of touring
combinations or the needs of local theatre managers, entrepreneurs
based in New York City centralized the booking operations and
streamlined what had become an unreliable system. The most
successful of these attempts at centralization was a pooling
arrangement that eventually became known as the Theatrical
Syndicate or "Trust." Almost immediately, the new organization
came under attack by those who feared it would become an abusive
monopoly. When evidence began to mount that initial suspicions
were accurate, opposition intensified and, led by such powerful
crusading figures as Harrison Grey Fiske, Minnie Maddern Fiske,
David Belasco, William Winter, and Walter Prichard Eaton,
transformed what might have been a debate about the benefits and
weaknesses of a new system of theatre economics into a battle of
contradictory impulses in American theatre at the turn of the
century.
According to its critics, the Syndicate was a rapacious monopoly
under the dictatorship of a small group of vulgar and greedy
hucksters whose only interest was money and whose power had
created a stranglehold over the American stage. The organization
was attacked as a ravenous octopus that used force and
intimidation to destroy its competition, made janitors out of local
theatre owners, blacklisted or bribed those who defied its control,
forced actors and managers to pay exorbitant booking fees, and
produced only the most tawdry productions in order to make a
profit. This "media mania" transformed the issue into a melodrama
in which the benefits of a centralized booking system were ignored
while every perceived fault of the American theatre-dearth of new
plays, corruption of artistic values, slavery of actors and managers,
or the decline of "good taste" in audiences-was laid at the feet of
24 lANDRO
the Syndicate. Subsequent commentators not only accepted the
self-defined roles of independents such as the Fiskes and Belasco,
who viewed themselves as oppressed victims fighting a moral
crusade against an evil "octopus," but also credited these individuals
(and later the Shuberts) with its demise. Eventually, the media
surrounded these various Davids who had slain Goliath with a heroic
aura and provided the melodrama with its necessary and satisfying
ending: the values of the idealized cultured past had triumphed over
those of the commercialized "bogeyman" of the present.
Rather than illuminating the period's complex and contradictory
realities, its diverse personalities, and its rough entrepreneurial
energies, this master narrative has obscured our understanding of
the Syndicate's role in revolutionizing the way Broadway theatre did
business at the turn of the century. Using magazines and
newspapers of the flourishing mass media, journalists shifted the
focus of commentary from an analysis of commercial change to a
blanket vilification unparalleled in the history of American theatre.
The result was a demonizing of the Syndicate by means of a one-
sided, biased scenario created by individuals who were bitter
enemies of the Syndicate.
In this essay I will demonstrate not only how the demonizing of
the Syndicate has been carried forward by historians almost without
change to the present day but also how it emerges in strikingly
similar rhetoric within media commentary about contemporary
Broadway. I also will suggest that the unprecedented intensity of
the original attacks were based less upon a struggle for artistic
freedom than upon ideological issues stemming from a sense of
threat by ethnic, commercial based entrepreneurs to the dominant
cultural authority and its elitist values. The result was a struggle in
which critics of the Syndicate attempted to protect the artistic
foundation of the modern American theatre by pushing it backwards
into the nineteenth century.
First, a brief review of the origins and practices of the Syndicate
and its treatment by historians is in order. Sometime in 1896 six
men who had become leaders in producing and booking regional
theatre circuits decided to create a solution to the unwieldy business
practices experienced whenever theatre managers across the
country booked their seasons. The six men were three sets of
partners: Charles Frohman, theatrical producer and head of the
biggest booking agency in the country, and AI Hayman, a long-time
business associate of Frohman; Abe Erlanger and Marc Klaw,
booking agents for a circuit of theatres in the South; and Samuel F.
Nixon and Frederick Zimmerman, who controlled a group of
Philadelphia theatres and had additional theatrical interests in
Baltimore, Washington, and Pittsburgh. At the outset, these
MEDIA MANIA 25
partnerships controlled thirty-three first-class theatres. The idea was
to pool various regional circuits into a centralized one-stop booking
service that would provide reliable contracts, efficient travel routes,
guaranteed playing dates, and competent productions, thus
eliminating most of the problems with the old system. Other than a
percentage of receipts or a flat fee for the service, the primary
contractual condition was exclusivity: each local theatre manager
must agree to book entirely with the Syndicate or not at all. By a
combination of shrewd financial maneuvering, aggressive
expansion, and competitive deal-making, the Syndicate captured
and maintained its dominance of the touring process for the next
fourteen years. Although estimates of the power of this
arrangement vary, at its height the Syndicate is estimated to have
controlled the booking arrangements for some five to seven
hundred theatres across the country.
However, rather than develop a balanced analysis of how the
Syndicate's operation transformed production and booking practices
within the period's new economically driven realities, historians have
from the outset continued to repeat the original accusations. As
early as 1919, Arthur Hornblow, for example, brings together all the
accusations of Syndicate critics, demonizing those "theatrical
despots" responsible for the decline in American theatre that
"destroyed the art of acting, elevated mediocrities to the dignity of
stars, turned playwrights into hacks, misled and vitiated public
taste, and the drama from an art, became a business."
1
Oral
Sumner Coad, Sheldon Cheney, and Arthur Hobson Quinn offer a
similar scenario in the 1920s: the result of the Syndicate booking
system was an American theatre prostrate under the stranglehold of
a commercial trust. The villains were the bullying business
managers of the Syndicate; the triumphant heroes were Fiske and
Belasco.
2
Even Alfred Bernheim, who wishes to make an
unprejudiced analysis that removes examination of the Syndicate's
activities from the plane of personal animus is unable to maintain a
completely objective distance. When he reviews the Syndicate's
practice of demanding fees from both the theatre managers and the
producers in order to book tours, Bernheim condemns the practice
as a breach of faith, exploitative, flagrantly discriminatory, and
1
Arthur Hornblow, A History of the Theatre in America, (New York:
Behjamin Blom: 1919), 2:318- 20.
2
See Oral Sumner Coad and Edwin Mims, Jr., "The American Stage" in ed.
Ralph Henry Gabriel, The Pageant of America ( New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1929), 14:308-309; Sheldon Cheney, The Theatre(New York, David
McKay Company, 1929): 59, 541-43; Arthur Hobson Quinn, A History of the
America Drama ( New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., 1927): 2-3.
26 l..ANDRO
evidence of an "evil" caste system. In the end, he resorts to
melodramatic language similar to the Syndicate's original critics: "In
short, the attractions and theatres of the country were puppets, and
the Syndicate, through the masterful hand of Abraham Lincoln
Erlanger, pulled the strings."
3
Such outbursts are better understood
when we note that Bernheim uses Belasco, Winter, Eaton, and
articles from Fiske's New York Dramatic Mirror as primary sources-
without acknowledging that these sources may be biased.
Since succeeding historical surveys have tended to use
Bernheim's commentary as a primary source, their descriptions
repeat accepted assumptions as facts. Glenn Hughes, for instance,
continues the assumption that the Syndicate was a deplorable result
of the application of big business methods to the legitimate theatre.
Hughes considers the "venerable" William Winter as someone who
"cried out against the injustice and danger of the situation," and
quotes his description of the founders of the Syndicate as "money-
grubbing tradesmen."
4
A more recent analysis of the economics of
American commercial theatre written by Jack Poggi uses Bernheim
as its primary source, accepts statements by Belasco concerning the
Syndicate's unfair practices, and concludes that the Syndicate was
another example of the negative effect of the "octopus" of big
business upon theatre art.
5
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s
Poggi's assumptions and analyses usually form the foundation for a
scenario that continues to transform a battle between contrasting
business practices into one between the values of high art and low
commercialism. Garff Wilson's 1982 survey of American theatre
characterizes the "infamous" Syndicate as an organization that
"created more evils than it corrected," stifled competition,
cheapened the drama, and produced shoddy plays that appealed
only to the masses. Driven by its aim of financial profit, the
Syndicate was guilty of ignoring the artistic goal of "elevating public
taste characterized though presentation of masterpieces.'
16
Comparisons between Oscar Brockett's 1973 Century of Innovation
and his 1999 history of the theatre reveal an almost unchanged
continuation of the master narrative: The Syndicate by means of
3
Alfred L. Bernheim, The Business of the Theatre (New York: Benjamin
Blom, 1932): 6, 59.
4
Glenn Hughes, A History of the American Theatre (New York: Samuel
French, 1951): 317-18.
5
Jack Poggi, Theater in America: The Impact of Economic Forces, 1870-
1967(Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1968), 13.
6
Garff Wilson, Three Hundred Years of American Drama and Theatre
(Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1982): 160-161.
MEDIA MANIA 27
ruthless maneuvers eliminated competition and took complete
monopolistic control of the American theatre by 1900. Because it
favored productions that attracted a mass audience, the Syndicate
caused the American theatre to remain "a conservative, largely
commercial venture." Although Brockett avoids the judgmental
language of his predecessors, he does nothing to seek a more
objective analysis.
7
In similar fashion, Walter Meserve provides an
ennobling characterization of the opposition of Belasco and the
Fiskes while the tyranny that finally expired from "internal discord,
excessive greed, questionable contracts and competition from such
ambitious impresarios as Keith and Albee and the Shubert brothers"
remains a vilified entity.
8
Felicia Hardison Londre and Daniel J.
Watermeier's survey is one of the few new works to suggest many
of the charges brought against the Syndicate were not wholly
justified; it reminds the reader that all accusations of illegal business
practices were either dismissed by the courts or decided in favor of
the Syndicate.
9
By and large, then, the chain reaction of history-
turned-morality tale continues remarkably unchanged to the present
day. Current historians cite Poggi, who cites Bernheim, who cites
the Syndicate's avowed enemies-Fiske, Belasco, Winter, and Eaton.
It is interesting not only how consistently historians have
framed their attacks over the previous decades but also how their
language continues to reflect a judgmental indignation and
resentment shared with the original critics. The issue of the
Syndicate remains primarily ideological : a small group of heroic and
selfless artists who embodied an intellectual and moral leadership
that transcended commercial values fight for an American stage
threatened by unprincipled and uncultured businessmen whose only
interest was profit and whose behavior was unnatural and corrupt.
Instead of questioning the inevitable prejudices of the original
sources and the extent to which their points of view were based
upon personal animosity or examining rebuttal statements from
other theatre professionals of the time, or, indeed, even appraising
the Syndicate's positive contributions to the American theatre during
a time of immense cultural and economic change, historical
commentary continues to demonize the Syndicate.
7
Oscar Brockett, Century of Innovation (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-
Hall, 1973): 182-184; Oscar Brockett, History of the Theatre 8th edition (Allyn
and Bacon: Boston, 1999): 455-457.
8
Walter J. Meserve, An Outline History of American Drama (New York:
Feedback Theatrebooks & Prospera Press, 1994), 214.
9
Felicia Hardison Londre and Daniel J. Watermeier The History of North
American Theater(Continuum Publishing: New York, 1998), 187.
28
LAN ORO
*
* * * *
As details of the new pooling arrangement leaked out
throughout 1896, media reaction against the Syndicate turned from
wariness to outright opposition. The first direct attacks were led by
Harrison Grey Fiske who, as editor of the New York Dramatic Mirror
and husband of actress Minnie Maddern Fiske, discovered that his
wife's career suddenly depended upon negotiation with the "Trust."
Fiske began his crusade almost immediately as the new booking
system was initiated and, fueled by a clumsy attempt by Erlanger to
secure exclusive control of Mrs. Fiske's next tour, assumed the
mantle of leader of the effort to destroy the Syndicate.
Son of a millionaire whose family had fought in the
Revolutionary War and member of New York's exclusive literary and
social clubs, Fiske reveled in his role as leader of the crusade. He
wielded his editorial columns like an axe. Although Fiske's
commentary would today exist primarily in tabloids, it carried great
authority at the turn of the century and is still cited without
qualification by contemporary researchers. Fiske never seemed to
tire of inventing new ways to attack Syndicate founders and their
new booking system. He accused them of planning "the subjection
of all other concerns for their own narrow and greedy purpose" and
warned readers that their arrangement "already held the theatrical
business of the country by the throat." In order to protect the
distributors and printing company who did business with the Mirror
from threat of a libel action as a result of his frequent personal
attacks against Syndicate founders, Fiske published fifteen separate
Supplements devoted exclusively to excoriating every aspect of the
trust's activities. He assured readers that his Supplements would
"handle the subject without circumlocution, in a definite manner,
and positively without gloves." He promised that the crusade would
last "until the trust shall vanish like a busted bubble." Although
Fiske's alleged purpose was to free the American stage, his
commentary was among the first to cast the struggle as one of
cultural and ethnic opposites rather than one of differing views
about the business practices of theatre. Nowhere was this more
apparent than in the editorials of the Supplements.
10
The weekly Theatrical "Trust" Supplements covered a four-
month period from 13 November 1897 to 26 February 1898. Each
issue contained stories that uncovered alleged abuses by the
Syndicate and chronicled ongoing efforts by the Mirror to bring that
organization to its knees. Editorials called upon others to join the
fight; columns were devoted to editorials reprinted from
newspapers around the country that had enlisted in the struggle.
10
"It Has But Just Begun," New York Dramatic Mirror, 6 November 1897, 2.
MEDIA MANIA 29
Each Supplement trumpeted an increasing momentum of support
and the gradual weakening of the "Skindicate." Fiske pledged that
his Supplements were "consecrated to the cause of theatrical
independence," but his attacks as "a guardian of dramatic interests
in this country" reveal a more complex bias rooted in defensive
cultural warfare. He targeted those half dozen men "having little or
nothing in common with our stage" as an "intolerable incubus . . .
. unfit to serve in any but the most subordinate places in the
economy of the stage" and as a "cabal alien to all impulses of art ..
an unnatural, an abominable, an intolerable device of middlemen."
11
Fiske's actual mission, of course, was not to provide objective news
reporting but to defend a cultural authority for which he was self-
appointed guardian, i.e., to bring about "the defeat of a money-
making scheme to monopolize the theatres of this country devised
by speculators, adventurers and vulgarians."
12
There was no middle
ground during this crusade:
These middlemen are not capitalists; they are not noted
for culture or for character; they have nothing in common
with the better aspirations of the drama, or with those
whose wish it is to see dramatic art sustained and not
degraded; they contribute little or nothing to the economy
of the theatre. They are schemers and shifters, pure and
simple, and as long as they are dominant so long will the
tendency of the stage, both artistically and commercially
considered, be downward instead of upward . . . . [The
Syndicate] will go down to stage history, branded as the
most pernicious enemy American dramatic art ever knew.
13
What strikes the reader is the unrestrained rhetoric of Fiske's
attack. The Syndicate had been operating only for about eighteen
months and controlled perhaps sixty out of the country's two
thousand legitimate theatres, but, according to Fiske, it already had
become a "pernicious enemy" and a "peculiar abomination"
degrading the high aspirations of the American stage. Its founders
were not merely economic monopolists (or even capitalists) but
11
Harrison Grey Fiske, "The Usher," Theatrical "Trust" Supplement no. 1,
New York Dramatic Mirror, 13 November 1897, 3; Theatrical "Trust"
Supplement no. 7, New York Dramatic Mirror, 25 December 1897, 2; Theatrical
'Trust" Supplement no. 12, New York Dramatic Mirror, 29 January 1898: 2-3.
12
Theatrical 'Trust" Supplement no. 15, New York Dramatic Mirror, 26
February 1898, 2.
13
Theatrical "Trust" Supplement no. 8, New York Dramatic Mirror, 1
January 1898, 1.
30 lANDRO
uncultured outsiders who had invaded a privileged place. Fiske was
not arguing merely against the threat of monopoly; he was
defending the status and cultural authority of an ideology that
intended to sustain its dominance against unwanted and unnatural
outsiders. Fiske wanted stasis, not change, and he brought to bear
every weapon in his media arsenal.
Accordingly, those who attempted to defend the Syndicate were
ridiculed because the "Trust is indefensible."
14
Newspaper writers
who pointed out Syndicate benefits were labeled notorious and
disreputable, and their publications called "degenerate" and
"uniformly unfortunate in character."
15
Moreover, Fiske's diatribes
often placed the attack on a more personal level in language that
contained deliberate slurs against ethnic interlopers who did not
know their place:
Water cannot rise higher than its source. A thorn-bush
does not bear grapes, and there are no figs on thistle-
stalks ... . What, then should be expected of the band of
adventurers of inferior origin, of no breeding, and utterly
without artistic taste, who by the devices that achieve a
corner in pork or cattle or corn have seized upon the
theatre of this country and are determined to reduce it for
revenue alone to the level of a sweat shop?
16
Fiske apparently never felt the need for journalistic integrity or
consistency to achieve his goals. He used innuendo in personal
attacks against Erlanger and characterized Charles Frohman as "this
pervasive little man, with his bumptious pretensions" while declaring
in the same column that his campaign was being waged "without
reference to the question of their [Syndicate founders] personal
standing or character."
17
14
Theatrical "Trust" Supplement no. 7, 2.
15
Theatrical "Trust" Supplement no. 6, 2; Editorial, Theatrical "Trust"
Supplement no. 8, 2; "The Usher," Theatrical "Trust" Supplement no. 12, 3.
16
"Keep It in Mind," Theatrical "Trust" Supplement no. 7, 2.
17
Harrison Grey Fiske, "The Usher," Theatrical 'Trust" Supplement no. 15, 3. If
these comments were designed to goad the Syndicate into public defense, the
strategy seemed to work. The attacks prompted a criminal libel suit by the
Syndicate against Fiske. Fiske printed the ensuing court transcripts, capturing
the sullen obfuscation of Hayman, Erlanger, and Klaw, and succeeding in
publishing for the first time a copy of the original pooling agreement. The suit
was eventually dismissed two years later.
MEDIA MANIA 31
Fiske's self-congratulations in February 1898 that the
Supplements were no longer necessary because he had already
rescued the American theatre from the threat of conquest by the
Syndicate turned out to be journalistic wish fulfillment. A new
Syndicate agreement signed in August 1901 listed sixty-five theatres
under Syndicate control; this number increased to eighty-three
theatres in 1903. The Syndicate's power would not be significantly
undermined until 1910, when the road began to decline and the
small town circuits deserted that organization for the Shuberts. By
this time, however, the Fiskes and Belasco already had found a
"mutual understanding" with the Syndicate when they agreed to
produce in both Syndicate and independent theatres. Fiske's
attacks within the regular pages of the Mirror suddenly ceased
altogether and Fiske sold the newspaper in 1911.
Fiske's editorial attacks on the Syndicate set the tone for much
that was to follow. The American theatre and its ideological
guardians had to protect their social order against a growing and
distasteful group of commercial entrepreneurs whose modern style
and values collided with those of a cultural majority rooted in an
idealized Victorian hegemony. These urgent and vicious attacks
were fueled by an extraordinary speed of change and centralization
of American business, a sense of loss of control and social
fragmentation with its attendant anxiety, and an increasing break
with cultural connections to the revered past. A changed cultural
climate sustained a new economic order whose amoral values were
bewildering to the cultural elite. One anecdote serves to typify the
ideological threat underlying Fiske's furious effort to demonize his
enemies. Mr. and Mrs. Fiske met Erlanger one day while out
walking. As they passed, Erlanger was alleged to have made some
derogatory remark about Mrs. Fiske, whereupon Fiske handed his
cane, gloves and hat to his wife and struck Erlanger. This anecdote
may be complete fiction, but its image of the Victorian gentleman
thrashing a low-class ruffian to protect the honor of his wife
illustrates how Fiske imagined the conflict and helps to explain the
furious intensity of his attacks. The independence of the American
theatre, therefore, was a secondary consideration; Fiske's real
enemy was an organization led by unassimilated outsiders who
threatened to change the rules. His solution was to strike it down.
18
Meanwhile, Fiske's crusade to destroy the Syndicate had found
allies within national magazines. By 1898, scarcely two seasons
after its inception, critics who shared his cultural biases began to
blame the Syndicate for everything they felt was wrong with the
18
Brooks Atkinson, Broadway(New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1974): 34-
5.
32 lANDRO
American theatre. In 1904, Leslie's Magazine, for example, carried
a series of articles attacking the Syndicate. The series, based
allegedly on a year-long investigation, claimed that the story was
accurate and "fairly put." But the first article, entitled "The
Dictators Rise from Obscurity," quickly established the editors' goal
of personal attack upon Syndicate founders. Once again the
language of the attack seems out of proportion to the nature of the
disagreement. The rhetoric expresses vindictive ethnic slurs upon a
group of men whose backgrounds apparently precluded any degree
of artistic achievement and qualified them only as profit-taking
thugs. The article accused the Syndicate of "using their friends until
they were as dried-up sponges" and supplied abusive thumb-nail
sketches of the six leaders that included a description of Erlanger,
for example, as always in physical training and a dead shot with a
revolver because he was "infected with the notion that he may be
attacked by some discontented actor or manager."
19
The next
installment, "How Six Dictators Control Our Amusements," detailed
Belasco's struggle against the Syndicate, cast him as a hero, and
stated that as a result of his challenges to the trust, he always
walked in the middle of side streets after midnight for his own
physical safety.
20
The fourth article went on to characterize the
Syndicate leaders as "ignorant of art, of the finer shades in
literature, indeed of anything approaching good taste, they make
their vulgar fancies as the manifestation of the public." In what
must surely have been unintended irony, the editors assured the
reader that they "love fair play in America."
21
In the same year, Belasco joined the published commentary
that condemned the Syndicate. Once an ally and collaborator of
Charles Frohman, Belasco had experienced a falling out with the
Syndicate and attacked Klaw and Erlanger in shrewdly written
harangues that exploited media attention in such anti-Syndicate
periodicals as Cosmopolitan and Harper's Weekly. If Fiske was the
editorial leader of the crusade, Belasco found his niche as one of the
most admired directors of his time fighting for artistic freedom
against the evil money changers. Accordingly, Belasco assumed the
high ground role of an anti-commercial, cultured seeker of art who
had been victimized by dangerous forces of greed. He
19
"The Dictators Rise From Obscurity," Leslie's Monthly Magazine 58
(October 1904): 581, 585.
20
"How Six Dictators Control Our Amusements," Leslie's Monthly Magazine
59 (November 1904): 35, 42.
21
"Today and To-Morrow," Leslie's Monthly Magazine 59 (November 1904),
334.
MEDIA MANIA 33
characterized the leaders of the Syndicate as "incompetent men of
trade," blamed them for the decadence of American drama, labeled
the combination a "commercial dictatorship," and related anecdotes
of its abusive and unfair treatment of theatre managers and artists.
Belasco's attacks focused on the presumption that profit-making
business practices were always an enemy to art. He disavowed any
commercial interests because business and art never mix. He
understood the ideological basis of the battle and knew how to
frame his accusations in the language of confirmed dominant
values. In a Cosmopolitan article, for example, he argued that the
theatre is a "noble religion" under attack by "the charlatan and the
money-grabbers ... knaves and fanatics ... fastened upon by the
octopus of greedy ignorance." Using an emotional context
unsupported by any direct evidence, Belasco blamed the Syndicate
for the decadence of the drama in America and provided his own
carefully selected-and usually anonymous-anecdotes to prove it.
Belasco waged the battle entirely upon terms of protecting the
cultural values of an idealized past from the barbarians of
commerce. The "greed of gain and lack of culture displayed by
managers who have no veneration, save a commercial one, for the
traditions of the past" is the enemy because "no pursuit classified as
an art can be revolutionized and classified as a business." The
Syndicate was evil because it had violated the rules that placed
artistic issues ahead of financial ones. Interestingly, Belasco saw no
contradiction between his own successful career in the commercial
theatre and the activities of those he attacked.
22
Like Fiske, Belasco preferred nineteenth-century solutions to
twentieth-century problems. Everything that was wrong with the
American theatre could be cured by taking "a leaf from the old
masters' book" based upon the work of such models as Palmer,
Daly, and Wallack. Rejecting the current national momentum
towards centralization and increased volume of production activity,
Belasco believed that theatre management should remain a one-
man business because a producer could give attention to only one
work at a time: "plays cannot be shoveled out to the public like so
many pecks of potatoes." Although the Syndicate and the Shuberts
(as well as Keith and Albee in vaudeville) had used centralized
booking practices on a national scale for years, Belasco in 1904
seemed bewildered by new industrial models. He could not
22
David Belasco, "The Theatrical Syndicate-One Side," Cosmopolitan 38
(December 1904): 193, 195, 198.
34 l.ANDRO
understand how a few men in New York could successfully book
hundreds of theatres across the country.
23
The attacks of drama critic William Winter outpaced both Fiske
and Belasco in vituperation and mockery. Winter, one of the
foremost drama critics during the last half of the nineteenth century,
was an unrepentant elitist and Anglophile whose values remained
rooted in the nineteenth century and who believed that "infections"
of materialism and commercialism were the cause of the
deterioration of American theatre. He was an ideologue who
defended the dominant culture of the previous century in which
certain rules were respected and certain classes of men produced
theatre. Never one to mince words, he skipped objective analysis
and went straight for the Syndicate's throat:
[The theatre] has passed from the hands that ought to
control it-the hands either of Actors who love and honor
their art or of men endowed with the temperament of the
Actor and acquainted with his art and its needs-and,
almost entirely, it has fallen into the clutches of sordid,
money-grubbing tradesmen, who have degraded it into a
bazaar.
24
Rejecting the transforming forces that were driving America into
the twentieth century, Winter's world remained one of fixed binary
moral boundaries and class membership. A theatre artist belonged
either to the genteel class of honor and pure cultural intentions or
to the lower one of trade and commercial interests. There was
nothing in between. Rejecting the argument that theatre is as much
business as art, Winter attacked commercial interests as avaricious,
rapacious tyranny and the typical producer as a "fungus of modern
growth-a prig, who crams himself by consulting a cyclopedia, and
who thrives by hood-winking some confiding female star, or some of
the many fat-witted tradesmen now, for the most part, possessors
of the American theatre."
25
In Winter's view, the manager who
23
David Belasco, " Presentation of the National Drama, " Harper's Week/y48
(3 December 1904): 184. The extent of Belasco's outdated views about
commercial theatre production can be more clearly discerned when it is noted
that during the 1904-1905 Broadway season, 224 new plays opened, up from
222 and 175 in the previous two seasons. By 1904, there were more than four
hundred companies touring the nation. See the New York Times, 21 May 1905,
IV, 4.
24
William Winter, Other Days(New York: Moffat, Yard & Company, 1908),
307.
25
Ibid. : 309, 316.
MEDIA MANIA 35
aimed only at financial gain was a "public enemy and a disgrace to
his profession." Responding to the defense of giving the public
what it wanted, Winter believed the public wanted only "inanity,
indecency, vulgarity, depravity, analysis of disease, spectacles of
horror, fabrics of filth." "Give the public what it wants!," he
thundered. "The ' public' wanted that Jesus of Nazareth should be
crucified-and it got what it wanted."
26
Winter regarded the theatre as a temple under siege and
himself as defender of the faith. In a letter to the New York
Dramatic Mirror, for example, he argued that the stage "exerts a
great influence upon society-almost as great as that of the church .
. . and it ought to be free of every form of tyranny.''
27
He
characterized the battle not as a struggle between differing views of
theatre practice but as a moral conflict between, on one hand, the
"purveyors of theatrical garbage" led by unscrupulous and ignorant
managers who had polluted the theatre and "sacrificed their duty to
the gratification of their greed or the indulgence of their aberrant
tendencies and standards," and, on the other, those to whom
theatre is a "clear mirror of all that is splendid in character and all
that is noble and gentle in conduct-showing ever the excellence to
be emulated and the glory to be gained, soothing our cares,
dispelling thoughts of trouble, and casting a glamour of romantic
grace over all the commonplaces of the world."
28
Art and morality
were inseparable. The battle lines, therefore, must be drawn to
protect these ideals from enemies who "befoul it with unclean plays,
alienate from it the respect and practical support of the better
classes of society, and thus deliver a great power into the hands of
speculators in freak, fad, dirt, and trash."
29
Winter's world view was
not unique. It mirrored values shared by many of his
contemporaries who struggled to prevent the Victorian aesthetic
and spiritual traditions of their class from being overwhelmed. While
American theatre moved decisively into the corporate industrial age,
the voices of this cultural aristocracy became more shrill, angry, and
vindictive as their efforts became less and less successful.
26
William Winter, "Theatrical Mismanagement," Harper's Weekly 54 (2 April
1910), 10.
27
William Winter, New York Dramatic Mirror, Theatrical "Trust " Supplement
no. 6, 18 December 1897, 4.
28
William Winter, "Theatrical Ethics and Managerial Slanders," Harper's
Weekly 54 (24 September 1910): 20; " Decadent Drama," Harper's Weekly 54 (7
May 1910), 34.
29
William Winter, "Theatrical Ethics, " 20.
36
lANDRO
Walter Prichard Eaton certainly viewed himself as a member of
this aristocracy and became one of the most widely published
Syndicate critics. A Harvard educated drama critic of American
Magazine and later a playwriting professor at Yale, Eaton was the
model Eurocentric, eastern cultural leader attacking the Syndicate
as unwanted and alien outsiders who needed to learn their place.
Eaton admired Winter and adopted his moral crusade against the
Syndicate. He added his own sense of condescension: the art of the
theatre requires men of superior education and taste-especially
those who follow European artistic traditions. Chronicling the "rise
and fall" of the Syndicate in American Magazine in 1910, Eaton
attributed the growth of the organization's power to the efforts of a
few ignorant men who "never showed that they cared for the true
interests of the theatre, or that they understood them, and so never
had the first right to dabble with a fine art." Eaton sneered
especially at Erlanger, who "never had any real artistic training,"
and cited anonymous sources who characterized Erlanger as being
unable to tell a good play from a bad one until he read the morning
papers. The chief cause of the decline of the American theatre was
the absence of an elite leadership: "the best plays will always be
discovered, and the best productions made by the best men, by
men of breeding, sound taste, and theatrical skill ."
30
The men who
were to guide the theatre's destiny, therefore, needed "a first-hand
knowledge of good society and its usages, who speak the English
language properly, who know how ladies and gentlemen comport
themselves."
31
The Syndicate founders were dangerous and
incompetent not because they did not know their jobs but because
they did not share Eaton's exclusive social class background. In the
world of this cultural aristocracy, theatre was something created by
the few for the few.
Not surprisingly, the ideals of the New Theatre seemed to have
a major impact upon critics in the early twentieth century who
condemned the American commercial theatre. Commentators
considered the New Theatre superior to the commercial model
represented by the Syndicate perhaps because its director, Winthrop
Ames, a sophisticated New England gentleman and, like Eaton, a
Harvard graduate, believed theatre should be treated as a temple of
30
Walter Prichard Eaton, "The Rise and Fall of the Theatrical Syndicate,"
American Magazine 70 (October 1910): 837, 842. Eaton's motives for his
negative characterizations of Syndicate leaders may not have been entirely
idealistic. He was discharged from his position as drama critic of the Sun after
Klaw and Erlanger complained about his attacks on their productions.
31
Walter Prichard Eaton, 'The Neglect of Stage Management," American
Magazine 71 (January 1911), 409.
MEDIA MANIA 37
the arts. If the commercial taint of the Syndicate had led to the
downfall of the American stage, then this new organization,
characterized by William Lyon Phelps as "the most important
dramatic event in America in the twentieth century," would finally
redress the balanceY The New Theatre would succeed because its
director belonged to the correct social class. In contrast to
commercial managers who were "self-made and self-educated,"
Ames was "a college man, a man of luxury and refinement" who
had the "requisite brains and ability, the artistic discrimination and
the courage of his convictions which will one day make him our
foremost producer of plays."
33
Despite the complete financial
collapse of the New Theatre within two years of its founding, critics
continued to defend a model based on Eurocentric snobbery. It did
not really matter if the New Theatre succeeded financially. Its
purpose was ideological, not artistic. It represented an idealized
vision of an upper-class elitist majority to whom theatre was a great
mission that should be insulated from the untutored, lower class
commoners who threatened its future. Apparently the American
theatre was no place for immigrant entrepreneurs who saw a
profitable opportunity to change the way that theatre did business.
While elitist presumptions may have been an inevitable result of
the particular educational and social backgrounds of their
advocates, the undercurrent of undisguised anti-Semitism in their
condemnation of the Syndicate casts a pall over the behavior of
these idealistic men. The personal assaults upon Syndicate
members not only accused them of being uneducated and
dictatorial tradesmen who lacked the artistic credentials and
breeding to head such a powerful booking agency; they were also
attacked because they were all Jews. The intensity of the attacks
was fueled with judeophobia that deliberately characterized
Syndicate founders as alien ethnics who had forced their way and
their values into a cultural setting from which they must be ejected.
Beginning as early as 1897, Fiske capped a string of epithets, such
as "greedy and narrow-minded tricksters," "illiterate managers," and
"insolent jobbers," with the characterization of the Syndicate as "the
Shylock combination."
34
Life critic James Metcalfe referred to the
Syndicate as "that Hebraic institution whose aim is to raise the price
32
William Lyon Phelps, The Twentieth Century Theatre (New York:
Macmillan, 1914): 20, 25.
33
Chester calder, "What's Wrong with the American Stage?," Theatre
Magazine (March 1913): xi, xv, 75.
34
Fiske, Theatrical 'Trust' Supplement no. 1, 2.
38
LANDRO
of admission and depreciate the quality of the entertainment."
35
A
poem in that same publication in 1905 accused the trust of
murdering the drama that was "in the power of Shylock now."
36
The editors of the accusatory series described above in Leslie's
Magazine made certain that its readers knew that "only one
Christian is a member of the Theatrical Syndicate and he is said to
be a convert."
37
And William Winter wrote that the Syndicate, "with
its serpentine, blood-sucking tentacles," was an "incubus" comprised
of "six Hebrew theatrical speculators" and "button-making
hucksters." Interestingly, Winter's resignation from the Tnbune
came shortly after the new editor refused to publish a poem with
anti-Semitic overtones.
38
Performing artists also held anti-Semitic biases against members
of the Syndicate. For example, Nat Goodwin, an actor who bolted
the first rebellion against the Syndicate, longed for the time men
and women made their booking arrangements when "no peeping
Izzies or Sols had access to our books."
39
Similarly, Francis Wilson,
a popular actor-manager who led an unsuccessful revolt against the
Syndicate and later became the first president of Actors' Equity,
describes the Syndicate founders as "mostly Hebrews" whom he
equated with "the money-changers in the Temple" led by "this
pudgy little Hebrew," Charles Frohman. "Certainly no one who
knows the business careers and the racial instincts of these men can
doubt the extent of the threat." Wilson's autobiography seethed
with resentment about how "these people, scarcely removed from
aliens" had forced out a man with several generations of American
ancestors behind him.
4
Cloaking their attacks with noble and
35
Metcalfe, "An Afterward," 468.
36
Biggers, 214.
37
"The Dictators," Leslie's Monthly Magazine 58 (October 1904), 590.
38
William Winter, 'The Department Store Theatre," New York Dramatic
Mirror, 17 June 1905, 10i Tice L. Miller, Bohemians and Critics (Metuchen, N.J.:
Scarecrow Press, 1981), 100. For a persuasive analysis as to how judeophobic
Syndicate critics made exceptions of such figures as David Belasco,
characterized as a "cultured Jew," see Mark Hedin, "The Disavowal of Ethnicity:
Legitimate Theatre and the Social Construction of Literary Value in Turn-of-the-
Century America," Theatre Journal52(2000) : 211- 226.
39
Nat Goodwin, Nat Goodwin's Book(New York: The Gorham Press, 1914),
99.
40
Francis Wilson, " Francis Wilson's Triumph," Theatrical "Trust"
Supplement, No. 10, New York Dramatic Mirror, 15 Jaunary 1898, 3 and Francis
Wilson's Life of Himself(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co, 1924): 148, 160, 281.
MEDIA MANIA 39
idealistic arguments, critics of the Syndicate appeared to resent the
success and ambitions of those individuals who were not members
of and did not share either the social values or religion of the
cultural elite.
In sum, the portrait of the Syndicate that has passed into
historical surveys-a ruthless, evil octopus led by greedy, uncultured
individuals driven by vulgar commercial motives that enslaved the
American theatre, cheapened American acting, and undermined
American playwriting- was derived from individuals whose agenda
was less about selfless artistic freedom than about defending their
own ideological authority. Their irrational and vindictive rhetoric,
staggering elitism, and racialized thinking stemmed from desperate
and deeply selfish motives. Unfortunately, it is this blanket
condemnation of the Syndicate that continues to be the basis of our
own understanding today.
* * * * *
Did no voice challenge this narrative? Was it true that, as
Fiske insisted, "There is yet to be heard a single word in defense of
the Trust from any person of prominence of character in or out of
the theatrical profession?" There existed, in fact, many voices who
argued that, whatever its specific abuses, the Syndicate overall was
either a positive influence or made little difference to the long-term
development of American theatre art. I will briefly examine a few of
these rebuttals and then speculate why these arguments were
ineffective and have been forgotten.
41
Although as a group the Syndicate founders tended to avoid
public statements, Charles Frohman and Marc Klaw mounted
counterattacks against their critics.
Writing in Harper's Weekly in 1904, Frohman mocked "the
bugaboo" of business management in theatre and believed the
workings of the Syndicate had been misunderstood. He especially
challenged the prevailing understanding of how the Syndicate was
organized. Although there had been formed "a combination for the
sole purpose of representing theatres and of facilitating what is
known as the 'booking' of attractions for these theatres," this
combination had nothing to do with the production of plays,
engagement of actors, or running of theatres. Indeed, the
participating managers all worked independently, competed with
one another for plays and actors, did not combine finances and
were, in effect, business rivals.
42
Usually considered disingenuous,
41
Editorial, Theatrical "Trust" Supplement no. 13, New York Dramatic
Mirror, 5 February 1898, 2.
42
Charles Frohman, " New Phases of Theatre Management," Harper's
Weekly48 (31 December 1904): 2022.
40 l.ANDRO
this account appears to be an accurate statement of the founders'
basic business agreement. As Peter A. Davis has demonstrated, the
organization was not a genuine trust but a pooling arrangement
that allowed individual members a wide degree of independent
decision-making. The loose arrangement of independent units is
also confirmed by the apparent lack of unified operational behavior.
For years, Erlanger and Frohman reportedly rarely spoke to one
another and operated sometimes to each other's discomfiture. The
three partnerships that made up the Syndicate often did not appear
to know what each other was doing and, in the case of Klaw and
Erlanger, sometimes cheated on one another.
43
Marc Klaw adopted a more aggressive tone in rebutting his
critics. Decrying the cutthroat, "dog-eat-dog" competition and
"frenzied rivalry" that characterized booking practices prior to the
Syndicate, Klaw in Cosmopolitan championed the contributions of
his organization:
The theatrical syndicate has brought order out of chaos,
legitimate profit out of ruinous rivalry. Under its operations
the actor has received a higher salary than was ever his,
the producing manager has been assured a better
percentage on his investment, and the local manager has
won the success which comes from the booking of accepted
metropolitan favorites. I know of no one, generally
speaking, who has been worked an injury by the
commercialization of the stage in America.
44
In his view, the theatre can never be an educator of the public
because it is a purely
business undertaking that operates under the law of supply and
demand:
The theater in the United States is not a public
institution, and it is about time some one said so. . . . It is
not out to dictate public taste. It is out to satisfy public
demand. While even such a purely business undertaking
must be hedged about with the essential suggestions of
artistic requirement, I do not believe the public demands of
43
Peter A. Davis, "The Syndicate/Shubert War," in ed. William R. Taylor,
Inventing Times Square, (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1991): 147-157.
44
Mark Klaw, "The Theatrical Syndicate-the Other Side," Cosmopolitan 38
(December 1904), 201.
MEDIA MANIA
us that we give over our commercialism. Moreover, the
public would have no such right. What the public has the
right to ask of the manager is that he shall give it good,
clean, decent entertainment of a wholesome sort. That is
as far as the public should go.
45
41
In a 1909 article in The Saturday Evening Post, Klaw again
attempted to separate myth from reality. He undercut the nostalgic
version of the past by reminding the reader of the chaos of the era
of "curbstone management" in which business was done with a
small book and pencil "with about as much dignity and system as a
bookmaker registers a bet on a horse." Local managers and
producing managers had been at the mercy of each other, locked
within a system of conflicting interests. The creation of the
Syndicate marked a new epoch in the history of the American
theatre because it effected a complete revolution in theatrical
business in which management became a dignified calling removed
from the curb and the cafe. In compelling the fulfillment of
contracts, actors and playwrights were assured of steady
employment and honest returns. A local manager now could come
to New York and within forty-eight hours return home with contracts
signed for a whole season's tour. The Syndicate was merely "a
clearing-house for the theatre managers and the play producer . . .
confining itself strictly to the matter of bookings, its influence upon
stage productions has, of necessity, been neutral beyond the fact
that it has insisted upon reputable plays." The Syndicate charged a
fee for its service because it provided a specialized skill. The
booking agent needed to know just what companies would be going
west, what kinds of plays were in the same territory at the same
time, and when to alter the mix if theatres closed or new attractions
appeared.
46
Klaw allied the theatre to the values of the emerging
consumer culture:
The hue and cry that has been raised about the alleged
' commercialization of the drama' is as illogical as it is
ridiculous. The theater to be successful must be conducted
on a business basis ... . The performance in the theater
may be artistic or it may be allied to art, but the business
conduct of the theater is, and must be commercia/.
47
45
Ibid., 200.
46
Marc Klaw, "The Theatrical Syndicate from the Inside," Saturday Evening
Post 181 (3 April 1909), 4.
47
Ibid., 3-4.
42 lANDRO
A good example of the effectiveness of the Syndicate's
specialized booking expertise and straightforward business dealing
was provided by the testimony of Duncan B. Harrison who in 1897
sought a national tour for Digby Bell's production of A Midnight Bell.
Harrison reported that in seven minutes Erlanger booked a route
covering twenty-seven weeks' time embracing all the principal cities
in the United States. Contracts were signed and delivered in a few
hours with fair terms and no attempt to reduce Bell's share of the
receipts. Under the old system such a consecutive tour would have
taken weeks or months of correspondence, included expense for
telegrams, postage, and clerical staff, and involved complication in
shifting dates and changes.
48
Other managers rebutted the media's vicious stereotyping.
In the Atlantic Monthly Lorin Deland, for example, attacked the
media's habit of basing its views upon inaccurate caricatures:
Upon this low person, so unerringly portrayed in the
facetious pages of the weekly press, with his immaculate
shirt-front, his diamond studs, his cigar in the corner of his
mouth, his feet on his desk, a disgusted public visits its
wrath. He is the cause of the degradation of dramatic art ..
. .Why obviously! He is a coarse, grasping money-getter!
Out upon him for a blasphemer of art!
49
To which Deland replied: "You have arraigned the wrong man!"
Deland explained that the typical manager's fundamental duty was
to survive financially by trying to give the fickle middle-class public
what it wanted. Unfortunately, the public rarely knew what it
wanted and this produced not a coarse bully but a very anxious
individual whose survival depends upon satisfying the "gallery gods"
whose response at the box office always dictated the manager's
future.
50
Although Fiske would have his readers believe otherwise,
not every journalist condemned the Syndicate. Franklin Fyles,
dramatic critic of The New York Sun for twenty-five years, found the
American theatre to be flourishing and attributed some of that
48
Duncan B. Harrison, "The 'Theatrical Syndicate'," The New York Times
25 March 1897, 7.
49
Lorin F. Deland, "A Plea for the Theatrical Manager," Atlantic Monthly
102 (October 1908), 492.
50
Ibid., 500.
MEDIA MANIA 43
success to the presence of the Syndicate. For Fyles, the enormous
growth of the American theatre-which by 1900 included over 3,000
legitimate and vaudeville houses worth about $100 million drawing
one and one-half million persons each week-day night-had
outpaced its clumsy and inefficient booking system and attracted
entrepreneurs who inevitably organized the Syndicate. Although a
powerful monopoly, the Syndicate had also been beneficial to the
American stage:
Under its operations contracts are enforced, larger
salaries paid to actors with certainty, playwrights are
encouraged and amply renumerated, and the traffic in the
drama has been lifted from suspicion into esteem. The
tastes of that portion of the public which demands good
art in the theatre are satisfied in a larger degree than
formerly, and, despite the application of this costlier and
more skillful stagecraft to some regrettable plays, the
standard of morality has been raised along with the other
advancement.
51
Fyles believed that the theatrical business "has arrived at a
commercial respectability which it did not enjoy a quarter of a
century ago."
52
Brander Matthews originally was hostile to the commercial
values of the Syndicate, saying in the New York Dramatic Mirror in
1898 that he thought it was evil and would fail of its own weight.
53
Looking back in 1920 he showed less patience with Syndicate critics
and argued that, given the current set of economic and geographic
realities, the centralization of theatre was the result of an inexorable
process and, therefore, it was foolish to indulge in offensive
personal attacks by "young persons who conceive of art as etherally
detached from all financial considerations." Moreover, he rejected
the art versus commerce arguments of Belasco: "In modern times .
. . theater prospers as a business. No art can survive unless it
affords a fairly satisfactory living to those who devote themselves to
51
Franklin Fyles, The Theatre and Its People (New York: Doubleday, Page
& Company, 1900), 71.
52
Ibid., 72.
53
Brander Matthews, "Brander Matthews on the Trust," New York Dramatic
Mirror, Theatrical "Trust" Supplement no. 12, 29 January 1898, 1.
44 lANDRO
it; and as the appeal of the drama is to the people as a whole it can
never be independent of the takings at the door."
54
Although the Syndicate offered actors an unbroken succession
of engagements in theatres whose bookings were arranged to
provide the least competition and greatest economics in
transportation, critics believed that the Syndicate's bottom line
values had cheapened American acting. Commercialism had
undermined the stock system and squelched the inspirational
qualities of the stage to such a degree that, according to John
Ranken Tawse, the English-born drama critic of the New York
Evening Post, "There is not on the American stage today one
solitary performer, male or female, of native origin, who is capable
of first class work in either the tragic or comic department of the
literary imaginative drama."
55
Not everyone accepted the judgment that the acting profession
had been undermined by the Syndicate. Charles Frohman certainly
didn't think so. Frohman declared that actors were among the chief
beneficiaries of the system. Not only were more actors employed
than in pre-Syndicate days, their careers were more stable.
Compared to the uncertainties of the past, the actor now could
forget about financial worries: "All the conditions which affect him
are handled according to the best principles. The actor need not
walk home now. The old-fashioned hard-luck stories are no more.
The position of players has never been better than to-day, and the
change is of vast importance to the accomplishment of good stage-
work."56 Several noted actors went on record to confirm the
accuracy of Frohman's views. Philip Lewis, an experienced touring
actor, recalled a career that contradicted the negative reports of the
critics. Lewis acknowledged the complaints about Klaw and
Erlanger's monopolistic grip on the business, but also noted the
benefits:
The actors in 1905 were pretty well satisfied with things
just as they were ... with them [the Syndicate], you could
count on a full season's work. In fact, for about the first
time since the business began, actors could see a lifetime
ahead in the theatre. . . . You could see the future and it
was at least forty weeks a year behind the new electric
54
Brander Matthews, Playwrights on Playmaking (New York: Scribner's
Sons, 1923), 261.
55
John Ranken Towse, Sixty Years ofthe Theater(New York: Funk &
Wagnalls Company, 1916), 88.
56
Frohman, 2024.
MEDIA MANIA
footlights, subject to agreement on terms and billing.
There had never been so many thousands of actors
working. 5
7
45
Even Nat Goodwin, who had earlier assumed the leadership of
the actors' revolt against the Syndicate, regretted his initial
response:
After all, what a silly fight I contemplated making and
what a blessing it turned out that I did not consummate it.
The theatrical syndicate has in fifteen years made more
actors and manager rich, improved the drama to a greater
extent, built more theatres and increased patronage more
consistently than has been accomplished by any other
factors during the last century.
58
Goodwin believed that in the future, contrary to prevailing
critical opinion, the names of Klaw and Erlanger would be
"synonyms for Honesty and Justice."
59
In 1940, historian Monroe
Lippman, examined the charge that the Syndicate had corrupted
American acting and, like Frohman, Lewis, and Goodwin, found it
baseless. Lippman not only cited evidence that the general level of
acting was probably no better or worse under the Syndicate, but
also reminded the reader that American stock companies had
disappeared twenty-eight years before the Syndicate was organized.
To blame the Syndicate for the alleged decline in the art of
American acting, Lippman concluded, "denotes either an insufficient
acquaintance with the details of history of the American theatre, or
careless handling of the facts."
60
Authoritative voices also challenged Norman Hapgood's notion
that "nothing does more than the existence of this powerful
association to prevent the growth of the American drama."
61
Charles Frohman emphatically rejected the notion that some great
57
Philip Lewis, Trouping: How the Show Came to Town ( New York: Harper
& Row, 1935), 197.
58
Goodwi n, 107-8.
59
Ibid., 108.
60
Monroe Lippman, "The Effect of the Theatre Syndicate on Theatrical Art
in America," Quarterly Journal of Speech 26 (April1940), 277.
61
Norman Hapgood, "The Theatrical Syndicate," The International Monthly
(January 1900), 117.
46 l.ANDRO
play had been lost to the American theatre because of the business
practices of the Syndicate: "The idea of 'lost art' in the drama exists
only in the minds of the very few who feel that the theatre ought to
be a class room, and that the 'Oedipus Tyrannus' ought to be the
standard of the high-class theatre."
62
Indeed, in 1909 George Jean
Nathan reported that a "veritable tidal wave of plays" from all over
the country had been pouring into producers' offices. Apparently,
this playwriting craze was the result of articles that had described
the huge amount of money made by successful playwrights.
63
Lippman, studying a compilation of important plays produced during
the period of the Syndicate, concluded that more good plays had
been presented by the Syndicate than by most other contemporary
managers. The Syndicate's production history from 1890 to 1899
included Richard Mansfield's Arms and the Man, Beau Brummell,
The Devils Disciple, and Richard III. AI Hayman featured Sarah
Bernhardt in Adrienne Lecouvreur, Fedora, and Phedre. In 1897,
Julie Marlowe performed in the Syndicate production of Countess
Valska, while Charles Coghlin appeared in The Royal Box. The plays
of authors such as James A. Herne, Clyde Fitch, William Gillette, and
Augustus Thomas also found production in Syndicate theatres.
Lippman reported that forty per cent of the "important productions"
compiled between 1908 to the time the Syndicate was dissolved
were Syndicate attractions; five of the seven plays chosen by Burns
Mantle as the best plays of 1908-1909 also were Syndicate
attractions. Because the Syndicate was primarily a huge booking
agency that wished to present plays that would enjoy long runs in
Syndicate theatres all over the country, that organization probably
had encouraged playwrights by providing them with a greater
opportunity than had been provided previously.
64
Finally, the record demonstrates that accusations about how the
Syndicate's commercial values prevented it from supporting
anything but tasteless and vulgar popular entertainment for an
undiscriminating mass audience is completely without foundation.
The Syndicate insisted that good drama be successful financially but
understood that few audiences wanted production of the classics.
Nonetheless, the Syndicate produced Sothern and Marlowe in
62
Frohman, 2024.
63
George Jean Nathan, 'The United States of Playwrights," quoted in
Jurgen C. Wolter, The Dawning of American Drama (Westport, Connecticut:
Greenwood Press, 1993): 252-3.
64
Lippman, 277, 280- 81 and Monroe Lippman, 'The History of the
Theatrical Syndicate: Its Effect Upon the Theatre in America," (Ph.D. Diss.,
University of Michigan, 1937), 192.
MEDIA MANIA 47
Shakespearean repertory and Forbes-Robertson as Hamlet. Klaw
and Erlanger were the first producers to bring African-American
performers to Broadway.
65
Their New Amsterdam Theatre cost over
a million dollars to build and was one of the most impressive
examples of art nouveau interior decoration in the country. The
"House Beautful" opened in 1903 with A Midsummer Night's Dream,
a lavish production that cost almost $100,000, starred Nat Goodwin
as Bottom, and featured orchestrations of Mendelssohn's music by
Victor Herbert. In sum, there is more than adequate evidence that
the characterization of the Syndicate as a ravenous octopus that
almost destroyed the American theatre, the American actor, and the
American playwright was not an objective portrait but a one-sided
scenario created by its greatest enemies.
If these rebuttals were so compelling, why did they fail to
counteract the demonizing of the Syndicate? I suggest that the
Syndicate never received a balanced critical analysis because the
arguments in its defense were-and continue to be-rejected for
ideological reasons. The defense of the successful centralization of
the commercial theatre in terms of "efficiency," and "stability" based
upon "strict business discipline" actually fueled opposition rather
than reducing it. Charles Frohman's likening the Syndicate's booking
system to a department store, for instance, was an apt business
comparison since both are concerned with the distribution of goods
rather than manufacturing. But that particular phrase confirmed to
Winter and other critics that theatre meant no more to the
Syndicate "than a factory of soap and candles" sunk to the level of
"a bargain counter."
66
Similarly, Klaw's insistence that theatre was a
private business-an idea later affirmed by the courts- succeeded
only in driving his opponents into more frenzied condemnations of
an organization they believed had corrupted a sacred public service.
The ideological differences between the two sides were
unbridgeable. On one hand, a cultural aristocracy rooted in
nineteenth-century values was desperate to maintain its grip on a
fixed sense of hierarchy and exclusivity; on the other, a new breed
of theatre brokers, members of an emerging economic order
unprecedented in size and power, had moved successfully from the
margins into the center of an increasingly heterogeneous nation.
The former found any rational arguments in favor of the Syndicate
to be alien, unnatural, and violently hostile to all its traditional
values. Thus, no matter how compelling, rebuttals that argued in
terms of commercial benefits, business sense, amoral values,
65
Thomas L. Riis, Just Before Jazz (Washington: Smithsonian Press,
1989): 67, 76, 109-111.
66
Winter, "Department Store Theatre," 10.
48 LANDRO
statistics, or satisfaction of the audience acted as flash points that
intensified criticism and confirmed racial stereotypes. It did not
matter whether the rebuttals were true; an elitist media inevitably
rejected the ideology of the new consumer economy upon which
they were based. I suspect that the reason testimonials by
Syndicate defenders have been ignored since then is because
contemporary historians and commentators share the same
ideological motives and anxieties as their predecessors.
* * * * *
The failure to separate issues of morality and commerce during
turn of the century Broadway is important because in some ways
that critical failure bears a striking resemblance to what is
happening on Broadway today. Antimodernism appears still to
maintain a tenacious influence on cultural authority as critics in
contemporary media condemn a new demon: The Walt Disney
Company. One hundred years after the Syndicate was formed,
when today's economy is booming after bouncing back from a
recession and advancements in technology are changing the way
we live, the Disney company has redefined Broadway economics by
restoring the New Amsterdam and producing two hit musicals
targeted specifically to tourists with families: Beauty and the Beast
in 1992 and Lion King in 1996. At the same time, a sense of
uneasiness has appeared in the media. Despite evidence of
corporate responsibility and the respect accorded such artists as
Julie Taymor, the media suspect Disney as a low brow predator who
wishes to turn Times Square into a theme park.
67
How closely the critical reaction approximates the campaign of
vilification at the end of the last century. As critics condemn Disney
for treating Broadway as "a retail outlet for licensed cartoon
characters," there is the same sense that corporate culture has
transformed theatre art into a banal commodity.
68
At a time when
rules are being rewritten and lines blur between Broadway and
nonprofit business practice, there is the same sense of simplistic
binary thinking-art versus commerce, good versus evil, low versus
67
Frank Rose, "Can Disney Tame 42nd Street?," Fortune 24 June 1996: 97-
98. See also Herbert Muschamp, "A Palace for a New Magic Kingdom, 42nd St,"
the New York Times 11 May 1997, II, 1. For more details about how Broadway
business practices are changing, see Rick Lyman, "2 Powerhouses of the
Theatrer Meld Broadway and the Road," The New York Times, 9 June 1997, A
1; Peter Marks, "Broadway's New Corporate Playmakers," the New York Times,
10 June 1997, C 2; and Dan Cox and Greg Evans, "B'way Rules Rewritten to
Heed 'Lion's' Roar, " Variety, 22 December 1997-4 January, 1998: 1, 78.
68
Editorial, "Tinseltown and Broadway," The New York Times 20 April
1998, A 18.
MEDIA MANIA
49
high art. Again, the size of corporate involvement scares
commentators who fear the "mouse-shaped gorilla" in their midst
and spread stories of Disney's alleged bullying, take-it-or leave-it
deals.
69
Like Frohman, Michael Eisner, Chief Executive Officer of
Disney, defends his long-running hits and the primacy of the box
office as the appropriate business response: "We have no obligation
to make art. We have no obligation to make history. We have no
obligation to make a statement. But to make money, it is often
important to make history, to make art, or to make some significant
statement."
70
This open testament to commercialism infuriates
Frank Rich, for example, who frequently uses his column in the New
York Times as a pulpit to denounce Disney's corporate culture and
urge readers to liberate Broadway's stages from "theme-park
culture" and "Disneyfication." Looking backward to a nostalgic past
when his mother took him to New York for the first time, Rich
sentimentalizes the past and wishes to stave off the "mailing of
Times Square.'
171
Similarly, in an echo of Walter Prichard Eaton,
Newsday critic Linda Winer wastes no time taking the moral high
ground to prevent Disney from the "infantization" of our culture by
establishing exclusive locations for low and high culture:
Disney is a company that is dedicated to the fake, to
making fake realities. If I thought they would just stay on
42"d Street, maybe I wouldn't be so nervous. If we could
keep all the family entertainment, theme-park musicals and
franchise productions on that block, the way the city tried
to keep all the porno stores on one street, and let the real
producers make real theatre somewhere else, maybe I
wouldn't worry.
72
Winer's elitism and snobbery show through as she laments how
sad it is "to have the theatre turned over to basically a corporate
culture, where they talk about franchising product as opposed to
making shows. It's just so homogenized and middlebrow and safe
69
Sylviane Gold, "The Disney Difference," American Theatre (December
1997): 14-16.
70
Michael D. Eisner, Work in Progress (New York: Random House, 1998),
100.
71
See Frank Rich, "Bring in the Funk," The New York Times, 20 November
1996, A 25; "Times Square's Act Two," The New York Times 20 April 1997, IV,
15; and "New York Bound," The New York Times, IV, 15.
72
Quoted in Gold, "Disney Difference, " 52.
50
lANDRO
and conventional and loud."
73
Critics once again crusade to protect
the American stage while attempting to impose their way of
appreciating theatre as the only legitimate one available to those
uniquely qualified to comprehend it, and seem determined to
dismiss any outsider who appears to threaten their cultural
hegemony. Waving banners of artistic freedom and crusading to
protect the purity of the American stage, contemporary media critics
actually seek to keep the theatre of the twenty-first century firmly
placed in the twentieth. As John Lahr in his review of The Lion King
so smugly expresses this antimodernist attempt to assert intellectual
dominance of the commercial stage: "I call it brilliant Business Art,
and the hell with it."
74
Perhaps it is time that we reject the demonizing of
Broadway's recurrent reinvention of the way it does business and
replace elitist myths with a more balanced analysis that no longer
confuses moral outrage with historical evidence. The general
assumption that free competition in the arts is inherently good while
a Syndicate or investment by a large corporation is inherently bad
oversimplifies what is truly a multi-faceted, complex, and
contradictory blend of constantly shifting boundaries and alliances
that has lasted throughout this nation's history. Broadway and
show business have existed side-by-side throughout our lifetimes.
The historical reality is that business-whether applied to the
American theatre or to corporate practice-is an amoral force that
requires reasonable rules and regulations. Chance, real estate, and
entrepreneurial ambition have as much to do with the history of the
American theatre as artistic breakthroughs. This is neither good nor
bad, but the way our theatre is.
73
Ibid., 51.
74
John Lahr, "Animal Magnetism," The New Yorker73 (24 November
1997), 129.
Journal of American Drama and Theatre 13 (Spring 2001)
THE YANKEE AND THE VETERAN:
VEHICLES OF NATIONALISM
MAURA L. CRONIN
"Communities are to be distinguished, not by their falsityjgenuiness,
but by the style in which they are imagined."
1
"Nations do not exist in nature. They are created by human cultures
and they provide a conspicuous example of how human realities develop
through languages, symbols and imaginative narratives."
2
"A national cultural identity is always constructed through memory,
fantasy, narrative and myth."
3
Though some scholars hesitate to define what brings about
"nationhood" and what ideological elements make up a "nation,"
concluding that the social and political situation is too complex,
Benedict Anderson offers a strikingly simple yet comprehensive
explanation. In his book Imagined Communities, he outlines this
elusive ideology as "an imagined political community-and imagined
as both inherently limited and sovereign.'
14
Following a line of
argument similar to Anderson's, Lloyd Kramer asserts in
Nationalism: Political Cultures in Europe and America/ 1775-1865
that nationalism developed in the late eighteenth century because
of a change in the perception of identity. People have always held
multiple identities, he maintains. They describe themselves (and
others describe them) through position in their families,
employment, economic level, gender, race/ethnicity, education, and
1
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities. Revised edition, (New York:
Verso, 1991), 6.
2
Lloyd Kramer, Nationalism/ Political Cultures in Europe and America,
1775-1865(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1927), 9.
3
Ibid., 8.
4
Anderson, 6.
52 CRONIN
religious affiliation. But in the later part of this century, rather than
simply identifying themselves through close-knit communities
(families, towns, provinces), people began to identify themselves
primarily as a part of a larger community: the imagined community
of a nation.
With this new (though imagined) sense of "nation-hood,"
America was in a peculiar situation, for, as Appleby, Hunt, and
Jacobs posit, 'There was no uniform ethnic stock, no binding rituals
from an established church, no common fund of stories, only a
shared act of rebellion. Americans had to invent ... a sense of
solidarity."
5
To fulfill this desire for solidarity, Kramer suggests,
nationalism began to be expressed "in texts and in state institutions
. ... " These texts expressed "the coherence and unity of the
nation ... '-6 - a nation bound by an ideology of sovereign rights.
Moreover, these texts (newspapers, novels, and, I would posit,
plays) began to construct a concrete image of the "American" and
to promote a specific understanding of how nationalistic sentiment
should be expressed.
Kramer states that nationalistic texts have four common
characteristics: they promote a shared and unique national
language/ they express a quasi-religious sentiment for national
history and heroes; they endorse a concern for the national family;
and they offer a definition of the national citizen. Using these
criteria Kramer identifies the poetry of Philip Freneau, the writings
of historian George Bancroft, and speeches of President Abraham
Lincoln as nationalistic texts.
Many early American plays, likewise, can be determined to be
nationalistic narratives, using the definition provided in Kramer's
work. Specific use of language, quasi-religious sentiment, concern
for the future family, and promotion of a specific image of 'citizen' in
5
Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt and Margaret Jacob, Telling the Truth About
History (New York: Norton, 1995), 92.
6
Lloyd Kramer, Nationalism, Political Cultures in Europe and America,
1775-1865(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1998): 3, 7.
7
In Kramer's work, 'language' refers to a linguistic system of
communication as we normally conceive it, but also in the sense of 'narrative;'
he writes, " ... the self-conscious advocates of the nation could not simply
proclaim the nation's existence in the language and independence of its people.
They had to show long-term continuities in the national literatures, religions,
politics, and histories that separated their nations from other cultures and
connected their nations to the past as well as to the spirit of their own era"
(51). It should be noted, however, that while he does make a distinction here
between two meanings of "language," the majority of his analysis suggests that
nationalistic texts promoted a specific national language (in terms of a linguistic
system).
NATIONAUSM 53
Royall Tyler's The Contrast(1787), James Nelson Barker's Tears and
Smiles (1808), and A. B. Lindsley's Love and Friendship (1810),
place these works within the "evolving narratives in which
Americans invented their national traditions and imagined their
nation.'ra The Yankee and the Veteran, two figures employed in
each of these dramatic texts, are crucial to this cause. These texts
not only work in generating an imagined community; they actually
propose an image of the ideal 'American, ' one that, like the
community itself, is imagined.
In the chapter devoted to language, Kramer writes "All nations
and nationalisms must have languages to represent their political
and cultural identities";
9
therefore, he claims, one function of the
nationalistic text is to promote a shared national language. To grow
in unity and modernity, a nation must be able to communicate in an
efficient manner. Divisions within the language must be eradicated
and foreign tongues expelled. To illustrate this phenomenon,
Kramer outlines narratives which sprang up in post-Revolutionary
France. These texts, he explains, sought a nationally unified form of
French by eliminating less popular, provincial versions of the
language and by excluding German from social usage. But, Kramer
also explains, not only do less legitimate dialects need to be rooted
out from usage, a dominant form of the language must be identified
and promoted. This language, Kramer argues, is one that is unique
to the nation and, as a national commodity, must be protected; it
must be "defended against other languages and cultures. "
1
Kramer
asserts that language holds such an imperative position amongst
nationalistic texts because political and societal cultures are shaped
by countless communicative acts. These acts, in turn, gradually
extend into everyday life and shape the ideologies of citizens.
According to Kramer's analysis, linguistically, America was in a
peculiar predicament in the post-Revolutionary era because its
national language was English- the same as its British predecessor.
How then, both Kramer and post-Revolutionary war texts ask, could
America distinguish itself in terms of language? How could a
language uniquely fitted for America be promoted? Historically
speaking, the creative spirit often finds answers for some of the
most complex social questions-and the field of linguistics is no
exception. The Yankee, a figure that emerged in American texts
after the war, exemplified creativity at work in the American
language system, for, while still speaking English, this character
8
Ibid., 107. (Emphasis added.)
9
Ibid., 42.
10
Ibid.: 44-45.
54 CRONIN
uses a style of language that is specifically American. His language
was so distinctly American, in fact, that in later years when actors
brought the American Yankee to the English stage, British audiences
would actually complain about the incomprehensibility of the
speech.
11
In his book Yankee Theater, Francis Hodge notes that British
travelers had the same difficulty understanding real Americans.
One diarist wrote, "Unless the present progress of change be
arrested by an increase of taste and judgment in the more educated
classes, there can be no doubt that in another century the dialect of
Americans will become utterly unintelligible to an Englishman."
12
While the Yankee certainly exaggerated the American dialect on
stage, certain regions of America had already solved the problem of
differentiating themselves linguistically from the British. In New
England, for example, a completely divergent strain of English had
emerged. When this (Northern) version of English was spoken upon
the stage, its dissimilarity from British English was emphasized. A
nationalistic text, therefore, only needed to identify and promote
this difference.
In the plays The Contrast, Tears and Smiles, and Love and
Friendship, the Yankee emphasizes the difference between
specifically American grammar and its British precursor. He uses
specific words such as ' tarnal, 'twer, sartain, ater, purtyish, sich, and
afear'd. These words must have sounded like a butchery of English
to any British citizen in the audience. For example, in The Contrast,
the Yankee Jonathan, when describing his night at the theater says,
"Mercy on my soul! Did I see the wicked players? Mayhap that 'ere
Darby that I like so, was the serpent himself ... and I am sure
where I sat it smelt tarnally of brimstone."
13
Likewise, Yank, in
Barker's Tears and Smiles fumbles through language: "Sarvant, sir.
Pray, sir-hem! As you come out o' yan house, you mought tell a
body-Pray, sir-hem! What o'clock mought it be, sir?."
14
But of
these three works, perhaps Lindsley's Love and Friendship is the
most distinguished. Hodge calls Jonathan's speech in Love and
11
See Hodge on actors Charles Matthews, James H. Hackett, and George
Handel Hill.
12
Francis Hodge, Yankee Theater: The Image of America on Stage, 1825-
1850. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964): 13-14.
13
Royall Tyler, The Contrast in ed. Don Wilmeth, Staging the Nation: Plays
from the American Theater 1787-1909 (Boston: Bedford Books, 1998), 36.
14
James Nelson Barker, "Tears and Smiles" in Paul H. Musser, James
Nelson Barker 1784-1858. (New York: AMS Press, 1969), 169.
NATIONAUSM 55
Friendship the most "fully developed dialect"
15
of the Yankee
Theater. In this text, Jonathan, one of the Yankee figures, finds
himself in a bit of a bind when Jack, a rival shipmate and Yankee
servant, steals his "Yankee Notions." Upon this discovery, Jonathan
exclaims,
There it is agin, by gum! I knew how't would be. It
beets all nater! Never fetch me ' f I don't think how it was
that rotten sailor feller cut up all these here witched capers.
But it beets everything tewe see capun Horner git intewe
sich a tarnal passion. Just as it was the fust night we left
Boston; and all for nothen at all as a body may say, only
'caze I a axt um (for I jest cum from Suffield, where they
makes wooden dishes, and never went tewe sea 'fore) as 'e
lay acrost the door what goes down chamber 'f 'e lay acrost
the door what the whul enduren night and how 'e'd stop
her, with all that are cloth flyen top on her. Darnation!"
16
Not only is Jonathan's speech different from that of his British
counterparts in its vocabulary, pronunciation, and sentence
structure, but also his speech is distinctly American in its
embodiment of the voice of a storyteller. Jonathan, like most
Yankees, is a teller of tall tales
17
His speech is both aimless and
endearing. He is not rushed nor quick to come to his point. He
seems almost to lose his way in conversation-pausing to tell us
where he was raised, adding in details about captain Horner, and
later in the monologue even singing "Yankee Doodle," for no
apparent reason. Hodge refers to this trademark digression as
having "lack of a specific point"
18
and notes that it becomes
characteristic of the Yankee in coming generations.
15
Francis Hodge, Yankee Theater: The Image of America on Stage, 182S-
1850 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964 ), 50.
16
A. B. Lindsley, "Love and Friendship; or Yankee Notions: A Comedy in
Three Acts." (New York: Longworth, D., 1809), 10.
17
This quality is distinctly American, according to Alecia Cramer, who says,
" ... Americans thought so much of the art of exaggeration that they
developed a unique American genre-the tall tale." This genre, Cramer asserts,
stems from the Yankee. Alecia Cramer. "The Yankee Comic Character: Its
Origins and Development in American Literature through 1830," diss.,
Oklahoma State University, 1995, 18.
18
Francis Hodge, Yankee Theater: The Image of America on Stage, 1825-
1850(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964), 50.
56 CRONIN
The Yankee, though in some ways similar to his Yorkshire
counterpart John Bull, distinguishes himself through his style of
speech. The Yankee is clever; he is honest; he is down to earth.
He is simple, but earnest. The Yankee's specific speech and style
made him into the "symbol of the new America."
19
No longer could
this bumpkin figure be mistaken for the Yorkshireman, his speech
and manner of speaking were far too divergent-they were truly
American.
Certainly, early American audiences found the Yankee's speech
and doings as humorous as we do today. There was, however, a
serious message behind the humor. As Marie Killheffer says, "While
the audience laughed at his crudeness, it undoubtedly admired his
virtues, especially his ardent patriotism."
20
The Yankee's speech
pointed to the existence of a uniquely American dialect. It
reaffirmed the country's motion toward linguistic independence and
linguistic difference. The stage has always acted as a physical "site
on which national prestige-the legitimacy and the renown of the
nation in the eyes of its citizens as well as its rivals-is staged,
acknowledged and contested".
21
In this sense, the mere act of
giving voice to the unique American style of speech on the stage not
only acknowledged its presence, but also confirmed its legitimacy.
As Killheffer suggests, the Yankee was a figure of patriotism, so
much so that "by the mid-1830s Yankee Jonathan had evolved the
Uncle Sam costume, and everywhere he had become the symbol of
the new American."
22
For example, in plays such as The Stage
Struck Yankee (1845) the ordinary straight characters are described
as wearing long-tail drab coats and/ or French gray trousers, but the
Yankee is costumed quite differently, with a showy vest; a large bell
hat; and red, white and blue-checkered trousers-the embodiment
of Uncle Sam.
23
The Yankee was so innately American that he
evolved into the physical replication of a national symbol on stage.
19
Ibid., 6.
20
Marie Killheffer, "The Development of the Yankee Character in American
Drama from 1787 to 1861," diss., University of Chicago, 1927, 11.
21
Lauren Kruger, The National Stage. (Chicago: University of Chicago,
1998), 12.
22
Francis Hodge, Yankee Theater: The Image of America on Stage, 1825-
1850. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964): 5-6.
23
As found in 0 . E. Durivage, esq. 'The Stage-Struck Yankee, a farce in
one act" in The New York Drama, a choice collection of tragedies, comedies,
farces (etc). 1845.
NATIONALISM 57
Part of his transformation stems directly from the patriotism he
expresses even in these early Yankee plays. His speech is filled with
praise of the nation, its forefathers, and its war heroes. For
example, in The Contrast, Jonathan says, "I am a true blue son of
liberty."
24
Likewise, Jonathan in Love and Friendship exclaims,
"Huzza! Bunker hill forever tewe the enemies of Columby, and the
sweet kisses of her pretty gals tewe her galyant sons."
25
Lindsley's
work is filled with nationalistic exultations such as this; he also ends
his play with an epilogue which reinforces American values. It bids
us to "live-each honest Yankee Notion."
26
This is a play on words:
the Yankees in the play are consumed with Yankee notions- items
from Boston which they hope to sell in North Carolina. Yankee
notions, in a less literal sense, are thoughts of Jonathan and Jack-
and they are filled with praise of war heroes, tales of national
wartime victory, and admiration of America's independence.
On the topic of a quasi-religious sentiment which nationalism
characteristically incorporates, Lloyd Kramer writes that nationalism
offers, "consolations and explanations for violence, sacrifice and
power."
27
People need a suitable explanation for suffering and
death. They often need a cause to justify sacrifice and thereby
assuage the pain over the loss of a loved one. Nationalism offers
such comfort to citizens. Just as religion often works to console the
grieving, Kramer asserts that nationalism functions similarly: an
American mother can be contented in knowing that her son died
bravely in the fight for freedom. Kramer writes:
The modern nation was not eternal, but could rival religion
in its comforting assurance of personal connections to a
greater power that existed long before and after the life of
every individual person. It could also resemble God insofar
as it became the ultimate source of meaning and
protection.
28
and continues:
24
Tyler, in Wilmeth, 27.
25
A. B. Lindsley, Love and Friendship/ or Yankee Notions: A Comedy in
Three Acts (New York: Longworth, 1809), 30.
26
Ibid., 58.
27
Lloyd Kramer, Nationalism, Political Cultures in Europe and America,
1775-1865 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1998), 55.
28
Ibid., 65.
58
CRONIN
Almost all the ancient religious themes could be adapted to
fit into stories about nations: descriptions of a Chosen
People, beliefs in a distinctive moral mission, explanations
of current sufferings as the prelude to a more harmonious
future, and reverence for the life giving sacrifice of blood
and bodies.
29
Sentiments expressed by both the Yankee and the Veteran
begin to offer this kind of quasi-religious outlook towards the new
America. They venerate veterans as saintly martyrs, they posit
Americans as a Chosen People-one with a Divine mission-and
they urge caution in caring for the newborn nation.
Yankees, as has been suggested, express abundant patriotic
sentiments. Their speech is filled with nationalistic ejaculations and
exultations, but the sentiments behind some of these speeches go
far beyond mere platitudes or truisms. At times they express a
quasi-worship for not-so-long-ago heroes of war and/or national
conflicts. Jack, in Love and Friendship, says, " ... when the gale
rages so I can carry sail no longer, I'll jump overboard and like the
gal-gallant Somers and all true heart-hearted yankee tars (sic),
when disabled from fighting and carrying sail any longer, gi-give
three che-cheers and sink to the bottom with my colors flying and
all my spirits about me."
30
This Yankee honors the heroes of the
Somers, wishing that he might have (if need be) as honorable a
death as they suffered. Likewise, though the song "Yankee Doodle"
was probably appropriated from the British and became a popular
ditty used in these early American plays for its entertainment
value,
31
its words are filled with a kind of reverence for the war and
its heroes: "I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy, a Yankee Doodle do or die.
A real live nephew of my Uncle Sam, born on the Fourth of July ... "
It seems appropriate then, that nearly every Yankee to grace the
American stage sings this song at some point in their plays.
Similarly, the Veterans within these plays express an even
greater quasi-religious sentiment towards the war and its heroes
and victims. Colonel Manly, for example, in The Contrastconstantly
29
Ibid., 81.
30
Lindsley, 42.
31
Eric Lott, in Love and Theft tells of an account published in Dial in 1842
which claimed, "Our only national melody, Yankee Doodle, is shrewdly
suspected to be a scion from British art". Eric Lott, Love and Theft Blackface
Minstrelsy and the American Working Class. (New York: Oxford, 1993), 16.
NATIONAUSM 59
expresses veneration for his fellow soldiers and a longing for their
injuries to be acknowledged and honored. He prizes them as much
as his own family members and cares for them as one would an
aging blessed figure. Also, Charlotte critiques his quasi-religious
sentiments, saying that when he speaks to her about America it is
"as if I had been at church."
32
General Campton in Tears and
Smiles, likewise, honors Sydney, a recent veteran, for his efforts to
free the prisoners of Tripoli. The General admonishes his brother
for believing that "the country is now old enough to take care of
itself." He states, "Go welcome the prisoners from the dungeons of
Tripoli with that sentiment! Dry with it the tears that are shed for
those who fell in attempting their deliverance, or generously give it
in thanks to the brave survivors of that action which accomplished
it!." Sydney, having been part of this effort to free American
prisoners, wins the General's approval: "The noble boy has arrived
also, with the proud consciousness of having shared in the glory of
their liberation!."
33
Persecuted saints and blessed martyrs are
necessary in religious narratives, and likewise, they become
necessary in nationalistic texts.
In discussing America's nationalistic history, Kramer explains,
"Puritan religious accounts of a new 'City on the Hill' ... helped
generate a narrative of the Chosen People that would contribute
decisively to the American Revolution and the subsequent
development of America's national ideology."
34
According to
Kramer, America has always considered itself a moral leader, a
chosen nation. This ideology has become so ingrained in the
definition of 'America' that our country continues to act on similar
impulses today. Kramer states, "The young United States is
perhaps the most instructive example of a nation in which a belief in
high destiny has been . . . a forceful presence in the lives of men
great and small"
35
Colonel Manly in The Contrast seems to uphold
this notion; he posits America as a Chosen Nation. This Veteran
says, "I am proud to say America, I mean the United States, has
displayed virtues and achievements which modern nations may
32
Royal Tyler, The Contrast, in Don B. Wilmeth, eel., Staging the Nation:
Plays from the American Theater 1787-1909(Boston: Bedford Books, 1998),
22.
33
Ibid., 146.
34
Lloyd Kramer, Nationalism, Political Culture in Europe and America,
1775-1865 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1998), 67.
35
Ibid., 44.
60
CRONIN
admire, but of which they seldom set us the example."
36
Not only is
America one of the first to follow the correct path, according to
Manly, not only should the other nations witness the 'Nation on the
Hill' and follow suit, but implicit in his speech is his disappointment
in the older nations for not having done so yet.
Kramer asserts that the narrative of the Chosen People also
expresses an acceptance of ' hard times' as being characteristic of
this divine position. Just as Job was tested, the Chosen Ones too
will be put through a time of suffering. There is, however, an
element of hope within such suffering. Religious narratives suggest
that, though the present may be filled with hardship for a Chosen
People, the future is expectantly hopeful-it will be filled with graces
and blessings from Above. Clinton Rossiter explains the forward-
looking focus of the Chosen People narrative as an artifact of the
newness of the nation. According to Rossiter, when a country gains
independence, its people must create and embrace an "instant
history."
37
In effect, national history begins with the birth of the
nation; therefore, all preceding events are forgotten or
unacknowledged. The events surrounding the struggle for
independence become the nation's only history. Because this
instant history does not span a great length of time, it tends to be
forward-looking; the new nation focuses on recent victories,
upcoming events, and future progress. The Yankee and the
Veteran, both staunch supporters of the nation, are the dramatic
characters best-suited to recount the nationalistic narrative and to
express the nation's hopes for the future.
The Veterans in The Contrast, Tears and Smiles, and Love and
Friendship promote this kind of 'instant history' in their recounting of
fairly recent American victories as deeply historical. The chronicle of
America begins, in their eyes, with the War of Independence; this is
the history drawn upon and departed from these texts. They also
depict an expectant hope in the future of America. Colonel Manly,
for example, admits that his nation is presently suffering
economically, but trusts in its eventual reward. He regards his
government notes as "a sacred deposit,"
38
and he says, "Their full
amount is justly due to me, but as embarrassments, the natural
consequences of a long war, disable my country from supporting its
credit, I shall wait with patience until it is rich enough to discharge
36
Tyler, 46.
37
Clinton Rossiter, The American Quest 1790-1860(New York: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1971), 40.
38
Tyler, in Wilmeth, 23.
NATIONALISM 61
them. If that is not in my day, they shall be transmitted as an
honorable certificate to posterity."
39
Colonel Manly waits patiently,
guarding the new nation as one would a child and not only longing
for, but expecting it to flourish and prosper. There is no doubt in
his mind that America will do so one day, for it is the Chosen Land
of new promise. This hope in a glorious future is not uncommon to
new nations, Rossiter explains: "The founding generation of a nation
... usually talk[s] bravely about a glorious future."
40
In these three early American plays, Veterans not only expect
their young country to soon prosper, but they are attentive to
particulars which may channel national success and progress. They
are often depicted as being more in touch than the ordinary citizen
with the nation and its needs. Just as Colonel Manly realizes that
the nation needs him to wait patiently to be paid for his services,
other veterans too, seem to know instinctively what the nation
requires. General Campdon says, " ... as I have fought, I can feel
for the nation's interests.'"'
1
The General understands the nation's
needs far more keenly than his brother, who escaped the war
because he "preferred the shedding of ink to spilling blood:" and
because he understands the nation's needs, he urges caution in
national affairs. Having fought, he does not want to lose what had
been gained. Manly expresses an anxiety that Lloyd Kramer finds
common to nationalistic texts: "The national story could become a
religious story of dangerous moral decline in which people betrayed
the national cause to pursue their own selfish gains or to adopt the
ideas and customs of other nations.'"'
2
Bruce McConachie posits
Manly as the moral center of The Contrast and states, "Manly ...
warns Americans that unless they are careful, they will repeat the
decline of ancient Greece, where the common good was lost in
pursuit of private interest.'"'
3
General Compton, in Tears and
Smiles, also acts as moral center of that play, and he suggests a
39
Ibid.
4
Clinton Rossiter, The American Quest 1790-1860(New York: Harcort
Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1971), 40.
41
James Nelson Barker, Tears and Smiles in Paul H. Musser, James Nelson
Barker 1784-1858(New York: AMS Press, 1969), 146.
42
Lloyd Kramer, Nationalism, Polttical Culture in Europe and America,
1775-1865 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1998), 74.
43
Bruce McConachie, "American Theater in Context, from the Beginnings
to 1870" in Don B. Wilmeth and Christopher Bigsby, eds. The Cambridge History
of American Theater. vol 1 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 130.
62 CRONIN
similar sentiment: that America still needs to be watched over and
nurtured so as to not slide into moral decline.
One of the keys to the prevention of moral decline is the family.
Kramer writes, "Narratives about the imagined communities of
modern nations rely constantly on metaphorical and political
allusions to families and a family relationship,"
44
and that, "The
overlapping, contrasting and connected identities of women, men
and nations became a prominent theme in nationalist writings about
families.'
145
Nationalistic texts are concerned with families-and
more specifically, women-because of the belief that the family acts
as a cultural mediating institution for child development. Therefore,
Kramer argues, if native women "fall" to foreign men, the nation
becomes in danger of losing its national identity. Loss of American
mothers could mean the loss of American children, thus weakening
the national resources, leaving the country susceptible to military
attack. Or, and perhaps even worse, Kramer asserts, loss of the
national mother could breed foreign children in the nation's very
midst. American children of European fathers are in danger of
becoming Europeanized. If this were to occur, the next generations
would not be adequately instructed in their national history and
customs. Thus the nation may be susceptible to internal conflict
and discord. The unity gained by the War of Independence would
be lost. It therefore becomes vital to protect the American woman
due to her expectant (and expected) motherhood. In this view of
the family, women become "guardians of the crucial domestic
sphere.'"'
6
A nation's culture flourishes only in an atmosphere of
cultivated collective memory of the nation's past heroes and
national achievements; therefore, " ... once a modern nation has
come into existence, its first intention must be to go on existing, to
guard itself against conquests, fission, decay and death.'
147
The
most efficient means of guarding against conquests, according to
Kramer's analysis, then, is to guard the women of the nation.
Each one of these early American plays deals directly with this
issue. Since they are sentimental comedies, each plot centers on
the problem of an upcoming marriage. These plays seem to ask,
'Will the woman be able to marry the young, patriotic American
44
Lloyd Kramer, Nationalism, Political Culture in Europe and America,
1775-1865(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1998), 85.
45
Ibid., 88.
46
Ibid., 90.
47
Clinton Rossiter, The American Quest 1790-1860 (New York: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1971), 75.
NATIONALISM
63
male, or will she be forced to succumb to her father's unwise
demand and be forced to marry the unsuitable Europeanized male?'
In The Contrast, the young American woman, Maria, is in danger of
marrying the Europeanized fop, Dimple. Similarly, in Tears and
Smiles, the conflict centers on Louisa's upcoming marriage: will she
be forced into an unnatural union with Fluttermore, the (again)
Europeanized fop, or will she be able to unite with Rangely, the
available young American veteran? Likewise, in Love and
Friendship, Augusta may have to marry Dick Dashaway, the corrupt
drunkard, rather than Algernon Seldreer, the honest young man
from Boston. Both the Yankee and the Veteran serve as rescuers of
the woman- this 'maiden-in-distress'-yet another reason for
audiences to revere them.
In The Contrast, the wise Colonel Manly defends Maria from
Dimple's wickedness, and is finally seen to be the perfect suitor-
thus acting as both prince and knight in shining armor. Tears and
Smiles equally shows the Veteran as wise and brave in his attempts
to save Louisa: General Compton offers shelter if she should choose
elopement, against her father's wishes. Also, after Fluttermore, the
Europeanized fop, is exposed for having dishonored a young girl,
the Veteran is again Louisa's savior; in light of the new information,
he urges her father to relent and agree to the more suitable
marriage. General Compton is pivotal in urging this final concord
and thus securing a happy (American) marriage. Similarly, the
Yankees take on a crucial role in preserving the family in Love and
Friendship. Augusta, the young woman, is in danger of being wed
to Dick Dashaway. Both Captain Horner and Jack, sea-worthy
Yankees, aid Algernon in his pursuit of and final victory in obtaining
Augusta (and thus securing a suitable match). One does so by
lending the young hero money, the other by exposing the rake for
his treachery. The Yankee and the Veteran both have very
honorable roles in these plays in that they help the 'right' man
obtain the American woman. They are in pursuit of the pure
American family by preventing the American woman from falling
into the hands of a foreigner.
The woman was not the only object
48
which required protection
from foreign apprehension. The nation itself also needed to be
protected. To maintain national safety, Kramer suggests,
nationalistic philosophy and texts discouraged interracial or
intercultural mrxrng. This sentiment comes out within the three
plays. The European is not simply a dandy, but a malevolent power
that at any time could bring destruction to the American community.
48
In nationalistic philosophy, women are objectified. Viewed solely as
prizes, they are a means of producing American children.
64
CRONIN
If he is not seen as stealing money from true Yankees, then he is
pilfering young women from suitable mates, or getting drunk and
challenging young American men to duels.
Outside of identifying Americans as benevolent and Europeans
as malevolent figures, the question still remains: "Who is the true
American? And how is he different from the European?" To be sure,
sometimes we are given tell-tale signs-in Tears and Smiles, for
example, Gallimard speaks with a French accent-but at times we
are left to come to our own conclusions. Bereft of a national
identity, how does one identify a true "American?" To answer this
question, Kramer relies upon a now commonplace understanding of
difference; he claims that in nationalistic texts, "Definitions of
difference appeared ... frequently ... because the imagined
community requires outsiders or enemies in order to define the
imagined unity and coherence of the nation."
49
In dealing with the
issue of difference and contrast, Kramer asserts that while later
nationalistic texts would concentrate more sharply on racial
distinctions, early American nationalistic narrations concentrated on
the delineation between the American and the European. This type
of progression can be seen in the three plays under consideration.
As the need for Americans to distinguish themselves changed, so
did the stage images. In The Contrast, difference is shown through
the juxtaposition of the American to the English. This stems from
the fact that the play was written in 1787, only two years after the
Revolutionary war ended. At this time the British became the
symbol of all that was "anti-American"
50
because America's first
concern was to differentiate itself from its former oppressor. As the
war settled into more distant national memory, the scope of
difference widened. For example, in Tears and Smiles, written in
1808, the American is distinguished not just from the British, but
also from the European. Thus, the Europeanized fop is
representative of all of Europe's failings (getting most of his bad
habits from the French and Italians); the critique is no longer
specific only to England. In 1810, when Love and Friendship was
written, the main distinction is between the African American slave
and the white man. The evolving definition of the "other" in these
plays suggests that Hodge is correct when he writes "Yankee
Theater thus has philosophical connotations beyond its immediate
49
Lloyd Kramer, Nationalism, Political Cultures in Europe and America,
1775-1865(Chapel Hill : University of North carolina, 1998), 41.
50
Ibid., 109.
NATIONALISM 65
product, implications which it supports through interpretations of
the evolving political life of America."
51
As Appleby, Hunt, and Jacobs state, "When Americans began
self-consciously constructing a national identity, they emphasized
those American practices and values which distinguished their
society from the mores and institutions of old-regime Europe."
52
In
early American dramatic texts, Americans are distinguished from the
British and from Europeans in part through language. Whereas the
Yankee's speech is rough but honest, the Europeanized fop affects
polite, socially acceptable speech and never speaks his mind or the
truth. American characters are further marked by their attitude
toward the War of Independence and its heroes. The American
regards his national heroes with quasi-religious sentiment, while the
European judges them to be foolhardy rather than brave. As for the
British, they are also characterized as oppressors of sovereign
rights. European and American are also differentiated through their
divergent attitudes toward American womanhood. The European,
who wishes to seduce the American woman, is the harbinger of ruin
to the American family; the American man does all in his power to
defend the next generation by protecting the American woman from
her European suitor. These cultural and textual distinctions
between Americans and Europeans signal profound ideological
differences between the two.
In The Contrast, Tears and Smiles, and Love and Friendship, the
European is concerned mainly with outward appearances-i:lothing,
conversation or societal rules. He is affected. Being the most
fashionable lady or the wittiest gentleman is important to the
European. Jeessamy and Dimple in The Contrast, for example, are
obsessed with exterior appearances. Contrastingly, their Yankee
and the Veteran counterparts, Jonathan and Colonel Manly are
simple, sentimental, and patriotic. The same contrast is seen in
Tears and Smiles. After visiting Europe, Fluttermore becomes
obsessed with manners and in this regard finds America to be
substandard to its European countries. In this same vein, he finds
his promised American fiancee uninteresting next to European
countesses he encountered on his travels. Yank and General
Compton, by contrast, are always occupied with good deeds and
noble sentiments. In Love and Friendship, Dick Dashaway is
interested in playing pool and drinking. By comparison to his
honorable American counterparts, he seems even more of a drunk,
51
Francis Hodge, Yankee Theater: The Image of America on Stage, 1825-
1850 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964): 6-7.
52
Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob, Telling the Truth About
History(New York: Norton, 1995), 102.
66 CRONIN
even more of an idler and loafer, even more unAmerican. Love and
Friendship shows that the European is decadent and frivolous, while
the American is practical, serious-minded, and sentimental.
Through these three plays, a definition of the American begins
to take shape. An American is a virtuous citizen-one who does not
put on airs, one who is content with traditional American life, and
one who takes marriage seriously. The European is decadent and
frivolous, while the American is humble, sincere, faithful and
patriotic. American patriotism, as seen through both the Yankee
and the Veteran, can be said to reside in the heart- it is linked with
sentimental affections.
Though the distinction between patriotic Americans and
European fops is clearly and starkly drawn, some questions of what
it means to be an "American" still remain. Love and Friendship, for
example, defines the American character further by offering another
contrast-one with racial distinctions. Harry, the African American
character in this work, is identified as an Other by Jonathan who
comments, "There here Charleston's sich a rotten hot place there's
no liven in't; then there's sich a tarnation sight 'f negurs black as the
ole feller umself, a body kaynt stire but they has um at their nose or
their heels. It beets all nater! ."
53
In suggesting that the black man
is similar in appearance to the devil, Jonathan clearly separates the
races. The American places himself within the Christian realm and
posits the black man as outsider. According to this play, then, the
American is white. Harry himself understands that he is different
from white Americans, having come from Africa:
What wicked worl dis white man worl be for true do! No
like de negur country; no do sich ting dere? No hab rum for
git drunk and fight. I wish I never bin blinge for lef it. I bin
happy dere wid fater, moder, and frien; no de hab massa
for scole, no ian bad ting and her him ebery day so much.
Now see de young buckrah man, git drunk losa all he
money, fight and stay out mose all de night, den come
home and sleep half de day long. But what hurt me mose,
some marry white man do same ting: he great deal wose
den, for he make dear wife and fam'ly unhappy too.
54
He does not want to be in the United States, but not being a free
citizen, he does not have the power to make decisions for himself;
he cannot leave. As a black man he enjoys none of the rights or
53
Lindsley, 37.
54
Ibid. , 35.
NATIONALISM
67
privileges of white Americans. Thus, the 'American' can also be said
to be a free man.
Unlike other non-Americans, the African American is not seen as
an enemy-his manners are not altogether divergent from the
American. He does not drink, nor steal American women, nor pilfer
American money. Harry holds marriage sacred and he seems to
understand the need to protect the family from danger. He is
morally superior to many of the white characters in this work. The
distinction between white and black seems to be simply a
distinction, rather than a critique of blackness such as we see in
later American texts. Though Harry is not a Christian, he is not
criticized nearly as much as the European character. Arguably, at
this point in American history, Americans did not have to fear the
slave as they feared the European. The European could 'pass' as
American at times, and thus, appropriate the American woman, but
the African American could not do so. Harry is certainly posited as
an outsider from his speech patterns and foreign identity, but this
outsider is not an enemy. There is no fear that he will infect
Americans with his particular evil and there is no fear that he could
adversely influence the American family. He is an outsider who can
function within American society because he poses no threat
55
.
Though Harry remains distinctly non-American, he does seem to
possess the innate spirit desired in the ideal American. He is
patriotic (though for Africa rather than America), and he is moral.
Similarly, the Frenchman, Gallimard, in Tears and Smiles is clearly
depicted as an outsider through his difficulty with the English
language, but he voices sentiments which ring as more American in
spirit than those of his counterpart, Fluttermore. Gallimard wishes
nothing more than to reside in America and to settle down with a
"little Quaker girl." He disagrees with Fluttermore concerning the
superiority of Europe saying, "For me, I tink Europe is like de old
libertine, de courtesane; I am disgust vid her. Amerique is de lit
demoiseele you point me in de street . . . [Like a Quaker girl,
America is] so ingenue, so modest. I viii choose de contree and de
quake for life. I viii marry one, and settle de oder."
56
The play's
positive attitude toward Gallimard is perhaps due to his being a
Frenchman-the French were seen as allies since the Revolutionary
war. Could he be an American in spirit, though still an outsider to
55
This attitude toward African Americans will change when the African
American is imagined as rebellious. Harry is unhappy being in America, but
there is no sense that he will take any action to remedy the situation. He is a
"good slave": easily managed, and well behaved.
56
Ibid., 156.
68 CRONIN
the nation? Does he gain the full status as an American once he
overcomes his French accent? When does an immigrant become an
American' The text does not provide clear answers to these
questions.
Fluttermore, the fop character in Tears and Smiles,
problematizes another aspect of American identity. Like Dimple and
Dick Dashaway, Fluttermore was born in America and dwells in
America. Yet these fops have picked up European values while
traveling abroad and they have assumed European identities. For
this they are depicted negatively. These nationalistic texts, then, do
not simply promote the American-but versions of the ideal
American. Simply being a homebred resident of America is not
enough; even if one possesses native citizenship, one must strive to
be American in spirit as well. Nationalistic texts create an imagined
American in the same way they promote an imagined national
community.
The dramatic representation of the idealized American-the
Yankee-was further complicated by the fact that the performers
playing the character were usually English. In the first production of
The Contrast, Thomas Wignell, an English actor, played the role of
Jonathan. Hodge gives the following account of this production:
Wignell's acting was probably related to the light comedy
style required by Colman and Sheridan, and far from the
vulgarity and broad humor of the later Yankees. Wignell
probably had none of the individualized, particular touches
of the Yankee eccentric. It is likely that he carried Tyler's
country dialect onto the stage, where it sounded more like
a stage Yorkshireman or other English country types, rather
than a New Englander ... Wignell was first an Englishman,
then an actor, and he could not be expected to tell an
audience much about genuine native Americans."
57
The situation of an Englishman playing the imagined and
idealized American-and, for that matter, playing it badly-was fairly
common. Joseph Jefferson
58
-another Englishman-played Yank in
57
Francis Hodge, Yankee Theater: The Image of America on Stage, 1825-
1850 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964), 48.
58
See Gerald Bordman, ed., The Oxford Companion to American Theate0
2nd Edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). Joseph Jefferson I
( 1774-1832), born in Plymouth, England, a minor comedic actor at Drury Lane.
He came to America in 1795 and made his American debut with Hodgkinson's
company in Boston. His New York debut was at the John Street Theater in
1796. He left for Philadelphia in 1803, where he later became acquainted with
James Nelson Barker.
NATIONALISM 69
the first production of Tears and Smiles, and Hodge says that his
performance "could have been scarcely more credible than that of
the first Jonathan."
59
Hodge is critiquing these actors' performances for their lack of
verisimilitude. However, this is not necessarily valid criticism
because audiences at that time (American or British) did not expect
realistic acting. Acting style was still largely presentational. Though
his critique is suspect, it must be noted that even if the British
actors wanted to present the Yankee realistically, they would have
had a very hard time doing so. For example, in the first decade of
the 1800s, actor Charles Matthews conducted sourcework, searching
for the characters he wanted to portray on stage in his one-man
show Trip to America. However, he did not find any within the
streets and villages of the United States. Similarly, in his
introduction to Tears and Smiles, the playwright, a Philadelphian,
states, "The truth is, I had never seen a Yankee at the time [Tears
and Smiles was written]. "
60
While Hodge asks, "How can 'outsiders' possibly delineate New
England character?,"
61
the more pertinent question may be, "Did
this allusive American figure even really exist?" Few accounts offer
concrete evidence of first-hand Yankee encounters. Just as Eric Lott
in Love and Theft describes representations of (real) African
Americaos in minstrel shows as stemming from imagined
encounters with imagined African Americans, so too, the Yankee
may be a completely imagined being
62
Lott suggests that Rice
never actually encountered the 'Negro'-or for that matter any
actual African American- from whom he created the character and
dance of Jim Crow; likewise there is little evidence to suggest that
the Yankee character actually existed in America save on the stage.
59
Ibid., 49.
60
James Nelson Barker, Tears and Smiles in Paul H. Musser, James Nelson
Barker 1784-1858(New York: AMS Press, 1969), 138.
61
Francis Hodge, Yankee Theater: The Image of America on Stage, 1825-
1850 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964), 48.
62
Eric Lott, Love and Theft, Blackface Minstrelsy and the American
Working Class. (New York: Oxford, 1993): 59, 39. Lott recounts Rice's
fabrication of the Jim Crow figure and dance as it was reported in Atlantic
Monthy (though the Atlantic Monthly reported it as though it was an actual
occurrence) and, in a later chapter says, "Recall that ... Rice gets the minstrel
idea without meeting any Blackman." He also says, "Black performance [as
portrayed in the minstrel show] itself, first of all, was precisely 'performative,' a
cultural invention .... "
70
CRONIN
If this figure existed only in the mind, could anyone-let alone an
outsider-possibly portray him realistically?
By applying the work of Benedict Anderson and Lloyd Kramer on
the contruction of national identity to three post-Revolutionary
American plays, Tyler's The Contrast, Barker's Tears and Smiles,
and Lindsley's Love and Friendship, we can see the extent to which
their central characters, the Veteran and the Yankee, are imaginary,
idealized figures through which the early American theatre audience
was led to embrace national values and to understand and aspire to
a new American identity. As vehicles of nationalism, these plays
and their characters played an important role in molding the new
nation and its citizens.
Joumal of American Drama and Theatre 13 (Spring 2001)
"WISHING ON THE EYE OF THE HORSE":
THE CONCEPT OF "ENTITY" IN
GERTRUDE STEIN'S liSTEN TO ME
AUCE PETERSEN
"No man is an island, intire of it self," wrote John Donne.
1
No
man perhaps, but then John Donne never argued it out with
Gertrude Stein. During her long career, Stein developed a principle
of hermetic totality as the defining feature of both the literary
genius and the truly original text. She called this concept "Entity."
The term "Entity" is derived from esse, to be, the direct mode of
being. The object that is an "Entity," be it person, text, character or
word, possesses a lucky autonomy and hermetic independence. In
both its construction and its existence, the "Entity" is an island,
"intire of it self," or as Stein put it, "a thing in itself and not in
relation" ( WAM, 88).
2
In this paper I use the concept of "Entity," as defined in Stein's
late manifesto The Geographical History of America (1936) as an aid
to reading Stein's play Listen to Me (1936). The close chronological
relation that this theoretical text bears to the plays of the mid-
thirties makes it particularly relevant to explicating the content and
form of the creative works. Like any literary aesthetic, Stein's
theories are open to criticism both in theory and in practice; Stein
may not accomplish her goal of creating a hermetic text, but the
theories provide a useful starting point for the examination of
experimental and conventional texts alike.
1
Helen Gardner and Timothy Healy, eds., John Donne Selected Prose
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), 101.
2
Quotations from Gertrude Stein's works are cited parenthetically in the
text using the following abbreviations:
BTV: Bee Time VineandOtherPieces(New Haven: Yale University Press,
1953).
4: Everybody's Autobiography (New York: Random House, 1937).
GHA: The Geographical History of America Or the Relation of Human
Nature to the Mind (New York: Vintage o o k ~ Random House, 1973).
LA: Lectures in America (New York: Random House, 1935).
LO&P. Late Operas and Plays, Carl Van Vechten, ed. (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1995).
WAM: What Are Masterpieces, Robert Bartlett Haas, ed. (New York:
Pitman, 1970).
72
PETERSEN
"Entity" and the challenge to patriarchal convention
Stein's work has long been hailed by feminist critics for its
systematic undermining of literary convention. Focusing their
attention on the experimental works of the first two decades of
Stein's career, and adopting Stein's own understanding of her
practice, critics following Marianne DeKoven contend that Stein's
subversion of linguistic convention is tantamount to undermining
prevailing ideological suppositions. Thus DeKoven's suggestion that
the "opposition implicit in experimental writing to the cultural
hegemony of sense, order, and coherence has ramifications on the
largest scale,'a finds an echo in Shari Benstock's statement that
"Stein discovered inherent inequalities in linguistic principles that
mirrored similar inequalities in the world in which she lived. She
found a discomforting reflection of the world in the 'word' and made
grammar a method for discussing and illustrating the effects of
patriarchy in 'language and life'.
4
Gertrude Stein's development of the concept of "Entity" and the
hermetic autonomy which is its defining feature was her attempt to
shut out the causal relations of Aristotelian logic. A concern with
the sequential order of fact, tradition, and event is essentially other
to Stein's perception of a world founded upon the concept of the
self-contained whole. Ideally, for Stein, writing was "neither
remembering nor forgetting, neither beginning nor ending" ( GHA,
150). Back in1927 Stein had made it clear that patriarchal
traditions were alien to her way of seeing the world, emphatically
reiterating that "Patriarchal poetry" was "their origin and their
history patriarchal poetry their origin and their history" ("Patriarchal
Poetry" in ~ 263). Their origin, their history-not hers.
5
At the level of the text, the concept of "Entity" ostensibly defies
patriarchal convention by proclaiming the proud hermetic status of
the text. Unlike T.S. Eliot's careful mosaics of intertextuality, Stein's
ideal "Entity text" has no conception of an anterior tradition.
Rather, the defining feature of the "Entity text" is the absence of
any exterior reference that could possibly dictate meaning.
Take, for example, the oft-quoted phrase rose is a rose is a
rose is a rose. Mulling over concept, noun, sound, and being, Stein
attempts to create a textual object that exists independently of the
shared meanings that form the history of the word. Relying upon
reiteration for its effect (or what Stein would call "insistence"), the
3
Marianne DeKoven. A Dtfferent Language. Gertrude Stein's Experimental
Writing (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983), 16.
4
Shari Benstock. Women of the Left Bank: Paris 1900-1940 (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1986), 86.
5
For a discussion of Stein's disruption of a range of genres see Franziska
Gygax, Gender and Genre in Gertrude Stein (Westport CT: Greenwood Press,
1998).
GERTRUDE STEIN
73
relation between the noun and the concept rose is redefined in the
course of a phrase by what in formalist terms may be described as
a process of defamiliarization, for the fourth repetition just tips the
noun over the edge of signification into a becoming sound and
shape.
Syntactically, the phrase is circular. Is it a statement or is it a
question? Nor is the phrase teleologically driven. Where is its
beginning? Its middle? Its end? It does not set out to be a
definition, for it does not begin with an article, nor does it end with
a botanical description of the presence of thorns or the
configuration of leaves on a stem.
"Entity" and the shift towards narrative convention
In their discussions of Gertrude Stein's plays, critics Betsy
Alayne Ryan and Jane Palatini Bowers support the notion that,
ultimately, Stein's texts are hermetic objects. Ryan states that "The
literature of Gertrude Stein, insofar as it conforms to its program of
entity, is an absolute art, possessing aseity, or self-existence, as
opposed to relations with the world. It exhibits an aestheticism in
which the thing, the touchstone of her art, is finally superseded by
the complete work".
6
Bowers makes her claim for the resistance of
Stein's plays to performance based on the primacy of the written
text: "Her texts seem to resist the very performance they instigate.
Stein attempts to oppose the physicality of performance, to stop the
driving force of action and to prevent the written text, the writer's
words, from being subsumed by other elements of the performance
event".
7
Theoretically, the phrase rose is a rose is a rose is a rose may
be considered to be an "Entity"; a textual object ready to be
celebrated as tiny fragment of subversion. That said, we still have
to deal with the fact that in the thirties and forties, Stein adopted
the linear narrative conventions that she had previously so
thoroughly repudiated, ostensibly to gain a wider audience. I
suggest that in the works of her last two decades, Stein establishes
female characters as embodiments of "Entity" as a consequence of
her late coming to terms with her own sexuality. As Stein adopts
the linear narrative and syntactic strategies of patriarchal discourse
6
Betsy Alayne Ryan, Gertrude Stein's Theatre of the Absolute (Ann Arbor,
University of Michigan Research Press, 1991), 32.
7
Jane Palatini Bowers, Gertrude Stein (London: Macmillan, 1993), 110.
74
PETERSEN
she appears increasingly to activate the female subject as a site of
opposition to this same discourse. In this respect the concept of
"Entity" (previously operating implicitly at the level of the text)
takes on an additional voiced political aspect. As Marc Robinson has
written, basing his findings on Stein's late plays Dr Faustus Lights
the Lights (1938) and The Mother of Us All (1946), writes about
Stein's abiding interest in the human subject:
Stein always kept alert to what surrounded her, the lay of
her stage and the obstacles filling it, but she felt most
urgently about discovering who surrounded her. Each of
her plays helped her learn whether or not she could ever
know another human being. That passionate project-
writing her way toward people-kept her art from becoming
the thinnest, most desiccated kind of abstraction.
8
In her careful analysis of the formal traits of Stein's works for
theatre, Ryan has stated that Stein's works that include
conventional aspects of staging and narrative "need to be
considered departures from her general technique and aesthetic"
(Ryan, 129). However, by basing her criterion for comparison on
play traits, Ryan neglects to consider the development of Stein's
aesthetic based on chronological relations. "at the same time as
Stein was beginning to explore narrative conventions, she was also
beginning to grant recognition to the female subject's power to
embody the concept of "Entity" and in so doing to present an
alternative to patriarchal narrative form.
Stein begins the move towards valorizing the potential of
female subjects to disrupt patriarchal narrative structures with a
renewed appreciation of the power of her own voice. In the
densely rich text The Geographical History of America (1936), Stein
formulates a theory of the artist in relation to the artwork that runs
counter to those of her contemporaries T.S. Eliot and E.M. Forster.
While Eliot's perception of the relation between the text and the
artist is dominated by the concept of tradition, Stein conceives of
the artist's vision as a panoramic gaze that is not situated in
relation to time or literary tradition. Moreover, certain comments
like "in this epoch a woman does the literary thinking" ( GHA, 223),
indicate that Stein was reassessing the connection between her
own gender and "Entity." As such The Geographical History of
America not only offers us an alternative to modernism as it was
being formulated in the work of Stein's male contemporaries, but it
8
Marc Robinson, 'The Other American Drama," Cambridge Studies in
American Theatre(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 17.
GERTRUDE STEIN
75
offers that alternative from the position of a specifically feminine
writing subject.
In The Geographical History of America, Stein sets forth her
theory on the relation between the author and the text, using the
landmass of the American continent as a metaphor for the material
from which art is made. Stein describes the separation of the
artist's vision from worldly affairs using the image of a light plane
skimming over the landscape. She calls the agent of this kind of
birdseye apprehension the "human mind":
Why does the human mind not concern itself with age.
Because the human mind knows what it knows and
knowing what it knows it has nothing to do with seeing
what it remembers, remember how the country looked as
we passed over it, it made big designs big designs like
human nature draws them without ever having seen them
from above. ( GHA, 63)
The "human mind" does not "concern itself with age" because it
operates in a space that transcends the linear passage of time. The
"human mind," "knowing what it knows," has no need to organize
its material in a succession, for like a landscape viewed aerially, all
experience is contained within the sight-lines of the immediate
present. Therefore it is not governed by recollection, "seeing what
it remembers," because it operates like a panoramic lens that sees
everything simultaneously.
The quotation cited above also makes reference to a second
mode of apprehending the material of life: from down on ground
level. These are the "big designs like human nature draws them
without ever having seen them from above." Stein calls this agent
of apprehension "human nature" and she sets it up in opposition to
the apprehension described as the "human mind." "Human nature"
sees things unfold in succession, just as a tiny figure would driving
through the countryside. Governed by the structuring principle of
succession (moving through the countryside as opposed to ranging
above it), "human nature" can only make texts, its "big designs,"
from recollection. The role of recollection in the mode of
apprehension called "human nature" means that its products exist
in a state of being in relation; each component part relies upon
another for its significance.
For Stein, the "masterpiece" is the product of "knowing that
there is no identity and producing while identity is not" ( WAM, 91).
In this context, Stein places the concept of "Identity" in opposition
to the concept of "Entity." For its function, "Identity" relies upon a
second term apart from itself. For an object to have "Identity," it
must be perceived by another: thus "Identity," like the mode of
artistic vision described by the phrase "human nature," exists as a
mode of being in relation.
76 PETERSEN
"Entity" and teleology
Stein was an artist acutely aware of both the process and the
moment of creation: "The business of Art as I tried to explain in
Composition as Explanation is to live in the actual present, that is
the complete actual present, and to completely express that
complete actual present" (LA, 104-105). The "complete actual
present" is an aspect of "Entity." Stein attempts to make the
product inseparable from the process of its own making by writing
the moment of the text's creation into the work itself:
I find that any kind of a book if you read with glasses on
and someone is cutting your hair and so you cannot keep
the glasses on and you use your glasses as a magnifying
glass and so read word by word reading word by word
makes the writing that is not anything be something.
(GHA, 151)
Stein's author is no Joycean God, indifferently paring his nails
far up in the stratosphere.
9
As a creator, Stein is there having her
hair trimmed in the text as she reads it, and as she writes it.
Stein's interest in the "complete actual present" brought her
into conflict with the theories of narrative proposed by E.M. Forster.
The Aristotelian conception of plot is all about being in relation,
notions reiterated in E.M. Forster's careful advice that the success of
a story depends on what happened next In Aspects of the Novel,
Forster was concerned to separate the organizing principle of time
(the sequence concerned with the beginning, middle and end of the
text) from the hierarchy of importance accorded to events in daily
life: "daily life, whatever it may be really, is practically composed of
two lives-the life in time and the life by values-and our conduct
reveals a double allegiance".
10
To Forster, events must follow each
other in sequence: "The time-sequence cannot be destroyed
without carrying in its ruin all that should have taken its place; the
novel that would express values only becomes unintelligible and
therefore valueless" (Forster, 49). Teleology, by placing the
phenomenon (or in narrative terms the resolution) at the end of a
chain of causes and effects, makes design (or in narrative terms the
progress of the text) subordinate to phenomenon. Contrarily, Stein
believed that the individual moments that make up the progress of
the narrative were all of equal importance. Stein's way of creating
the thing itselfwas to constantly reiterate that the textual object is
created at the moment at which it is perceived as a creation.
9
James Joyce. A Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man (New York: Viking
Press, 1982), 215. 'The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or
behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence,
indifferent, paring his fingernails."
to E.M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1962),
36.
GERTRUDE STEIN 77
Characters as "Entities"
Wendy Steiner has stated that in Gertrude Stein's plays, the
"transformation of concepts into characters, the linking of character
and speech to subject and predicate, and the constant grouping and
re-grouping of the elements of the theme are the play-genre's
means of exploring an issue".
11
Following Steiner's lead, I suggest
that as Stein's plays move away from their meta-textual focus and
towards narrative convention, the concept of "Entity" and the
challenge which it presents to the patriarchy become embodied in
female characters.
In The Geographical History of America, Stein's definition of the
way characters operate in her conception of a "masterpiece"
focuses on the properties associated with "Entity": "Now in a
masterpiece what does anybody do they do what they do that is
they say what they know and they only know what they are as they
know what they are, there is no time and no identity, not at all
never at all ever at all" ( GHA, 217). As this passage shows, each
character is constantly expressing his or her own sense of self.
Such constant self-generation defies "time" (perpetual self-
expression is a constant beginning again) and "Identity," for if the
characters completely express themselves in and of their own
actions, they do not require the presence of other characters to
justify their existence. Stein once explained her decision to write
plays as a bringing together of "Entities":
I came to think that since each one is that one and that
there are a number of them each one being that one,
the only way to express this thing each one being that
one and there being a number of them knowing each
other was in a play. (LO&P, 119)
The problem for Stein as she approached conventional narrative
was how to maintain the self-contained "Entity" of her characters at
the same time as the exigencies of getting published required her to
tell a story which would mean bringing them into relation with each
other. Stein described the problem in one of the American lectures
of 1934, "Plays": "as I say everybody hears stories but the thing
that makes each one what he is not that" (LO&P, 121). In Listen to
Me Stein approaches the problem of the opposing impulses of
"Identity" and "Entity" by embodying them in two different
11
Wendy Steiner, Exact Resemblance to Exact Resemblance: the Literary
Portraiture of Gertrude Stein (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), 203.
78
PmRSEN
characters, both connected with the two very different notions of
textual generation. Narrative convention and "Identity" are
connected with Sweet William who wishes to tell stories. By
contrast, "Entity," the notion of an unmediated relation between a
word and its referent, becomes vocalized in the character of Lillian.
The concept of "Entity" and the game of monosyllables
At the centre of Listen to Me is the game of monosyllables.
And so all together they say, I wish words of one syllable
were as bold as old. I will tell in words of one syllable
anything there is to tell not very well but just well.
And so there is no curtain.
Curtain is a word of two syllables. (LO&P,389)
Here, for example, the syllable count of the word "curtain"
precludes its use in the text, for it has two syllables and therefore
does not meet the criteria for playing the game of "telling in words
of one syllable anything there is to tell." However, the meaning of
the word "curtain" also factors into the play, for it has a specific
dramatic function. When the "curtain" falls, the play is over.
Fortunately, "curtain" has two syllables so the play can continue.
I would like to suggest that in Listen to Me, the monosyllable
acts as a linguistic analogue for the concept of "Entity," for the
monosyllable contains within one sound all that is required for the
expression of whatever concept is represented by the word. For the
characters in the text, the monosyllable represents the possibility of
an unmediated connection between signifier and signified. One
character in the play claims that monosyllables are more readily
understandable: "And the first one the first one of the seven of
them said in meditation. What is a word of one syllable is it easier
to understand than one of several" (LO&P, 389). In Everybody's
Autobiography(1937) Stein comments further on the monosyllable:
"And in some fashion the letters chosen that make up the words of
one syllable although they are so few are like letters which would
make up a longer word. Are we for example " (4, 114). While
Stein's definition appears to be maddeningly vague, the definition
contains the notion that a monosyllabic word is a rendering down of
essence.
In my reading of Listen to Me I wish to consider Stein's use of
monosyllables not just as a game-plan for the procedure of the play
but as a means by which Stein critiques the complex diction and
rhetoric of the patriarchy. Virginia Woolf is another modernist who
sees in the monosyllable the potential for an unmediated connection
between a word and its referent, as opposed to the latinate
discourse of the patriarchy which in its aggregation of syllables
draws a word further away from its referent. At the end of the
village pageant in Woolf's novel Between the Acts (1941), a
disembodied voice invites members of the audience to reflect on
their own nature:
GERTRUDE STEIN 79
Before we part, ladies and gentlemen/ before we
go ... (Those who had risen sat down) .. .lets talk in words of
one syllable/ without larding/ stuffing or cant. Lets break
the rhythm and forget the rhyme. And calmly consider
ourselves. Ourselves. Some bony. Some fat
12
The voice suggests that language is the site of illusion which
disrupts the process of self-scrutiny. While circumlocutious puffery
draws language away from its referents in the world, "words of one
syllable" contribute to a more direct apprehension of the thing itself.
The magic utterance here seems to be the word "one." "One"
embodies a sense of undivided wholeness: one word; one syllable
sound; one person; one all-encompassing vision.
Characters and monosyllables
Not all of Listen to Me is written in monosyllables. However,
the concept of ennumerating syllables informs the action of the first
group of characters in the play: those named after ordinal numbers
(Second character, Third character and so on). These characters
display the kind of "Entity" that Stein described in The Geographical
History of America as being characteristic of the "masterpiece":
"they do what they do that is they say what they know and they
only know what they are as they know what they are" ( GHA/ 217).
13
The characters are named after numbers, they know about
counting, they count for business and they make puns about
counting for their own amusement. Thus the words that they utter
define what they do:
12
Woolf, Virginia, Between the Act51941 (London: Hogarth Press, 1990):
123-124.
1
1'he concept that a character is according to what it does brings to mind
Fenollosa's early twentieth century commentary on the Chinese ideograph and
its close relation to transitive verbs: "The true formula for thought is: The
cherry tree is all that it does." Ernest Fenollosa, "The Chinese Written
Character as a Medium for Poetry," Ezra Pound, Instigations 1920 '(Freeport,
NY: Books for Library Press, 1967), 382.
80
Character: And everybody counts.
Second character: What is a count
PETERSEN
Third character: A count is a gentleman who has a name
Fourth character: And what is his name
Fifth character: His name is count. ( L O ~ 393)
The preoccupation of these characters with counting provides
the backdrop against which Sweet William and Lillian make their
own very different enumerations of the world.
The differing kinds of narrative produced by Sweet William the
genius and his lady Lillian are also determined by the couple's
relation to syllables. At first sight, the male and female characters
fill the stereotypical subject positions designated by heterosexual
convention. An early soliloquy in Listen to Me contains a definition
of gender differences, aligning masculinity with activity: "That is
what a man is they like to know that it is well done" ( L O ~ 387).
Not only is Sweet William's masculinity firmly established, but so too
is his subject position as the swain of Lillian: "Sweet William had
his genius and so he did not look for it. He did look for Lillian and
then he had Lillian" ( L O ~ 388). Lillian, on the other hand,
appears to fulfill the ancient role of principal domestic muse for
William.
Now imagine a scene which is on this earth and as many
come about as are and are not there. They are so careless
with their luggage and luggage gradually gets reduced, at
least they find there was a place where more could be put
and so there was less in any other place.
This is what Lillian had as her blessing.
And Sweet William, sweet William had Lillian. ( L O ~ 391)
While Sweet William has his "genius," Lillian's "blessing" is her
ability to tuck luggage away in handy storage places! However, an
examination of the relation of each character to the game of
monosyllables shows that each represents a different form of
textual generation: Sweet William represents the narrative of
relations ("Identity"), and Lillian the unmediated utterance of the
thing itself ("Entity"). Through her connection with the theoretically
privileged concept of "Entity," Lillian brings into question her
passive designation as luggage-bearer.
Sweet William and patriarchal narrative
In Listen to Me, conventional narrative and "Identity" are
connected through Sweet William's quest to tell a story. The basic
premise of Sweet William's character is that he is a writer seeking
to tell a romance. However, in order to make patriarchal narrative
(his "careful story") Sweet William requires the presence of Lillian:
GERTRUDE STEIN
Now Sweet William had his genius and so he could tell a
careful story of how they enjoyed themselves. But he did
not have his Lillian, he looked for Lillian and so he could not
tell a careful story of how they enjoyed themselves. ( L O ~
390)
81
That Lillian is indispensable to William is, as Wendy Steiner
suggests, reinforced by the parallel internal structure of the names
"William" and "Lillian" (Steiner, 198). But why does Sweet William
need Lillian in order to make narrative? The answer lies in the
function of being in relation that Stein perceived as being common
to patriarchal narrative structures and the formation of "Identity."
Patriarchal, or conventional narrative, depends on causal
relations. Conventional aspects of plot like the beginning, middle,
and end depend for their definition on their relation to each other.
"Identity" too is the result of the gaze of recognition. One is an
"Identity" in so far as one comes into relation with another. If we
concede that according to Gertrude Stein's schema, patriarchal
narrative exists by virtue of being in relation then Lillian does form
part of the definition of Sweet William's very nature as a writer. He
needs to be recognized by her in order to write the structured
narratives of "Identity."
Sweet William is further aligned with patriarchal narrative
through his connection with polysyllables. As I argued above,
monosyllables are associated with "Entity." By contrast, the diction
of Sweet William is polysyllabic, for he is the bearer of patriarchal
narrative, the classifier and the teller of stories. Like Kubla Khan,
he decrees the creation of a pleasant landscape:
Sweet William prepared verdure and fountains and he
admired what he did. ( L O ~ 399)
His words are not monosyllabic "Entities" that, in Stein's terms,
contain all that is required for their existence. Rather, they are
polysyllabic outcroppings of his "genius":
Sweet William had his genius.
Sweet William had his syllables.
Sweet William had water and had no water in his pools
sweet William had water in his water falls
Water-fall Three syllables made up a two syllables and one
syllable. ( L O ~ 400)
In this example we see how the generation of the landscape is
paralleled with Sweet William's mode of textual generation. Here
Sweet William uses "his syllables" to create a fertile land. However
it is not just syllable count that has a bearing upon the nature of his
creation, but the meaning of the words too. The connection
between polysyllables and their referents creates problems for
Sweet William as he sets out to create his textual version of the
world. There is no water in Sweet William's pools, because "pools"
82 PETERSEN
is a monosyllable that does not contain the polysyllabic word
"water." However "water-fall" does contain "water" and so there is
water in his waterfalls.
Throughout the play, William's process of creation seems to be
focused on solving the questions raised by his diction rather than
getting through to "the thing itself." When he considers events
happening in his textual world he must first address a host of issues
surrounding his choice of words, issues which almost prevent the
event from happening:
Sweet William: Suddenly there is a war
Suddenly is a word of three syllables
There is a war
Words of one syllable
Sweet William: Suddenly there is a war.
Sweet William: What is suddenly there is a war.
Sweet William: The earth is all covered over with people
when this is so then it is not so that
suddenly there is a war.
Because suddenly if the earth is all covered
over with people then sudden is not any
more. ( L O ~ 405)
The passage opens with Sweet William's customary
enumeration of syllables, according to the game that governs the
text. However, Sweet William goes on to become concerned with
the import of the word "suddenly" and its relation to the meaning of
the monosyllables "there is a war." What might be needed in order
for a war to occur suddenly? First one must have warring factions:
a populace. However if there was a populace then the war might
not come as a surprise, and Sweet William could not use the adverb
"suddenly" after all. With each new conjunction Sweet William's
logic brings the event of the war into a new set of circumstances;
the clauses wind about and about with "when" and "so then" and
"because . . . if." Soon Sweet William is so caught up in the
ramifications of his own diction that he almost talks himself out of
noticing the war at all. By contrast, Lillian's relation to language is
unmediated by questions of diction or the windings of logic. Her
utterance, when it comes to us, contains a lucidity of vision that
springs from a statement of "the thing itself and not in relation."
lillian and monosyllables
At the same time as Lillian's presence is necessary to William,
she represents far more than the female muse, lover or even inbuilt
audience, for Lillian embodies the concept of "Entity" privileged in
Stein's theoretical framework. Lillian's speech presents an
apatriarchal alternative to the "careful story" of Sweet William.
Lillian produces text that is indivisible: "Lillian had no connection
GERTRUDE STEIN 83
with syllables. Syllables are not so" L O ~ 399-400). She does not
care to compartmentalize the world in this way:
Lillian has never divided anything from anything and in this
way the earth is the earth and the earth which is the earth
is the earth which is, there is a hesitation not within but
without, which is, there is no hesitation within without,
which is, do not like what there is not to like, within, very
quietly five enter.
In no time at all there is no time. (LO&P, 394)
Lillian lives outside the schema of syllables which classifies
language, having never "divided anything from anything." She
allows what she perceives, represented by the monosyllable "earth,"
to remain whole and true to its own nature. Unlike Sweet William's
"pools" which contain no "water," Lillian's "earth" contains "earth."
Thus, according to Stein's theories, the relation between signifier
and signified is more closely mediated. Nor is Lillian's timelessness
("In no time at all there is no time") any coincidence, for Lillian's
ability to describe and perceive the earth in its entirety is
characteristic of the "human mind" which perceives the earth from a
birdseye perspective.
Lillian's main utterance occurs quite late in the play, and in fact
it surprises us with its originality and its volubility. The only other
time when Lillian speaks is in rather desultory dialogue with Sweet
William:
All of a sudden there is no all of a sudden.
There are people everywhere.
Sweet William: Where
Lillian: Everywhere
Sweet William: But do I like it.
Lillian: You do not like it.
Sweet William: Everywhere. L O ~ 406)
In dialogue with her male counterpart, Lillian dully echoes
Sweet William, trailing along after him, weighed down by the
luggage of his concerns. When we finally hear Lillian speak, she is
alone, for hers is the voice of "Entity" which does not speak in
relation to another. Indeed, Sweet William is so busy organizing his
own careful story that he misses Lillian's speech:
Sweet William: There is no one because I like it.
Sweet William: Because I like it there is no one there is
no earth and there are not people everywhere on it.
Lillian: There is a wish
Lillian: There is a horse
Lillian: There is a head
Lillian: There is an eye
Lillian: There is a kneel
Lillian: There is a wish when I kneel on the eye of the
84 PETERSEN
horse and wish it.
Sweet William was not there. (LO&P, 412)
Lillian's utterance is apatriarchal in two ways. First, it defies
chronology by sending time forwards in the form of a wish, and
then folding it back upon itself through the use of the present
tense. The "wish" opens up possibilities for the future without
committing the text to the exigencies of chronological time.
Second, the utterance defies patriarchal syntax. Because of its
syntactic position, the word "kneel" becomes a noun, only to revert
to its customary usage in the last sentence. Without taking the
interpretation too far, one might conjecture that it is not necessarily
a coincidence that "kneel" has a changing allegiance, for it is
customarily used to designate homage to a person of superior rank.
Perhaps in miniature the word encapsulates Stein's uncanny ability
to subvert ideology by bringing into question meanings and usages.
Stein gives a source for Lillian's vision in Everybody's
Autobiography. She describes a trip to Cornwall with Robert "Abdy
and his wife Diana. One sight-seeing trip included a visit to an
ancient chalk horse etched onto the hillside. Evidently Diana Abdy
knelt on the eye of the horse to make a wish (EA, 300). Visualizing
the version of this event contained in Listen to Me requires us as
readers to employ the birdseye view of the "human mind." The
changing syntactic position of the word "kneel" demonstrates just
how the panoramic vision of the "human mind" challenges the
reader to both value the discrete units of language and to see the
text laid out beneath us like a landscape. The individual nouns
which lead us up to the word "kneel" ("wish," "horse," "head,"
"eye") are laid out like stepping stones, rendered discrete from each
other by repetition of the objective formula "there is." The
noun/verb "kneel" provides the point at which the focus changes.
In order to visualize the statement "there is a kneel" the reader
must employ the panoramic view from above (it may be read as
"there is a kneeling one"). Later, the word evokes the viewpoint of
ground level when it is used as a verb in conjunction with the
subjective "I": "when I kneel." "As readers we are at once close to
and very far from the kneeling woman. We must rise above the
hillside in order to fit the kneeling woman and the great horse into
our field of vision.
More than a representation of the beloved other necessary for
the male character's own comfort and inspiration, Lillian embodies
the approach to the text characteristic of the "human mind"
privileged in the theoretical schema outlined in The Geographical
History of America. I suggest that the shift is a part of Stein's move
towards valuing her own voice as a creator and as a woman. It
would not be inappropriate to suggest that the summons in the title
of the play "listen to me" is a call to hear the utterance of other
Lillians in the world.
Journal of American Drama and Theatre 13 (Spring 2001)
WILLIAM DUNLAP'S A TRIP TO NIAGARA
JULIAN MATES
The last play William Dunlap wrote was in many ways his best,
though critics have tended to ignore it when evaluating Dunlap's
influence on the American stage. Dunlap was America's first
professional playwright, and the number of his plays-original,
adaptations, translations-is about sixty. Almost all of these were
written between 1797 and his insolvency in 1805. Only a very few
of these were brought back season after season, notably his
translations of August von Kotzebue and his patriotic plays. Still, his
reputation was national: his dramas were produced in Boston,
Philadelphia, Baltimore, Hartford, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Providence,
to mention only a few. His theatre friends offered him free passes
wherever he went. One of these friends was responsible for
Dunlap's last burst of theatrical energy.
Charles Gilfert, an old friend, was managing the Bowery Theatre
and asked Dunlap to write some plays to counter those being
offered at the Park. George Gilfert, his father, had been a music
teacher and organist in New York in the 1790s, and he was a
member of the John Street Theatre orchestra; too, he sold musical
instruments at a shop on Broadway.
1
As manager of the Old
American Company, Dunlap knew him and was later friends with his
son, Charles. In 1826, Charles was selected as general manager of
the Bowery Theatre. The competition with the Park was fierce.
One of Gilfert's lasting accomplishments was the stress on dance.
An article in the New York Evening Post, 1 December 1828, said, in
part:
It is with sentiments of unaffected surprise that I have read a
most illiberal attack upon the charming ballet of the Bowery
Theatre . . . . That what is called the legitimate drama has
ceased to charm, the managers of theatres can testify to their
cost. Are they then to blame, finding that even Shakespeare
1
George C. D. Odell, Annals of the New York Stage (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1927): I, 327, 368; II, 38, 413.
86 MATES
will not attract; that Macready's fame and talents will not
produce audiences commensurate with the expences of his
engagement; are then the caterers for public amusement to be
arraigned for seeking in pageantry and the dance, that
remuneration which the most sublime poetry, and the best
actors will not afford them? ... . Melo-drama had its day ....
What was to be done--opera was resorted to . . . at the end of
a year [Garcia] was obliged to go to Mexico. The dance alone
remained untried; and to the managers of the Bowery Theatre
do we owe the introduction of an entertainment which has
beguiled us of many a care, and which has probably received as
much patronage from the ladies of our city as any other species
of entertainment . . . woe to the organization of that State
whose foundation is to be sapped, by the graceful attitude of an
accomplished woman."
But the dance, however important to the history of American
theatre, was not sufficient to keep the Bowery Theatre afloat, even
with such luminaries as Charles Vestris and his wife, Ronzi, and
Mlle. Celeste.
The Park theatre, Dunlap's old stamping ground, had been
presenting plays on American themes, especially James Hackett's
performance in John Bull at Home, or Jonathan in England, and the
Bowery needed a response. Too, the Park had shown scenes of
other countries in dioramas, and the Bowery could combine both
theme and diorama with an assignment for Dunlap. The source for
many of the scenes was a long anecdote told to Dunlap by John
Wesley Jarvis, later recounted in Dunlap's History of the Rise and
Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States.
2
'The last piece
I wrote for the stage," Dunlap wrote elsewhere, "was a farce called
A Trip to Niagara, the main intention of which was to display
scenery."
3
Dunlap wrote and translated several pieces for the
Bowery in the 1820s, at the request of Gilfert, "and in the plain way
of trade, receiving meagre compensation for poor commodities.""
As was frequently the case, Dunlap denigrated his work, and
scholars have taken his word; yet the play had much to recommend
2
William Dunlap, A History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design
in the United States(1834; Reprint, New York: Dover Publications, 1969): II,
91-2.
3
William Dunlap, History of the American Theatre {1832; Reprint New
York: Burt Franklin, 1963): II, 280.
4
Ibid.
DUNLAP 87
it. The New York Mirror, 22 November 1828, managed to whet its
readers' appetites:
The species of moving scenic exhibition, which causes the
pleasing delusion of making the spectator feel as if he
moved and passed the scenes which in reality pass before
him, was, we believe, first displayed at the Park Theatre to
an American audience. It was followed by a pleasing
spectacle of the same kind at the laFayette, and, again, in
the pieces now performing of London and Paris and the
Dumb Savoyard, at the Park. The managers of the Bowery
have had, for months past, in preparation a display of this
nature, which, from the talents of those engaged, is
expected to equal any thing of the kind seen by us of the
western world. With great judgment the scenes of our
native country have been selected for the pencil and the
brush, and a native dramatist [the coy reference is to
Dunlap] employed to compose the plot and dialogue which
is to give intellectual entertainment while the external
senses are delighted by the magnificent views which our
rivers and mountains present .. . . Too much praise cannot
be given to the managers for the selection of the subject,
and for the liberality evinced by calling upon the talent of
the country to delight or instruct its citizens, rather than
servilely receiving the maukish, and, frequently, ill-suited,
effusions of London playwrights, because they can be
obtained cheap.
The idea of the diorama was to display a series of scenes while the
characters of the play sat in a steamboat, and the scenery rolled
past them, giving the illusion of actually passing each place; a
canvas area of 2,500 square feet was used. The New York Evening
Post said, "As the 'getting up' of this piece has been very costly, we
hope the manager may reap the benefit of his labours." The first
few advertisements listed the treats to be expected, and after
awhile instead of the description, mention was made of a separate
list available to potential theatre-goers. The high cost of the
production can be ascertained from the first descriptions.
5
The Eidophusicon, or Moving Diorama
The new and splendid scenery painted by Messrs. Jones,
Gordon, and Reinagle, assisted by Messrs. Haddock, White,
5
The list below, including the painters for each scene, is from 'The Bowery
Theatre" in the New York Evening Post, November and December, 1828.
88
MATES
and Leslie, from correct sketches taken on the spot by the
respective artists. The extensive and complicated
Machinery of the Diorama invented and executed by Mr.
Danes. The Steamboats and other mechanical and moving
objects on the Hudson by Mr. Haddock. The Music
composed and selected by Mr. Gilfert.
"DESCRIPTION OF THE SCENERY
1. The Dining Room of the City Hotel. Painted by Messrs.
White and Leslie.
2. Steamboat Wharf-Steamboat ready to saiL-Painted
by Mr. Gordon.
3. The Bowery. Painted by Mr. Reinagle.
4. The Eidophusicon. Painted by Mr. Jones. Commencing
with a view of Governor's Island, with shipping at anchor,
from which the spectator is carried opposite Jersey City,
with the U.S. frigate Hudson at anchor, including the varied
shipping and animated imagery of that part of the river.
From thence the view proceeds to Hoboken, where the
steam vessel Constitution appears in her progress. From
Hoboken the view proceeds, passing Wehawk, to those
stupendous and gigantic cliffs the Palisades, which, for
singularity of appearance and grandeur of natural beauty,
are not to be rivalled in the world. In this part of her
progress the vessel encounters one of those violent and
sudden storms so frequent on the North River. The
steamboat and surrounding scenery are gradually lost to
the view of the spectator in a dense fog, which is followed
by thunder, lightning, and all the varied and alarming
features of a summer storm, which in that season so often
terrifies while it excites the admiration of the traveller in
that wild and romantic region. The storm subsides and the
view shows Haverstraw Light House and adjacent scenery,
with Caldwell's Landing and Entrance; from which the
spectator approaches the Highlands, with all their rich
variety of mountain, wood, and cliff. He then passes West
Point, with its concentration of beautiful and intersting
objects, and which are seen under the imposing effect of a
bright Sunset. Leaving West Point night approaches, and
the soft and silvery light of the rising Moon begins to tint
the rugged fronts of the rocky eminences which overhang
the river. The Constitution pauses under the wooded banks
of Polypus Island, which receding from the sight, the broad
and beautiful expanse of waters which form Newburgh Bay
spreads before the audience-the town of Newburgh in the
DUNLAP
distance, and the bay enlivened with fishing boats and
other shipping. From thence the dioramic view proceeds
up the river, till it shows the concluding general view of
Catskill Point and distant Mountains, by Moonlight. The
whole animated by the various craft which navigate the
North River.
5. The Bar Room of an Inn at Catskiii-(Rip Van Winkle's
Cottage in Embryo.) Painted by Mr. White.
6. Catskill Mountain House, at the Pine Orchard, by
Sunrise-the morning mist upon the country beneath.
Painted by Mr. Gordon.
7. That picturesque and romantic spot the Cauterskill
Falls. Painted by Mr. Jones.
8. State-street, Albany. Painted by Mr. Reinagle.
9. The Canal and Aqueduct at the Little Falls, on the
Mohawk. Painted by Mr. Gordon.
10. Inn at Buffalo. Painted by Mr. Leslie.
11. Niagara! The stupendous cataract of the Falls of
Niagara, with all its terrific grandeur and sublime effect,
presented with the superior advantages of the immense
altitude that this Theatre affords. Painted by Mr. Jones."
89
This was the scenery against which Dunlap had to weave his play.
As a man who had spent a large part of his life professionally
involved with the theatre, he was not only able to work the effects
into his play, but to write a more-than-competent play, to boot.
A Trip to Niagara begins in an apartment in the City Hotel, New
York. Amelia Wentworth is writing to her sister in England about
the delights she finds in America, such as superb steamboats and
the vision of the people. Her servant, Nancy, wants to return to
England, because in America she is considered no better than a
black, and because America has no royalty. She is afraid that her
near-fiance, Thomas, wants to stay here. "[H]e will go into the
woods, and buy wild lands, and be a Congress-man.'
16
Wentworth, Amelia's brother, enters. He is disgusted with
America, calls it the "fag-end of creation.'' He misses the celebrated
ruins of Europe. Her response "If America takes warning by the
errors of Europe, she will soon be the pride of the Universe!" He is
contemptuous of everything in America, where he is treated like
everyone else. He leaves to secure them berths on a steamboat to
Albany.
John Bull surprises Amelia. He is an Englishman who had
courted her in England, where she had insisted that he travel before
6
William Dunlap, A Trip to Niagara (New York: E.B. Clayton, 1830), 6.
90 MATES
they committed themselves. He still wants to marry her, and they
strike a bargain: if he can convince her brother to give up his
prejudices about America, she will consider matrimony.
Nancy's Thomas has left his employment as servant, and Nancy
hopes to hire Job Jerryson as a replacement. He is black, a bit of a
dandy, and totally without any hint of the standard portrayal of
black speech and manners. He refuses to leave his employment at
the hotel and paraphrases Othello: "I would not my free condition
put in confinement for seas of wealth."
7
(He is the manager of a
black theatre company, "The Shakespeare Club.") His character
and speech reflect Dunlap's attitude toward the picture of slaves
and slavery itself. Soon after his father died, he freed the family
slaves; he was on the executive committee of an abolitionist
society; and most of his published works have some reference to
the evils of slavery.
Now Dennis Doherty comes in, the last in a long line of Dunlap
stage Irishmen. Dunlap came of Irish stock and at least seven of
his plays contain Irishmen: Darby's Return, The Glory of Columbia,
Bonaparte in England, Lewis of Monte Blanco, The Wife of Two
Husbands, Yankee Chronology, and this one.
8
He confuses "favor"
with "fever" and wants advice about getting back overseas as
quickly as possible. Now Bull enters disguised as a Frenchman and
is the recipient of one of Dennis's complaints. "Did not I see a shop
full of coffins the first day I landed? 0, what a divil of a place is it
where the coffins stand ready to catch a man the moment he stips
ashore.'
19
He has been in America for two weeks, but since there is
no ship available to take him back, he is resolved to travel north to
canada where he can live safely under His Majesty's flag. Amelia
returns but does not recognize Bull until he reveals himself. Dennis
again tells his story, now confusing "hate" and "heat.'' Wentworth
comes in, is amused by Dennis's account of America and resolves to
help him. Bull tells Amelia of his plans and his various disguises
"borrowed from the Bowery Theatre" as they prepare for the trip to
Niagara.
The second scene takes place on the Steamboat Wharf at the
bottom of Courtland Street. "View of Jersey City. Ships in the
stream, & c." The language of the runners gives some excellent
local color. 'The North America is the fastest, Sir!" "This way,
Sir!-We beat them by twenty minutes last trip.'' "We beat them,
7
Dunlap, Niagara, 13.
8
Oral Sumner Coad, Willam Dun/ap(1917; reprint New York: Russell &
Russell, 1962), 179.
9
Dunlap, Niagara, 15.
DUNLAP 91
sir." Wentworth enters followed by Porters and Amelia, Nancy (with
her "ridicule''), and Dennis. Job shows travelers to a boat: "Permit
me to have the honour of showing you the way."
10
Bull comes on,
now disguised as Jonathan, a Yankee; he argues with the Engineer,
and they all go on board at the end of Act I.
The second act shows the Bowery, with a view of the front of
the Theatre. Dennis is convinced that Job is black as a result of a
fever and insists that he stand away from him. Dennis has lost his
way, and there is some farcical stage business as he drops one
parcel and picks up another. Job directs him to the pier.
The next stage direction is "Diorama, or Moving Scenery." The
panorama, with a special building and special lighting had been
invented in 1787; the diorama was invented by a Frenchman in
1822-a painting with a transparent effect (the terms tended to be
used interchangeably).
11
The steamboat seems to be passing up
the river as eighteen scenes are shown. The boat stops, and the
passengers put off in a small boat; they go ashore at Catskill, at
night. Wentworth enters the inn with the landlord, complaining all
the while. When Amelia enters, the landlord does for her what he
can to be helpful.
Wentworth: So sister, here we must stay, in this wretched
dog-hole tonight.
Amelia: Dog-hole, brother? Every thing is very
comfortable! And the people are very obliging.
12
She speaks of their delightful journey; he retorts that he was
reading newspapers in the cabin. Bull, in the guise of a Frenchman,
torments Wentworth who runs off to end the act.
The third and final act begins at "the Mountain, or Pine Orchard
House." There is a view of distant scenery, and the sun rises during
the scene. Wentworth believes the Frenchman is trying to murder
him. Suddenly, Leatherstocking appears, in part to help display yet
more scenery, but also to portray James Fenimore Cooper's hero as
the kind of American Wentworth can admire; too, his ideas
represent something of America's: the building of a great nation at
the cost of the loss of the natural beauty so important to Americans'
idea of their country and their relation to it. Leatherstocking speaks
of how the country has changed. "The beasts of the forest all gone!
10
Dunlap, Niagara, 21-22.
11
Walter J . Meserve, An Emerging Entertainment: The Drama of the
American People to 182B(Bioomington: Indiana University Press, 1977), 312.
12
Dunlap, Niagara, 28.
92 MATES
What is worth living for here, now! All spoilt!" He speaks of how
the country was "When the trees began to be kiver'd with leaves,
and the ice was out of the river; when the birds came back from the
south, and all nater lifted its song to its Maker-think you not that
the hunter's thanksgiving went up to Heaven with the song of all
around him" He offers to show some of the splendors of nature to
Amelia, and even Wentworth cannot criticize Natty Bumpo and is
reduced to repeating, "After breakfast-after breakfast."
13
It is not surprising that Dunlap should compliment Cooper
through the use of Leatherstocking. Cooper and Dunlap were good
friends; indeed, Cooper was a big help financially in Dunlap's last
years. Dunlap had painted a scene from Cooper's novel, The Spy,
and years later, in The Pilot, Cooper wrote. "We shall, therefore,
proceed to state briefly the outlines of that which befell them in
after life, regretting, at the same time, that the legitimate limits of a
modern tale will not admit of such a dilation of many a merry or
striking scene, as might create the pleasing hope of beholding
hereafter some more of our rude sketches quickened into the life by
the spirited pencil of Dunlap."
14
At the end of Scene 1, Bull enters as the Yankee, Jonathan, and
finds ways to torment Wentworth before they all go in to breakfast.
Scene 2 gives the scenic artists and mechanics an opportunity
to display a waterfall and a cave. Leatherstocking has taken Amelia
and Wentworth to view the place, over Wentworth's constant
complaints. Leatherstocking says he is going west, where the land
is still unspoiled.
The next scene takes place on State Street, in Albany. Bull, as
Jonathan, finds additional means of tormenting Wentworth, so that
the latter will do almost anything to contradict Bull.
Scene 4 is set on the Little Falls of the Mohawk. Amelia gives
us a bit of historical local color: 'The opportunity we so frequently
have, of stepping from the canal-boat, and thus walking on the
bank, adds to the pleasure derived from the ever changing scenery
that is presented to us." She speaks of America's debt to Fulton
and Clinton. Wentworth, of course, complains, this time of the
possibility of having his head knocked off by a bridge as he stands
on the canal boat. Dunlap did not need to mention the call " low
bridge!/' all too familiar to his audience.
15
Dennis at last catches up
to them and joins the party.
13
Dunlap, Niagara, 32.
14
James Fenimore Cooper, The Pilot(New York: President Publishing Co.,
1849), 434.
15
Dunlap, Niagara, 42.
DUNLAP
93
A hotel at Buffallo, scene 5, finds Wentworth complaining as
usual, now supported by Bull as Jonathan. After an assortment of
tall tales, Wentworth objects:" ... you know that neither the people
nor the country are as bad as you make them." He goes on, "I
begin to think that I have done both the people and country
injustice."
16
At this point the plot is revealed, and Wentworth is
delighted that his sister and Bull will marry.
The final scene reveals the "Falls of Niagara as seen from
below, on the American side." Leatherstocking is taking his last
look at places he loves, before going off to the prairie. He and
Wentworth shake hands, the Englishman and the American.
"Henceforth, forever friends!" says Wentworth.U
* * *
Dunlap referred to A Trip to Niagara as a farce, with
"pretensions to no higher character."
18
And yet the New York
American, before giving the cast or describing the diorama, wrote of
"the dramatic piece in three acts written by William Dunlap." The
cast was a good one: John Fisher as Wentworth, W.B. Chapman as
John Bull (and the Frenchman and the Yankee), Read as Job
Jerryson, H. Wallack as Dennis Doughterty, Forbes as
Leatherstocking, Mrs. Hughes as Amelia, and Miss A. Fisher as
Nancy. The Evening Post lists the minor characters as well, and
ends with "Travellers" as played by the "Corps de Ballet."
While the Evening Post continually stresses the scenery, the
American rarely mentions the scenery but most often refers to the
"new dramatic piece in three acts by William Dunlap" and
sometimes the "drama" of A Trip to Niagara or "the much admired
new drama." For the Evening Post, Dunlap's play was the thing.
A Trip to Niagara was sometimes given as an afterpiece, though
most often it was the main work of the evening. Occasionally extra
acts such as songs by Mr. Sloman were mentioned in
advertisements or M. and Mme. Vestris dancing a "grand pas de
deux."
19
On Wednesday, 31 December, the Bowery happily
16
Dunlap, Niagara, 50.
17
Dunlap, Niagara, 53.
18
William Dunlap, "Preface," A Trip to Niagara (New York: E.B. Clayton,
1830).
19
"For the Evening Post," in the New York Evening Post, 1 December
1828.
94 MATES
announced Dunlap's play's twenty-fifth performance. Odell wrote
that the Dunlap piece had saved the season.
In its own time, A Trip to Niagara gained mostly favorable
notices. As always, the Evening Post was most impressed with the
scenery. 'This beautiful representation, or rather succession of
pictures, drawn from some of the most splendid scenes of nature,
continues to attract crowded houses to the Bowery theatre."
The New York Mirror, as we have seen, had prepared its
readers (22 November 1828) by giving the history of the diorama in
America, and then some description of the wonders to anticipate.
When the play opened, the Mirror (6 December 1828) advised its
readers to go see the show. Then, on 20 December, it noted
something special :
Mr. Dunlap's play of a Trip to Niagara-Friday and Saturday
last were distinguished at the Bowery Theatre by the
remarkable circumstance, that the entertainments of the
first evening were repeated in the next, in consequence of
the press to see two pieces, on the same night, both
popular, and both from the pen of the same dramatic
writer. On Friday evening the house overflowed, and,
literally, hundreds went away disappointed. The manager
gave immediate assurance of the repetition of both pieces
on Saturday, and was rewarded by another bumper ... the
author has wielded the lash of satire so playfully, that even
the patient must join in the laugh which is raised at his
expense, but for his cure.
The second play by Dunlap was Thirty Years, or the Gambler's
Fate, a translation of a French melodrama by Prosper Goubaux and
Victor Ducange. Dunlap's translation ran agains one at the Park,
and was considered the better of the two. Dunlap had been
instrumental in introducing melodrama to America, and it is not
surprising that his knowledge of the conventions and his experience
pleased the Bowery's audience. And the "lash of satire" was
directed at English travelers and travel writers who took every
occasion to hold in contempt all things American. The trend to
criticising America reached its peak with Frances Trollope's
Domestic Manners of the Americans in 1832.
When the Arch Street Theatre in Philadelphia produced Dunlap's
A Trip to Niagara, Coyle and Leslie were the scene painters, and
DUNLAP 95
Charles Durang thought the staging accurately and beautifully
done.
20
Not all contemporary accounts were favorable. The Irish Shield
said of Dunlap's play:
. . . the most satiating namby pamby production that ever
disgusted our audience; words without ideas, scenes
without conexion of probability; low jests, and mawkish
sentiment clothed in the poorest language . . . . Such a
play as this would stigmatize with contempt the name of
any author, who had not given before, unquestionable
evidences of dramatic talent and literary capacity."
21
* * *
Later evaluations of A Trip to Niagara have tended to be more
mixed than those bf Dunlap's day. His first biographer, Oral
Sumner Coad, found the play "merely a series of disconnected and
puerile scenes and irrelevant characters," with humor that is
"frequent and boisterous."
22
Arthur Hobson Quinn found "There is
little to be said in its favor," though he admits to an interest in the
five caricatures that Dunlap portrays ("The Yankee, French, English,
Irish, and negro types'') and tends to accept Dunlap's own
evaluation of his play.
23
Robert H. Canary, here as elsewhere in his
treatment of Dunlap, is ambivalent. He calls the play "well-done
hackwork," says "Perhaps he [Dunlap] was led to underrate the
play," calls it "a workmanlike job," and "Since this is a Dunlap play,
the suddenly good-natured Wentworth acquiesces to their
engagement," and finally, "Not a great play, it is still the best of the
surviving original plays by Dunlap and by no means an unworthy
end to his long career as a dramatist."
24
2
Francis Hodge, Yankee Theatre, The Image of American on Stage, 1825-
JSSO(Austin: UniversityofTexas Press, 1964), 162.
21
The Irish Shield, January 1829, 30-31, quoted in Meserve, 113.
22
Coad, 177.
23
Arthur Hobson Quinn, A History of the American Drama From the
Bginning to the Civil War(New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1951), 107.
24
Robert H. Canary, William Dunlap (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1970):
71-5.
96 MATES
Aside from its value as a play, A Trip to Niagara inspired other
dioramas, such as views of European cities, and such displays as
the "Burning of Moscow."
25
Walter Meserve points out other effects of Dunlap's play:
. . . with their articulated awareness of American
idiosyncracies, American dramatists responded to the
desires of the people for a vivid scenery as well as an
understanding of a national character. William Dunlap's A
Trip to Niagara (1828) provided a beginning that was
exploited by the popular dioramas and the spectacular
theatre settings from Nick of the Woods to the numerous
scenes of city life in A Glance at New York and many other
plays. Generally, Jacksonian Americans did not care to be
thoughtful; they wanted only to know what they looked like,
individually and as a country.
26
In Yankee Theatre, Francis Hodge suggests that the character
of Wentworth is a mild satire of Charles Matthews, then praises
Dunlap's play as "among his most amusing pieces and certainly
merits much greater attention than it has usually received."
27
Dunlap must have thought that the play's popularity on the
stage, one of the most popular he ever wrote, might result in the
sale of the text (and it is also possible that he thought more highly
of his work than he let on). In any case, he published the play, and
as almost always the case with a Dunlap project, probably lost
money. A letter dated 18 November 1830, to friends, reads:
I sent a bundle of my farce of a Trip to Niagara to your
care with the request to place them for sale with a
Bookseller who is known as a dealer in dramatics. Retail
price 25 cents.
I know from experience that either of you will do this or
more to [serve] Your friend
William Dunlap
28
25
Wolfgang Born, American Landscape Painting ( 1948; Reprint
Connecticut: Greenwood, 1970), 90.
26
Walter J. Meserve, Heralds of Promise, The Drama of the American
People During the Age of Jackson, 1829-1849 (New York: Westport,
Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1986), 197.
27
Hodge, 162.
28
General Collection, Rutgers University Library.
CONTRIBUTORS
WALTER MESERVE is Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Ph.D.
Programs in Theatre and English, The City University of New
York. MOLLIE ANN MESERVE is editor of The Playwrights
Companion (1985-1999). The Meserves have co-authored A
Chronological Outline of World Theatre (1992) and co-edited two
volumes of pre-World War I American plays: When Conscience
Trod the Stage (1998) and Fateful Lightning! (2000). They are
currently editing selected American plays from the nineteenth
century and the early twentieth century.
VINCENT LANDRO is Visiting Professor of Theatre in the School of
Theatre and Dance at Northern Illinois University. He has
published articles on regional theatre management practices and
playhouse management in Renaissance London, and is currently
at work on a study of publicity agents in American theatre at the
turn of the centruy.
MAURA CRONIN is a Ph.D. student in Theatre at the University of
Pittsburgh.
ALICE PETERSEN is a graduate of Queen's University at Kingston,
Ontario and the University of Otago, New Zealand.
JULIAN MATES is Emeritus Professor at C.W. Post College of Long
Island University. He is the author of several books on the
musical theatre and the Renaissance. His biography of William
Dunlap will be published by Southern Illinois University Press.
97
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