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TH JOURN L O

MERIC N DR M ND THE TRE

Volume 13 Number 2 Spring 2001

Editor: Vera Mowry Roberts

Co-Editor: Jane Bowers

Managing Editor: Kimberly Pritchard

Editorial Assistant: Dalia Basiouny

Circulation Manager: Lara Simone Shalson

Circulation Assistants:

Hillary Arlen

Celia Braxton

Edwin Wilson Director

Martin E Segal Theatre Center

THE GRADUATE SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY CENTER

OF THE ITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK



Editorial oard

Ruby Cohn ruce A McConachieMargaret Wilkerson Don B Wilmeth

Robert Vorl icky

The ournal o American Drama and Theatre welcomes submissions.Our aim is to promote research on American playwrights, plays, andtheatre, and to encourage a more enlightened understanding of ourliterary and theatrical heritage. Manuscripts should be prepared inconformity with he Chicago Manualo Style using footnotes (rather

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of Circulation Manager/Martin E Segal Theatre Center, CUNY GraduateCenter, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10016-4309.



TH JOURN L OF MERIC N DR M ND THE TRE

Volume 13, Number 2 Spring 2 1

Contents

WALTER MESERVE AND MOLLIE ANN MESERVE, 1Aspirations, Challenges, and Accomplishments:

America's Literary Dramatists of the 1850s

VINCENT lANDRO, 23Media Mania: The Demonizing of

the Theatrical Syndicate

MAURA CRONIN, 5

The Yankee and the Veteran:

Vehicles of Nationalism

ALICE PETERSEN, 7

Wishing on the Eye of the Horse : The

Concept of Entity in Gertrude Stein's Listen t Me

JULIAN MATES, 8

William Dunlap's Trip to Niagara

CONTRIBUTORS 97





Journalo merican Drama nd Theatre 13 (Spring 2001)

ASPIRATIONS, CHALLENGES AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS:

AMERICA1

S LITERARY DRAMATISTS OF THE 185 s

WALTER J MESERVE AND MOLLIE ANN MESERVE

n 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 deridedhis competition as a damn'd mob of scribbling women -the numberof 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 exploitedcontemporary issues in their plays; others displayed an awarenesslimited 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 writersreceived public hearings in theatres - even if each play occupied aselect audience for a single evening. n fact, during this decadesuch 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:

t will be the study of this management to produce in rapidsuccession, such a series of excellent plays as will sustainthe high reputation this establishment has already achievedby the production, during the past season, of fifteen pieces

by New Dramatists, besides the· numberless dramas of

English authorship . . . While selecting such pieces as havebeen 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

t should be pointed out, of course, that the financial panic ofthe 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 inSeptember had limited success with Joe Jeferson in a comic role,

but her presentation of Charles T. P. Ware's Splendid i s e ~ which

made use of topical humor and the current financial crisis, failed inOctober. 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, butthere is no evidence that she made good her promise. Still, heridea held merit. Meanwhile, journeymen playwrights were churning

out amusements with reckless haste. More serious writers neededencouragement - and more experience.

Among those journal writers and editors who with varyingdegrees 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 o Life had been produced at the Bowery Theatre inNew York in 1848. n 1850, his second effort, Marco Bozzaris

dramatizing the recent revolt in Greece with a highly patrioticinterpretation of the hero, played by James Wallack, was alsostaged at the Bowery. Although The Spirit o the Times wasfavorably 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 byAmerican playwrights such as Nathania Parker Willis, Robert

Conrad, and Bunce, also appeared in Bunce s play entitled Fate/ or

the r o p h ~ 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 stereotypicaland rapacious characters whose unrelieved excesses become quitedull. Rupert, banished by his father the Duke, returns home to see

Corinna and in so doing spurns Lady Catherine, whose jealousrevenge brings death to Corinna. Only at the end of the play does

1George C D. Odell, Annals o he New York Stage 7 (New York : ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1927-49), 29 .

2The Spirito The Times_ 15 June 1850, 204.



SPIR TIONS

Catherine repent: Remorse doth shake my nature (V,v). But it is

too late. Rupert, now gone mad from the strains of imbalanceinherited from his insane mother, kills Catherine's co- conspirator

and, in the act receives a mortal wound. Although Fate - with itsforeign setting, poetic imagery, and Gothic atmosphere - did notplay to the tastes of many audiences of the 1850s, Bunce sapproach was typical among literary figures who tried to impose

their traditional standards upon theatregoers. No matter that

audiences craved light and extravagant amusement from theirplaywrights and spectacular performances by actors and actresses,whatever the vehicle might be.

Bunce found moderate success on the stage only once -and thisby the force of his own good writing. Love in 7 was first producedat Laura Keene s Theatre, 28 February, 1857, with Miss Keene castas the heroine, Rose Elsworth. Based on an incident of theRevolution 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 limitedinformation which has helped distort the modern reader's

understanding of nineteenth-century American drama, called it theonly play of that period which is entirely social in its character; anda charming contrast to its blood-and-thunder associates. Huttonwas seriously wrong on the first count, right on the second, andonly 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 theworn conventions of nineteenth-century comedy. As the daughterof 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 toarrest Armstrong as a spy and would rather enjoy taking Rose as hismistress; but he is no match for her cleverness. Having hiddencaptain Armstrong in the house, Rose feigns an interest in British

captain Arbald and extracts a promise from Major Cleveland toprotect her captain, a promise she later holds Cleveland to when

he catches Armstrong and Rose together. The persistent MajorCleveland then arranges a military joke and persuades Bridget, themaid, to disguise herself as Rose in a marriage to Armstrong.

Always at least one step ahead of Cleveland, however, Rose

Laurence Hutton, Curiosities of he merican Stage (New York: Harper &

Brothers, 1891 , 20.



4 M S RV

disguises herself as Bridget, marries Armstrong, "her c a p t a ~ , 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 ploteffective 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 otherlimited experiences in the theatre: no tangible rewards He gave upwriting 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 luff (1881); a book on etiquette andgrammar 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 pleasepre-Civil War audiences for long. After the conflict, theatremanagement and the structure of acting companies changed with

the arrival on the scene of Augustin Daly and others, and with thesubsequent 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 successfuldramatists from the previous decade appeared on American stages.

These writers, boasting major reputations in neither the literaryworld 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 thetheatre. n the fall of 1850 the American actor McKean Buchanan

purchased a revision of Isaac C. Pray s 1837 play entitled PoetusCaecinna; or, the Roman Consul and The Spirit did its best topromote his efforts on the stage.4 The play did not appeal. Nor did

Joseph S. Jones s play Zafari the Bohemian, produced at the BostonTheatre in the winter of 1856, although Jones's reputation was still

strong in spite of his being past his prime. During the fall of 1853audiences in and around Cincinnati were thoroughly entranced5 by

Cornelius Mathews's poetic tragedy Witchcraft (1846) while his

4The Spirito The i m e ~ 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 n Boston

Acorn (James Oakes), the celebrated critic for the Spirit, did hisutmost to raise an audience for Epes Sargent's tragedy entitled The

Priestess (1855) based on Bellini's Norma. Calling it an effectiveacting tragedy, Acorn quoted passages from the play and declaredit 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 notlast in Boston on any other stage.

The mid-nineteeth century American audience demanded

spectacles. Many plays of course, were light romanticextravaganzas 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 WaltWhitman as he wrote his essay on The Eighteenth Presidency in

1856. Meanwhile, many among the literati persisted in theirattempts to write plays in a traditional mode - sometimes with thetastes of the audience in mind but more frequently interested onlyin appealing to a reading public. ndrti A tragedy in five acts by W.W. Lord was described by the critic of The National Magazine,

Devoted to Literature, rt and Religion (November 1857, 186), asan 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 Tiberius 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) byH.C. Moorehead, a man of considerable experience with AmericanIndians, explored in a quasi- dramatic form their problems with thewhite settlers of the Province of Pennsylvania at mid-eighteenth

century. A story in dialogue, the play gave even the kindly disposedreviewer for Godey's Magazine (September 1856, 276) little

opportunity. He found it undistinguished and lacking a dramaticspirit. Such playwrights might argue that their grand

configurations suggested events related to contemporary publicoutcry, but they seriously misunderstood the interests of America's

theatregoing public.

6The Spint of The Times 27 January 1854 600.

7The Spirit of The Times 4 February 1855 19; 17 March 1855 493; 31

March 1855 74.



M S RV

Louisa Susanna McCord (1810-1879), generally associated with

Charleston, South Carolina, where she was born and died, has helda reputation as a poet and essayist who tackled social problems.

Her criticism of Uncle Tom s Cabin in the Southern Quarterly Reviewfor January 1853, for example, justified slavery as a humanitarian

institution. Her five-act tragedy, Caius Gracchus, 1851, exposed hersevere classical education as well as her disdain for acquiring theskills 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 aproblem relevant to mid-nineteenth century American literature andtheatre 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 widerrange in view of humanity than belongs to the expression of

individual feelings, or the portraiture of individual character." Thereviewer went on to suggest that "female writers" in particular

tended to avoid the drama, a view which seems to be supported bythe 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 andmelodramas in contrast to the limited public appeal of seriousdrama of historical and philosophical intent. Both forms, howeverdisparate their contemporary reception, have been equally ignoredby 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 provideevidence of more literary ambitions. Cortez. th 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. Historyinspired Thomas to dramatize his own opinion of the contemporaryissue of slavery. Hassan Cortez's Moorish slave, questions a

Christian gentleman's advice that Hassan take his liberty and kill thetyrants, all in "Heaven's name " Hassan however, sees "anothermaster-nothing more" and vows to report the incident. If I must



SPIR TIONS

be a slave, I 'll prove, at least ,/Myself, a faithful, honest and trueman. 8

Another Maryland poet, George Henry Miles (1824-1871), also a

lawyer and a professor of English literature at Mount St. Mary'sCollege in Emmitsburg, wrote at least four plays that wereperformed in New York. Upon receiving commendation from actorEdwin 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 Forrestnever produced the winning play from this contest, he sent the prize

money to Miles-because his play most nearly met the conditions ofthe 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

nd Bloom (1854); Mary s Birthday (1857); and Senor Valiente

(1858)-all of which were produced in New York theatres. Afterreceiving his appointment to the faculty of Mount St. Mary's Collegein 1858, he continued to write plays, some of them adapted from

popular novels: Oliver r o m w e l ~ Afraja the Sorcerer, The ParishClerk Emily Chester Love and Honor The Old Curiosity Shop

Thiodolf the Icelander, and a play called The Seven Sisters, whichsymbolized the Southern states that agitated for withdrawal fromthe Union. Miles evidently did not fight in the Civil War, although hishymn, God Save the South, was very dear to Southern heartsduring the conflict, and was sung in schools throughout theConfederacy. 9 During the last five years of his life Miles devoted his

energies exclusively to literature and especially to the study ofShakespeare's major plays.

Miles studied his resources thoroughly before writingMohammed and explained his thesis in a preface to the publishedplay: The lesson conveyed by the life and death of the Arabianimposter is the inability of the greatest man, starting with the purestmotives, to counterfeit a mission from God, without becoming theslave 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: toassert 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 hemay 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 Libraryo Southern Literature (Atlanta: Martin and Hoyt Co. , 1907): 3641-43.



8 M S RV

of Mecca as an act of vengeance toward his enemies (IV, v) and

finally succumbs to poison administered by the wife of a man hehad 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 comeAmony my fellows-citizens on high (V, iv)

In spite of some impassioned speeches, Mohammed did notprovide the great role that Forrest required . There is nothing ofMetamora or Sparticus in his make-up. He is not a noble character;

he has few strong lines and no spectacular or grand actions. Only afew scenes, in fact, are well dramatized-such as the climax of Act

III when Mohammed escapes his enemies disguised as a Bedouinand vows vengeance by the crescent moon . The play offers nohumor, no change of pace-a fault shared by many literary plays of

this period-only love and heroics opposed to villainy in long andtalky scenes. Forrest knew what he wanted-and, perhaps more tothe point, did not want-when he chose not to produce this play,but another good actor could find something there, as MackeanBuchanan later proved. After receiving permission from Miles, whohad published the play in 1850, Buchanan reduced the play to three

acts and reconstructed it with "such dramatic situations as I thoughtit 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 duringthe 1850s. The imagery and the language of the play werefrequently praised, but the spectacular scenery depicting Florida and

the banks of the Mississipi River, along with the beauty of theIndian girl Ulah, added to an audience's pleasure. In his search forthe great river, DeSoto doubts the fidelity of his Indian guides andseized Ulah, the daughter of the chief, as a hostage to insure theirloyalty. At one point in his journey DeSoto must reinspire thededication of his own soldiers, who show increasing signs of

weariness and rebellion. Of far greater danger to DeSoto, a

10he pirito 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 o 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 oneproduction 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.

With Mary s Birthday, or, the Cynic (1857) Miles evidently tried

to lighten his approach and suggest that he did, after all, possess asense of humor. He could not, however, avoid the contrived andsentimental 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 yourEnglish 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 he Spirit o the imes (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 infive 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

See reviews for productions in Bo ston, 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 Miss issippi by DeSoto, 1541. A

frieze in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington entitled Midnight Burial of DeSotoin the Mississippi was created late in the decade of the 1850s.



10 M S RV

gleefully, gulped his wine, hated all libraries, and spoke very rapidly.Miles also resorted to the tired boy-gets-girl formula, with the aid o

much intrigue of plot and frequent disguise changes by Harry

Clinton, who portrayed Valiente. Moderately successful for his daybut distinguished by his peers as neither poet nor dramatist, Mileswas granted an exposure that suggests both the hope o sometheatre 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 WardHowe and William Gilmore Simms stand in sharp contrast to such

minor writers as Laughton Osborn, George H. Calvert, and Charles

James Cannon all o whom wrote with an eye toward publicationrather than production in the theatre. Employing traditionaldramatic form, whether for the closet or the stage, both major and

lesser authors uniformly considered their works as contributions to

the generally neglected genre o American dramtic literature. Julia

Ward Howe (1819-1910) had from childhood enjoyed writing plays.Far from the mainstream of contemporary theatre, she was neithersufficiently knowledgeable nor skillful enough to imitate the classical

traditions with any degreeo

success. Without diminishing the effectof Lenora; r he Worlds Own her greatest dramatic achievement,this play probably owed its run o nights at Wallack's Theatre lateMarch of 1857 to the difficulties theatre managers were facing

during this year o financial panic. A plethora of novelties,spectacles, and poetic experiments by well-known literary figures

found their way to the stages o New York and other cities duringthe lean years o 1857 and 1858.

Best known for her stirring Battle Hymn of the Republic andher anti-slavery endeavors with her husband Samule Gridley Howe,whose energetic knight-errantry led him also to spectacular workwith the blind and the dumb at the Perkins Institue, Julia WardHowe maintains her position in the history o American poetry. Sheplaced her romantic tragedy in the early eighteenth century, whenLenora, the queen of the village and loved by the artist Edward, is

swept off her feet by Lothair, a nobleman in disguise. Her deweyeyed 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 castaside during much o the action of the play, mourns his loss in the

curtain line:

The wreck o all that's fair and excellent;A thing o tears and tenderness forever.



ASPIRATIONS

n spite of a lavish production at Wallack's Theatre, featuringthe admired efforts of Matilda Heron as Lenora, and certain

passages of graceful and passionate poetry, the play did not pleaseall critics. One confessed to losing all sympathy for Lenora afterthe first scene and to being repelled by a society even worse thanwe had ever conceived that it could be. 2 Another reviewercommented on Mrs . Howe's lack of knowledge of the stage, her

straining for picturesque expressions, such as chain of perfurmedbreath, padlocked with kisses and paving stones described as thebosom of the street. 3 The withdrawal of the play from the stage

before the production could become an embarrassment was

accepted by The Spirit as a shrewd move . 4

With his reputation as a popular novelist, controversial essayist,

critic, and political writer, William Gilmore Simms (1806-1870) mighthave been expected to try his hand at writing for the theatre.Having aligned himself with the Young America movement in the1840s, Simms grew increasingly politically oriented, until politicscompletely 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 thetheatre. 5 n his novels he often quoted liberally from plays; he

reviewed contemporary theatre productions, and he compiled andedited A Supplement to the Plays o William Shakespeare (1848).Thoroughly consistent in his action, Simms had no interest in writingcloset drama and when he started to write plays immediatelythought of Edwin Forrest. Forrest, however, did not find Simms'swork sufficiently developed or stageworthy, and Simms was forcedto

become aware of his dramaturgical weakness-ineffectivesituations, for example, and lagging action. 6 Stubbornly, he

persisted, but his lack of success made him take a more realisticlook at his work, and when in 1852 he published Michael Bonham;

~ the Fall o Bexar (written in 1843-44) in the Southern Literary

2 The Spirito The Times_ 21 March 1857, 72.

3 The Spirito The Times_ 28 March 1857, 74.

4 The Spirito The Times_ 4 April 1857, 96.

5 See Jon L. Wakelyn, The Politics o a Literary Man William GilmoreSimms Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1973).

6

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 thestage 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 theunrelenting demands placed upon American playwrights before theCivil War, all of which he could have anticipated. As a literary manand never a stranger in the theatre, Simms wrote openingaddresses 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 onSouthern playwrights, such as Isaac Harby and William Ioor. At one

time he wrote to a friend that dramatic writing was my firstpassion, and I believe it to be my forte.'118 The passage of time hasproven him mistaken in this self analysis.

After trying to sharpen his fledging skill with various dramaticsketches written between 1825 and 1835, Simms looked for helpfrom Edwin Forrest with his major plays: Michael Bonham 1834-44)

and Norman Maurie; or The Man o 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 souredhis enthusiasm for the theatre and sent him back to writing fiction.n 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

bothof

these [plays] have been acted with success. Meanwhile,Simms continued to turn out his poetic dramas. George HenryBoker, another unhappy but far more talented dramatist, toldSimms in a letter in 1869 that he had just handed Simms s drama,The Peace of Elis to the editor of Lippincott s Magazine withouteffect.

19While 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. Asstrong political statements, they echoed the public voice in a far

more substantial manner than the work of the numerous

Noted in Quinn, A History o h American Drama from th Beginning to

th Civil War(New York: Appleto-Century-Crofts, Inc, 1943), 285.

8Charles Watson, Antebellum Charleston Dramatists (University of

Alabama Pre ss, 1976), 119.

19

Jay B. Hubbell, Five Letters from George Henry Boker to William GilmoreSimms, 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 mindsecondary to certain points of view he espoused. He energeticallypreached in favor of the annexation of Texas by the United States

as a Southern response to the anti-slavery movement andconsidered his play a very Texan drama to which, when it was firstproduced 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 o the People Simms

advocated the admission of slave states from the West andattempted to portray the ideal leader of the people as one whowould follow Simms s own principles. A physically powerful man, afine 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 anycost. Having consented to run for the Senate in Missouri, Maurice ischallenged by his opponent's trumped-up charge of forgery, a

charge supported by the villain. Clarice s struggle with this villainwhen he gives her the forged document, and her attempt to stabhim, 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 bothforgery and murder and elected to the legislative body, he returns

home to find his wife dying. A major inspiration for Maurice as atrue man of the people was Edwin Forrest himself, whose oneventure 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 smind 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 theattempt 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 ourtime could not approach the grave dignity of tragedy. 2 Writingearlier in the decade, a reviewer for Sartain s Union Magazine had

20Russel/ 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 defectsin the play. 21 Simms may have been more determined than manyof 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), whilenot a literary man by profession, published four volumes of his

collected works in 1857 (Volume IV consisting of Dramas), followinghis Poems Dramatic nd Miscellaneous, 1851. An aspiring writer, hefelt 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 allthat he wrote. Nonetheless, his great ambition, it seems was to be

a dramatist, and his plays-weak as they are in dramatic action andin general lacking theatricality-are not unlike and no worse than

many poetic dramas which did appear on the stage during the1850s . Not alone in his lack of knowledge of the contemporary

stage nor his presumption that the playwright need not attempt toplease a particular audience, Cannon had something to say to thepeople 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.I t

is a comment more than a play, however, as Cannonattempts to enliven his excessively romantic and image-riddenpoetry with music and spectacular scenes. The Sculptor s Daughter

is set in Italy, where a young woman whose father, furious with theimproper advances of a suitor, stabs the man and flees the scene

with his daughter. The melodramatic plot develops as the daughterbecomes 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 dictatesdetermines the climax of the play. These scenes are also far morecompelling than those dramatizing the sculptor's spiritual renewal

and the daughter's reunion with her presumedly murdered lover.

21Sartain s Union agazine IX (1851): 277-8.

22 C. J. Cannon's Works, Bronson s Quarterly II (October 1857 : 503-27.



SPIR TIONS 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 bringher to ruin. The tests mount in intensity until finally, accused of

sorcery and imprisoned, Dolores hears a voice from above- On theLord 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 exploresthe intellectual and moral precepts found in Cannon's prose and

poetry.

Cannon's two most interesting plays are Better Late ThanNever published in 1854 and described as an attempt at comedy,

and The Oath o Office a tragedy, 1850, published in 1854 with adedication 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 merchantrunning for Congress who tries to assure his victory by pledginghimself to three different and opposing political parties; Scape amoney-lender, Sir Bryan O'Fallon, an Irish Baronet; Windfall, an

actor; Tag, Rag and Bobtail, as political leeches, and Allsides's wifeand daughter. Although the blank verse does not help this slightfarce, the action is frequently humorous, the dialogue witty, and thecharacters, 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 thepublic-day and night. People have the right of universalsuffering , Allsides's theory of the grand education of salaries

determines that everyone, the President included, shall have onedollar a day. He is opposed to all leveling tendencies, and he

supports the gallows and perpetual charters for all banks. Anotherpolitician wants to keep all foreigners out of the country, which willthus rise as a nation to a rank but little inferior to that of the greatempire of China itself (II, iii). As the plot unfolds, Allsides'sduplicity is exposed; and, in traditional farce fashion, Scape reforms

and the appropriate characters discover that they are mother and



16 M S RV

son, contriving a happy ending. With his infusion of irony andhumor 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 werewell echoed in contemporary newspapers, and the play, lacking any

recorded performances, had it ever been staged, might well have

been successful.The Oath ofOffice was produced at the Bowery Theatre in New

York on 18 March, 1850. A weak play, it nevertheless conveyed astrong 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 themayor of Galloway kills his friend, at the time a guest in his father'shouse. As the sitting judge, the mayor sentences his son to be

hanged. When no one else will do the deed, this honorable manfeels 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 wasrevolted 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 theadvantages: 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 hehad once been dismissed from Harvard for rebelling against thecollege government may suggest something of his motivation at this

point in his life. His interest in writing for the theatre having beeninspired by his experience both in the library and among theatre

audiences, Calvert may well have been fascinated by the challengefacing an American playwright at his time in history. His first effortwas a translation of Don Carlos his second a tragedy in blank verse

entitled Count Julian, which he published in 1840. An inauspiciousbeginning, 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 nd Andre, was not published in its completed form until

1864 and is easily dismissed.





18 MESERVE

Days at Newport The play is lost/ as he never published it but he

did leave a comment for what it is worth: On reading it over I findit

fullof

fun good hits variety rapidity a good plot a thoroughlyAmerican character The dialogue is spirited and generallyprogressive. 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 tothe popular theatrical appetite. Mirabeau, a historical drama (1873)or he Maids o Orleans/ that same year dealing with the hypocrisyand worldliness of a priesthood that was deaf to a spiritualmessage-these subject interested him. After his attempts failed togain a production for he Maids o Orleans Calvert complained

about the difficulty'/ of getting a woman with both the soul andthe body needed for the Maid. 4

n 1868 he wrote Brangomar, atragedy concerned with the busy and vivid career of Napoleon which he published in 1883.

Considering the number of poetic dramas performed in America

during the 1850S Calvert perhaps had as much right as any toexpect a production/ but he lacked the reputation of the better

known literary figures. More significantly/ Calvert lacked friends inthe theatre who might have helped him gain experience in writingfor the stage.

Laughton Osborn (1809-1878) was another hopeful dramatist ofindependent thought and action who wrote a great many plays none of them performed in the theatre. Born into a wealthy NewYork family/ he graduated from Columbia University and after a yearof foreign travel settled into a life of comfortable retirement in

Manhattan where he attempted to penetrate the literary world.Aggravated by the unfavorable reception of his early writing/ hebegan to attack other writers in fierce reviews; he warred againsthis critics andr at his own expense, issued successive and severelycritical publications, sometimes unsigned. n his work on he

Literati: Some Honest Opinions about Authorial Merits and Demerits

(1850), Edgar Allan Poe spoke favorably of Osborn as a person buteven Poe thought that Osborn carried his ideas of independence to

the point of Quixotism/ if notof

absolute insanity (p. 56 .Frustrated Osborn published a volume of comedies in 1868 and avolume of tragedies in 1870, which carried such titles as he Heart s

Sacrifice Matilda of Denmarck, Bianco Capello/ and Mariamne/ a

Tragedy o Jewish History.

23Ida G. Everson, George Henry Calvert, American iterary Pioneer(New

York: Columbia University Press, 1944), 170.

24Everson, 203.



SPIR TIONS 19

These published versions of Osborn s plays indicate that hewrote 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 stagedversion. 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 beto-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 basenature, tries to destroy the relationship between Manfred and Helen

but fails when it is discovered that Helen is high born and hermarriage to Manfred is appropriate after all. I t may reveal a

politically cynical quirk in Osborn's nature that at the end of the playhe contrives for the villainous Oscar to depart the scene to becomegovernor of Texas with his mistress as his Secretary of State.Other than this stratagem, which has less to do with the play thanwith 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 thehand of the lovely Gismonda. Ten years later Uberto, repenting his

folly, decides that Gismonda should marry the young man who hasbeen waiting all of these years. On a stormy night he stabs himself

and dies, but because he was good and prayed on occasion, he issaved from Lucifer by the Archangel Michael. With his emphasis

upon plot rather than character and a dramatis personae mixingmortals and immortals, Osborn wrote an interesting morality play inrather smoothly flowing blank verse. A later work, Ugo d Este(1861) a five act tragedy, is unfortunately, typical of the worst playscontributed by the literati of the period-poor plotting, weaklydrawn characters, no confrontation or climax.

The American theatre at mid-nineteenth century boasted alimited number of distinguished actors-such as Edwin Forrest and

Charlotte Cushman-who, bolstered by the traveling English actorswho came to America, brought Shakespeare and the classics of thetheatre to enthusiastic audiences across the country. But a greatdeal more theatrical activity occurred in America than these stars

provided, and the public appetite for new plays seemed almostinsatiable: an evening's entertainment might easily demand as

many as three plays. I t was to this audience that Americanplaywrights had to tailor their offerings.



20 M S RV

Social awareness-or the practiced avoidance of it-permeates

the kinds o 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 playwrightswhose careers depended upon their knowledge o what washappening around them. Then there were those who made it apoint 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 sensitivityto the mounting tensions o the 1850s had the best chance ofseeing their plays performed, even briefly, on the nation's stages,

and in large part they were the journeymen playwrights o the typewho amuse every generation. Some were quite successful-Charles

W. Taylor, John Brougham, H. J. Conway, Clifton W. Tayleure, JohnPoole and Thomas De Walden. Others, less prolific yet with someinterest in a reading public, who achieved moderate success include

Edward S. Gould, E. P. Wilkins, Henry Clay Preuss William HenryHulbert, Thomas Dunn English Oliver S. Leland, and Oliver Bell

Bunce. And then there were the staunchly literary writers whoviewed the theatre mainly through the library door and resolutelybelieved in the poetic beauty o classical drama, the theories o

Aristotle, and the dicta of Horace-which they aspired to follow.They wrote for those among the mid-nineteenth century audiencewho enjoyed seeing starring actors in classical plays, but theirattempts seldom attracted the attention o those stars.

t remains an irony in the history of American drama that thetwo best remembered and most appreciated dramatists o the

1850s represent the extremes of the demanding theatre o the time.

One was a visitor from across the Atlantic Ocean who was to spendthe better part o his remaining years in America, writing scores o

plays and trying to catch the public fancy. The other was a

respected native poet who wanted desperately to write for hiscontemporary stage and contribute to the literature o the American

theatre. The first was extraordinarily successful during the 1850sbut suffered a weakening o his professional reputation toward theend o his life, although his good name as premier creator of

melodrama remains secure in theatre history; the other failed toplease the mid-century theatre audiences and had to wait nearly

thirty years for a new generation o theatregoers to recognize hisdramatic skills-skills still admired by historians o the theatre.Considered together, the careers o these two dramatists-DianBoucicault and George Henry Boker-clearly illuminate the problemsand 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 2

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 nineteenthcentury, 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. n late nineteenthcentury America, David Belasco insisted on being called a playwrightbecause 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 centuryprogressed, both styles of acting and the kinds of plays presented

changed: Ibsenism had its influence; dramatists had ideas topromote; 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 theirrequirements. n the main, the literary dramatists of the 1850slacked these relationships, and in spite of the resourcefulness of

Laura Keene and a few others, the result was a void in thedevelopment of American drama and theatre that would not befilled until the Little Theatre Movement of the twentieth century.

n contrast to the journeymen American playwrights whoworked 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. t their use ofpoetic form was not satisfying to the hoi polloi, it was the acceptedmetier of such dramatists as Julia Ward Howe and Louisa SusannaMcCord, who believed in the traditions of great drama to which they

felt they were contributing. There were writers of socialconsciousness : George Calvert with The Will and the Way LewisThomas 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 inhumanassumptions 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

in7

and Cannon with Better Late Than Never.



MESERVE

These are not writers to be dismissed lightly simple becausethey lacked an opportunity, overtly denied almost all aspiring

serious dramatists by an arrogant theatre world determined to

produce on American stages, as Washington Irving pointedlyexpressed through Andrew Quoz all the enjoyments in which ourcoarser 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. Whetherwritten for the armchair or the box seat, intentionally or by default,these plays of the 1850s are relevant to any cultural or social historyof America.



ournalo merican 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 bookingpractices that no longer matched either the volume of touring

combinations or the needs of local theatre managers, entrepreneursbased in New York City centralized the booking operations andstreamlined what had become an unreliable system. The mostsuccessful of these attempts at centralization was a pooling

arrangement that eventually became known as the TheatricalSyndicate or Trust. Almost immediately, the new organizationcame under attack by those who feared it would become an abusivemonopoly. When evidence began to mount that initial suspicionswere accurate, opposition intensified and, led by such powerful

crusading figures as Harrison Grey Fiske Minnie Maddern FiskeDavid Belasco William Winter, and Walter Prichard Eatontransformed what might have been a debate about the benefits and

weaknesses of a new system of theatre economics into a battle ofcontradictory impulses in American theatre t the turn of thecentury.

According to its critics, the Syndicate was a rapacious monopolyunder the dictatorship of a small group of vulgar and greedyhucksters whose only interest was money and whose power hadcreated a stranglehold over the American stage. The organizationwas attacked as a ravenous octopus that used force and

intimidation to destroy its competition, made janitors out of localtheatre owners, blacklisted or bribed those who defied its control,forced actors and managers to pay exorbitant booking fees andproduced only the most tawdry productions in order to make aprofit. This media mania transformed the issue into a melodrama

in which the benefits of a centralized booking system were ignoredwhile every perceived fault of the American theatre-dearth of newplays, corruption of artistic values slavery of actors and managers,

or the decline of good taste in audiences-was laid t the feet of



4 l NDRO

the Syndicate. Subsequent commentators not only accepted the

self-defined roles of independents such as the Fiskes and Belascowho 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 heroicaura and provided the melodrama with its necessary and satisfyingending: 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 ofthe Syndicate's role in revolutionizing the way Broadway theatre didbusiness at the turn of the century. Using magazines and

newspapers of the flourishing mass media, journalists shifted thefocus of commentary from an analysis of commercial change to ablanket vilification unparalleled in the history of American theatre.The result was a demonizing of the Syndicate by means of a onesided, biased scenario created by individuals who were bitter

enemies of the Syndicate.n this essay I will demonstrate not only how the demonizing of

the Syndicate has been carried forward by historians almost withoutchange to the present day but also how it emerges in strikingly

similar rhetoric within media commentary about contemporaryBroadway. I also will suggest that the unprecedented intensity of

the original attacks were based less upon a struggle for artisticfreedom than upon ideological issues stemming from a sense of

threat by ethnic, commercial based entrepreneurs to the dominantcultural authority and its elitist values. The result was a struggle inwhich critics of the Syndicate attempted to protect the artisticfoundation of the modern American theatre by pushing it backwardsinto the nineteenth century.

First, a brief review of the origins and practices of the Syndicateand its treatment by historians is in order. Sometime in 1896 six

men who had become leaders in producing and booking regionaltheatre circuits decided to create a solution to the unwieldy business

practices experienced whenever theatre managers across thecountry booked their seasons . The six men were three sets ofpartners: Charles Frohman, theatrical producer and head of the

biggest booking agency in the country, and AI Hayman, a long-timebusiness associate of Frohman; Abe Erlanger and Marc Klawbooking 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 5

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, thuseliminating 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 managermust agree to book entirely with the Syndicate or not at all. By acombination of shrewd financial maneuvering, aggressive

expansion, and competitive deal-making, the Syndicate capturedand maintained its dominance of the touring process for the next

fourteen years. Although estimates of the power of thisarrangement vary, at its height the Syndicate is estimated to havecontrolled the booking arrangements for some five to sevenhundred theatres across the country.

However, rather than develop a balanced analysis of how theSyndicate's operation transformed production and booking practices

within the period's new economically driven realities, historians havefrom the outset continued to repeat the original accusations. As

early as 1919, Arthur Hornblow, for example, brings together all theaccusations of Syndicate critics, demonizing those theatricaldespots responsible for the decline in American theatre thatdestroyed the art of acting, elevated mediocrities to the dignity ofstars, turned playwrights into hacks, misled and vitiated public

taste, and the drama from an art, became a business.1

OralSumner Coad Sheldon Cheney and Arthur Hobson Quinn offer a

similar scenario in the 1920s : the result of the Syndicate bookingsystem was an American theatre prostrate under the stranglehold of

a commercial trust. The villains were the bullying bus inessmanagers of the Syndicate; the triumphant heroes were Fiske and

Belasco . Even Alfred Bernheim, who wishes to make anunprejudiced analysis that removes examination of the Syndicate's

activities from the plane of personal animus is unable to maintain acompletely objective distance. When he reviews the Syndicate'spractice of demanding fees from both the theatre managers and theproducers in order to book tours, Bernheim condemns the practice

as a breach of faith, exploitative, flagrantly discriminatory, and

1rthur Hornblow, A Historyo h 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, he Pageant ofAmerica (New Haven: Yale Un iversity

Pre ss, 1929), 14:308-309; Sheldon Cheney, he Theatre New York, David

McKay Company, 1929): 59, 541-43; Arthur Hobson Quinn, A Historyo h

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 LincolnErlanger, pulled the strings. 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 resultof the application of big business methods to the legitimate theatre.Hughes considers the venerable William Winter as someone whocried out against the injustice and danger of the situation, and

quotes his description of the founders of the Syndicate as moneygrubbing tradesmen. 4 A more recent analysis of the economics of

American commercial theatre written by Jack Poggi uses Bernheimas its primary source, accepts statements by Belasco concerning the

Syndicate's unfair practices, and concludes that the Syndicate wasanother 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 ascenario that continues to transform a battle between contrasting

business practices into one between the values of high art and lowcommercialism. Garff Wilson's 1982 survey of American theatre

characterizes the infamous Syndicate as an organization thatcreated more evils than it corrected, stifled competition,

cheapened the drama, and produced shoddy plays that appealedonly to the masses. Driven by its aim of financial profit, the

Syndicate was guilty of ignoring the artistic goal of elevating publictaste characterized though presentation of masterpieces.'16

Comparisons between Oscar Brockett's 1973 Century of Innovationand his 1999 history of the theatre reveal an almost unchangedcontinuation of the master narrative: The Syndicate by means of

Alfred L Bernheim, he Business o he Theatre (New York: BenjaminBlom, 1932): 6, 59.

4 Glenn Hughes, A History of he American Theatre (New York: Samuel

French, 1951): 317-18.

5 Jack Poggi, Theater in America: he Impacto Economic Forces 1870-

1967 Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1968), 13.

6

Garff Wilson, Three HundredYears

ofAmerican Drama and Theatre(Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1982): 160-161.



MEDIA MANIA 7

ruthless maneuvers eliminated competition and took completemonopolistic 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, largelycommercial venture. Although Brockett avoids the judgmental

language of his predecessors, he does nothing to seek a moreobjective analysis.7 In similar fashion, Walter Meserve provides an

ennobling characterization of the opposition of Belasco and theFiskes 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 JWatermeier's survey is one of the few new works to suggest many

of the charges brought against the Syndicate were not whollyjustified; it reminds the reader that all accusations of illegal businesspractices were either dismissed by the courts or decided in favor of

the Syndicate.9 By and large, then, the chain reaction of historyturned-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.t is interesting not only how consistently historians have

framed their attacks over the previous decades but also how theirlanguage continues to reflect a judgmental indignation andresentment shared with the original critics. The issue of theSyndicate remains primarily ideological : a small group of heroic andselfless artists who embodied an intellectual and moral leadershipthat transcended commercial values fight for an American stagethreatened by unprincipled and uncultured businessmen whose onlyinterest was profit and whose behavior was unnatural and corrupt.Instead of questioning the inevitable prejudices of the originalsources and the extent to which their points of view were based

upon personal animosity or examining rebuttal statements fromother theatre professionals of the time, or indeed, even appraising

the Syndicate's positive contributions to the American theatre duringa time of immense cultural and economic change, historical

commentary continues to demonize the Syndicate.

7 Oscar Brockett, Century o nnovation (Englewood Cliffs, N J : Prentice

Hall, 1973): 182-184; Oscar Brockett, History of he Theatre 8th edition (Allyn

and Bacon: Boston, 1999): 455-457.

8 Walter J. Meserve, n Outline History o American Drama (New York:

Feedback Theatrebooks & Prospera Press, 1994), 214.

9

Felicia Hardison Londre and Daniel J. Watermeierhe

Historyo North

American Theater Continuum Publishing: New York, 1998), 187.



28 LANORO

* * * * *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 byHarrison Grey Fiske who, as editor of the New York Dramatic irror

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 bookingsystem was initiated and, fueled by a clumsy attempt by Erlanger tosecure 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 theRevolutionary War and member of New York's exclusive literary and

social clubs, Fiske reveled in his role as leader of the crusade. Hewielded his editorial columns like an axe. Although Fiske s

commentary would today exist primarily in tabloids, it carried greatauthority at the turn of the century and is still cited withoutqualification by contemporary researchers . Fiske never seemed totire of inventing new ways to attack Syndicate founders and their

new booking system. He accused them of planning the subjectionof all other concerns for their own narrow and greedy purpose andwarned readers that their arrangement already held the theatrical

business of the country by the throat. In order to protect thedistributors and printing company who did business with the Mirror

from threat of a libel action as a result of his frequent personalattacks against Syndicate founders, Fiske published fifteen separate

Supplements devoted exclusively to excoriating every aspect of thetrust's activities. He assured readers that his Supplements wouldhandle the subject without circumlocution, in a definite manner,

and positively without gloves. He promised that the crusade wouldlast until the trust shall vanish like a busted bubble. AlthoughFiske s alleged purpose was to free the American stage, hiscommentary was among the first to cast the struggle as one ofcultural and ethnic opposites rather than one of differing viewsabout the business practices of theatre. Nowhere was this more

apparent than in the editorials of the Supplements.1

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 theSyndicate and chronicled ongoing efforts by the irror to bring that

organization to its knees. Editorials called upon others to join thefight; columns were devoted to editorials reprinted fromnewspapers around the country that had enlisted in the struggle.

1It Has But Just Begun, New York Dramatic Mirror 6 November 1897, 2.



MEDIA MANIA 29

Each Supplement trumpeted an increasing momentum of supportand 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 interestsin this country reveal a more complex bias rooted in defensivecultural 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 theeconomy of the stage and as a cabal alien to all impulses of art

an unnatural, an abominable, an intolerable device of middlemen.

Fiske s actual mission, of course, was not to provide objective news

reporting but to defend a cultural authority for which he was selfappointed guardian, i.e., to bring about the defeat of a money

making scheme to monopolize the theatres of this country devisedby speculators, adventurers and vulgarians. 12 There was no middleground 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 thosewhose wish it is to see dramatic art sustained and notdegraded; they contribute little or nothing to the economyof the theatre. They are schemers and shifters, pure andsimple, and as long as they are dominant so long will thetendency of the stage, both artistically and commerciallyconsidered, be downward instead of upward. . . . [TheSyndicate] will go down to stage history, branded as the

most pernicious enemy American dramatic art ever knew.

3

What strikes the reader is the unrestrained rhetoric of Fiske sattack. The Syndicate had been operating only for about eighteen

months and controlled perhaps sixty out of the country's twothousand legitimate theatres, but, according to Fiske, it already hadbecome a pernicious enemy and a peculiar abominationdegrading the high aspirations of the American stage. Its founderswere not merely economic monopolists (or even capitalists) but

11 Harrison Grey Fiske, The Usher, Theatrical Trust Supplement no. 1,

ew ork Dramatic Mirror 13 November 1897, 3; Theatrical Trust

Supplement no . 7, ew York Dramatic Mirror 25 December 1897, 2; Theatrical

'Trust Supplement no. 12, ew ork Dramatic Mirror 29 January 1898: 2-3.

2 Theatrical 'Trust Supplement no. 15, New ork Dramatic Mirror 26

February 1898, 2.

3

Theatrical Trust Supplement no. 8, New York Dramatic Mirror 1January 1898, 1



3 lANDRO

uncultured outsiders who had invaded a privileged place. Fiske was

not arguing merely against the threat of monopoly; he wasdefending the status and cultural authority of an ideology that

intended to sustain its dominance against unwanted and unnaturaloutsiders. Fiske wanted stasis, not change, and he brought to bear

every weapon in his media arsenal.

Accordingly, those who attempted to defend the Syndicate wereridiculed because the Trust is indefensible. 14 Newspaper writerswho pointed out Syndicate benefits were labeled notorious and

disreputable, and their publications called degenerate anduniformly unfortunate in character. 15 Moreover, Fiske s diatribes

often placed the attack on a more personal level in language thatcontained deliberate slurs against ethnic interlopers who did not

know their place:

Water cannot rise higher than its source. A thorn-bushdoes not bear grapes, and there are no figs on thistlestalks . 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 acorner in pork or cattle or corn have seized upon thetheatre 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 orconsistency 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 declaringin the s me column that his campaign was being waged withoutreference to the question of their [Syndicate founders] personalstanding or character. 17

14 Theatrical Trust Supplement no. 7, 2.

5 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.



MEDI M NI 31

Fiske s self-congratulations in February 1898 that theSupplements were no longer necessary because he had already

rescued the American theatre from the threat o conquest by the

Syndicate turned out to be journalistic wish fulfillment. A newSyndicate agreement signed in August 1901 listed sixty-five theatresunder Syndicate control; this number increased to eighty-threetheatres in 1903 . The Syndicate's power would not be significantlyundermined until 1910, when the road began to decline and thesmall town circuits deserted that organization for the Shuberts. By

this time, however, the Fiskes and Belasco already had found amutual understanding with the Syndicate when they agreed to

produce in both Syndicate and independent theatres. Fiske sattacks within the regular pages o 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 ideologicalguardians had to protect their social order against a growing anddistasteful group o commercial entrepreneurs whose modern styleand values collided with those of a cultural majority rooted in an

idealized Victorian hegemony. These urgent and vicious attackswere fueled by an extraordinary speed o change and centralizationo American bus iness, a sense of loss o control and socialfragmentation with its attendant anxiety, and an increasing breakwith cultural connections to the revered past. A changed culturalclimate sustained a new economic order whose amoral values werebewildering to the cultural elite. One anecdote serves to typify theideological threat underlying Fiske's furious effort to demonize hisenemies . Mr. and Mrs . Fiske met Erlanger one day while outwalking. As they passed, Erlanger was alleged to have made somederogatory remark about Mrs. Fiske, whereupon Fiske handed hiscane, gloves and hat to his wife and struck Erlanger. This anecdotemay be complete fiction, but its image of the Victorian gentlemanthrashing a low-class ruffian to protect the honor o his wife

illustrates how Fiske imagined the conflict and helps to explain thefurious intensity o his attacks. The independence o the Americantheatre, therefore, was a secondary consideration; Fiske's real

enemy was an organization led by unassimilated outsiders whothreatened to change the rules. His solution was to strike it down.18

Meanwhile, Fiske 's crusade to destroy the Syndicate had foundallies within national magazines. By 1898, scarcely two seasons

after its inception, critics who shared his cultural biases began toblame the Synd icate for everything they felt was wrong with the

18

Brooks Atkinson , Broadway ew York: Macmillan Publ ishing, 1974): 34-5



32 lANDRO

American theatre. In 1904, Leslie s Magazine, for example, carrieda 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 TheDictators Rise from Obscurity, quickly established the editors' goal

of personal attack upon Syndicate founders. Once again thelanguage of the attack seems out of proportion to the nature of thedisagreement. The rhetoric expresses vindictive ethnic slurs upon a

group of men whose backgrounds apparently precluded any degreeof artistic achievement and qualified them only as profit-takingthugs. The article accused the Syndicate of using their friends until

they were as dried-up sponges and supplied abusive thumb-nailsketches 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 beattacked by some discontented actor or manager. 19 The nextinstallment, How Six Dictators Control Our Amusements, detailedBelasco s struggle against the Syndicate, cast him as a hero, andstated that as a result of his challenges to the trust, he always

walked in the middle of side streets after midnight for his ownphysical safety.2 The fourth article went on to characterize theSyndicate leaders as ignorant of art, of the finer shades inliterature, indeed of anything approaching good taste, they maketheir vulgar fancies as the manifestation of the public. In whatmust surely have been unintended irony, the editors assured thereader that they love fair play in America . 21

In the same year, Belasco joined the published commentarythat condemned the Syndicate. Once an ally and collaborator of

Charles Frohman, Belasco had experienced a falling out with theSyndicate and attacked Klaw and Erlanger in shrewdly writtenharangues that exploited media attention in such anti-Syndicate

periodicals as Cosmopolitan and Harper s Weekly. f Fiske was theeditorial leader of the crusade, Belasco found his niche as one of themost admired directors of his time fighting for artistic freedomagainst the evil money changers. Accordingly, Belasco assumed thehigh ground role of an anti-commercial, cultured seeker of art who

had been victimized by dangerous forces of greed. He

19The Dictators Rise From Obscurity, Leslie s Monthly Magazine 58

(October 1904): 581, 585.

2How 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

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 anycommercial interests because business and art never mix. He

understood the ideological basis of the battle and knew how toframe his accusations in the language of confirmed dominantvalues. In a osmopolitan 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 theoctopus of greedy ignorance. Using an emotional context

unsupported by any direct evidence, Belasco blamed the Syndicatefor the decadence of the drama in America and provided his owncarefully selected-and usually anonymous-anecdotes to prove it.

Belasco waged the battle entirely upon terms of protecting thecultural 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 thetraditions of the past is the enemy because no pursuit classified as

an art can be revolutionized and classified as a business. TheSyndicate was evil because it had violated the rules that placed

artistic issues ahead of financial ones. Interestingly, Belasco saw nocontradiction 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 theAmerican 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 momentumtowards centralization and increased volume of production activity,Belasco believed that theatre management should remain a oneman business because a producer could give attention to only one

work at a time: plays cannot be shoveled out to the public like somany pecks of potatoes. Although the Syndicate and the Shuberts

(as well as Keith and Albee in vaudeville) had used centralizedbooking practices on a national scale for years, Belasco in 1904seemed bewildered by new industrial models. He could not

David Belasco, The Theatrical Syndicate-One Side, osmopolitan 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 theforemost drama critics during the last half of the nineteenth century,was an unrepentant elitist and Anglophile whose values remainedrooted in the nineteenth century and who believed that infectionsof materialism and commercialism were the cause of thedeterioration of American theatre. He was an ideologue whodefended the dominant culture of the previous century in whichcertain rules were respected and certain classes of men produced

theatre. Never one to mince words, he skipped objective analysisand went straight for the Syndicate's throat:

[The theatre] has passed from the hands that ought tocontrol i t-the hands either of Actors who love and honortheir art or of men endowed with the temperament of theActor 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 abazaar.24

Rejecting the transforming forces that were driving America intothe twentieth century, Winter's world remained one of fixed binarymoral boundaries and class membership. A theatre artist belongedeither to the genteel class of honor and pure cultural intentions orto the lower one of trade and commercial interests. There wasnothing 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 moderngrowth-a prig, who crams himself by consulting a cyclopedia, andwho thrives by hood-winking some confiding female star, or some of

the many fat-witted tradesmen now for the most part, possessorsof the American theatre. 25

In Winter's view, the manager who

23 David Belasco, Presentation of the National Drama, Harper s Week/y 8

(3 December 1904 : 184. The extent of Belasco's outdated views aboutcommercial 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.

24William Winter, Other Days(New York: Moffat, Yard Company, 1908),

307.

5 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 publicwhat it wanted, Winter believed the public wanted only "inanity,

indecency, vulgarity, depravity, analysis of disease spectacles ofhorror, fabrics of filth." "Give the public what it wants ," hethundered. "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 andhimself as defender of the faith. In a letter to the New ork

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

Hecharacterized 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 ignorantmanagers who had polluted the theatre and "sacrificed their duty tothe gratification of their greed or the indulgence of their aberranttendencies and standards," and, on the other, those to whomtheatre is a "clear mirror of all that is splendid in character and all

that is noble and gentle in conduct-showing ever the excellence tobe emulated and the glory to be gained, soothing our caresdispelling thoughts of trouble, and casting a glamour of romanticgrace over all the commonplaces of the world."28 Art and moralitywere inseparable. The battle lines therefore, must be drawn toprotect these ideals from enemies who "befoul it with unclean playsalienate from it the respect and practical support of the betterclasses 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. I t mirrored values shared by many of hiscontemporaries who struggled to prevent the Victorian aestheticand spiritual traditions of their class from being overwhelmed. WhileAmerican 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 April1910), 10.

27 William Winter, ew 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 merican

Magazine and later a playwriting professor at Yale Eaton was themodel Eurocentric, eastern cultural leader attacking the Syndicateas 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 thetheatre requires men of superior education and taste-especiallythose who follow European artistic traditions. Chronicling the rise

and fall of the Syndicate in merican Magazine in 1910, Eaton

attributed the growth of the organization's power to the efforts of afew ignorant men who never showed that they cared for the true

interests of the theatre, or that they understood them, and so neverhad the first right to dabble with a fine art. Eaton sneeredespecially at Erlanger, who never had any real artistic training,

and cited anonymous sources who characterized Erlanger as beingunable 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 bediscovered, and the best productions made by the best men, by

men of breeding, sound taste, and theatrical skill . 3 The men whowere to guide the theatre's destiny, therefore, needed a first-handknowledge of good society and its usages who speak the Englishlanguage properly, who know how ladies and gentlemen comport

themselves. 3 The Syndicate founders were dangerous andincompetent not because they did not know their jobs but because

they did not share Eaton's exclusive social class background. In theworld 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 whocondemned the American commercial theatre. Commentatorsconsidered the New Theatre superior to the commercial modelrepresented by the Syndicate perhaps because its director, WinthropAmes a sophisticated New England gentleman and, like Eaton, a

Harvard graduate, believed theatre should be treated as a temple of

3 Walter Prichard Eaton, The Rise and Fall of the Theatrical Syndicate,

merican agazine 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, mericanagazine 71 (January 1911), 409.



MEDIA MANIA 37

the arts. I f 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 finallyredress the balanceY The New Theatre would succeed because itsdirector belonged to the correct social class . In contrast tocommercial managers who were self-made and self-educated,

mes was a college man, a man of luxury and refinement who

had the requisite brains and ability, the artistic discrimination andthe courage of his convictions which will one day make him ourforemost producer of plays. 33 Despite the complete financial

collapse of the New Theatre within two years of its founding, criticscontinued to defend a model based on Eurocentric snobbery. I t didnot really matter if the New Theatre succeeded financially. Its

purpose was ideological, not artistic. It represented an idealizedvision of an upper-class elitist majority to whom theatre was a great

mission that should be insulated from the untutored, lower classcommoners who threatened its future. Apparently the Americantheatre was no place for immigrant entrepreneurs who saw aprofitable 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 theiradvocates, the undercurrent of undisguised anti-Semitism in their

condemnation of the Syndicate casts a pall over the behavior ofthese idealistic men. The personal assaults upon Syndicate

members not only accused them of being uneducated anddictatorial 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 attackswas fueled with judeophobia that deliberately characterizedSyndicate 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, suchas greedy and narrow-minded tricksters, illiterate managers, andinsolent 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

3 William Lyon Phelps, The Twentieth entury Theatre (New York:

Macmillan, 1914): 20, 25.

33 Chester calder, What's Wrong with the American Stage?, Theatre

Magazin (March 1913): x i, xv, 75.

4Fiske, Theatrical 'Trust' Supplement no. 1, 2.



8 LANDRO

of admission and depreciate the quality of the entertainment. 5 A

poem in that same publication in 1905 accused the trust of

murdering the drama that was in the power of Shylock now. 6

The editors of the accusatory series described above in Leslie sMagazine made certain that its readers knew that only oneChristian 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 comprisedof six Hebrew theatrical speculators and button-makinghucksters. Interestingly, Winter's resignation from the Tnbune

came shortly after the new editor refused to publish a poem with

anti-Semitic overtones.8

Performing artists also held anti-Semitic biases against members

of the Syndicate. For example, Nat Goodwin, an actor who boltedthe first rebellion against the Syndicate, longed for the time menand women made their booking arrangements when no peepingIzzies or Sols had access to our books. 9 Similarly, Francis Wilson,a popular actor-manager who led an unsuccessful revolt against theSyndicate and later became the first pres ident of Actors' Equity,

describes the Syndicate foundersas

mostly Hebrews whomhe

equated with the money-changers in the Temple led by thispudgy little Hebrew, Charles Frohman. Certainly no one who

knows the business careers and the racial instincts of these men candoubt the extent of the threat. Wilson's autobiography seethed

with resentment about how these people, scarcely removed fromaliens had forced out a man with several generations of American

ancestors behind him.4° Cloaking their attacks with noble and

5Metcalfe, An Afterward, 468.

6 Biggers, 214.

37The Dictators, Leslie s Monthly Magazine 58 (October 1904), 590.

8 William Winter, 'The Department Store Theatre, New York ramatic

Mirror, 17 June 1905, 10i Tice L. Miller, BohemiansandCritics (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.

4 Francis Wilson, Francis Wilson's Triumph, Theatrical Trust

Supplement, No. 10, New York Dramatic Mirror, 15 Jaunary 1898, 3 and Francis

Wilson s Life o Himself(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co 1924): 148, 160, 281.



MEDIA MANIA 9

idealistic arguments, critics of the Syndicate appeared to resent thesuccess and ambitions of those individuals who were not membersof 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 theAmerican theatre, cheapened American acting, and underminedAmerican playwriting- was derived from individuals whose agenda

was less about selfless artistic freedom than about defending theirown ideological authority. Their irrational and vindictive rhetoric,

staggering elitism, and racialized thinking stemmed from desperateand deeply selfish motives. Unfortunately, it is this blanketcondemnation of the Syndicate that continues to e the basis of ourown 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 ofthe Trust from any person of prominence of character in or out of

the theatrical profession? There existed, in fact, many voices whoargued that, whatever its specific abuses, the Syndicate overall waseither a positive influence or made little difference to the long-termdevelopment of American theatre art. I will briefly examine a few of

these rebuttals and then speculate why these arguments wereineffective and have been forgotten.4

Although as a group the Syndicate founders tended to avoidpublic statements, Charles Frohman and Marc Klaw mountedcounterattacks against their critics.

Writing in Harper s Weekly in 1904, Frohman mocked thebugaboo of business management in theatre and believed theworkings of the Syndicate had been misunderstood. He especiallychallenged the prevailing understanding of how the Synd icate was

organized. Although there had been formed a combination for thesole purpose of representing theatres and of facilitating what is

known as the 'booking' of attractions for these theatres, thiscombination had nothing to do with the production of plays,

engagement of actors, or running of theatres. Indeed, theparticipating managers all worked independently, competed withone another for plays and actors, did not combine finances and

were, in effect, business rivals.42

Usually considered disingenuous,

4Editorial,Theatrical Trust Supplement no. 13, New York Dramatic

Mirror, 5 February 1898, 2.

42

Charles Frohman, New Pha ses of Theatre Management, Harper sWeekly48 (31 December 1904): 2022.



4 l.ANDRO

this account appears to be an accurate statement of the founders'basic business agreement. As Peter A. Davis has demonstrated, theorganization was not a genuine trust but a pooling arrangement

that allowed individual members a wide degree of independentdecision-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 oneanother and operated sometimes to each other's discomfiture. Thethree partnerships that made up the Syndicate often did not appearto know what each other was doing and in the case of Klaw andErlanger, sometimes cheated on one another.43

Marc Klaw adopted a more aggressive tone in rebutting hiscritics. Decrying the cutthroat, dog-eat-dog competition andfrenzied rivalry that characterized booking practices prior to the

Syndicate, Klaw in osmopolitan championed the contributions of

his organization:

The theatrical syndicate has brought order out of chaoslegitimate 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 betterpercentage on his investment, and the local manager haswon the success which comes from the booking of acceptedmetropolitan favorites. I know of no one, generallyspeaking, who has been worked an injury by thecommercialization of the stage in America.44

In his view, the theatre can never be an educator of the publicbecause it is a purely

business undertaking that operates under the law of supply anddemand:

The theater in the United States is not a publicinstitution, and it is about time some one said so. . . . I t is

not out to dictate public taste. t is out to satisfy publicdemand. While even such a purely business undertaking

must be hedged about with the essential suggestions ofartistic requirement, I do not believe the public demands of

43Peter A. Davis, The Syndicate/Shubert War, in ed. William R. Taylor,

nventing Times Square (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1991): 147-157.

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 isas far as the public should go. 5

4

In a 1909 article in The Saturday Evening Post Klaw againattempted to separate myth from reality . He undercut the nostalgicversion of the past by reminding the reader of the chaos of the era

of curbstone management in which business was done with asmall book and pencil with about as much dignity and system as a

bookmaker registers a bet on a horse . Local managers andproducing managers had been at the mercy of each other, lockedwithin a system of conflicting interests. The creation of theSyndicate marked a new epoch in the history of the American

theatre because it effected a complete revolution in theatricalbusiness 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 cometo New York and within forty-eight hours return home with contractssigned for a whole season's tour. The Syndicate was merely aclearing-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 factthat it has insisted upon reputable plays. The Syndicate charged a

fee for its service because it provided a specialized skill. Thebooking agent needed to know just what companies would be going

west, what kinds of plays were in the same territory at the sametime, and when to alter the mix if theatres closed or new attractionsappeared. 6 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 theatermay be artistic or it may be allied to art, but the business

conduct of the theater is and must be commercia/. 7

5 Ibid., 200.

6 Marc Klaw, The Theatrical Syndicate from the Inside, Saturday Evening

ost 181 3 April 1909), 4.

7 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 1897sought a national tour for Digby Bell s production of Midnight Bell

Harrison reported that in seven minutes Erlanger booked a route

covering twenty-seven weeks' time embracing all the principal citiesin the United States. Contracts were signed and delivered in a fewhours with fair terms and no attempt to reduce Bell's share of the

receipts. Under the old system such a consecutive tour would havetaken weeks or months of correspondence, included expense for

telegrams, postage, and clerical staff, and involved complication inshifting dates and changes.48

Other managers rebutted the media's vicious stereotyping.In the tlantic 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 thefacetious pages of the weekly press, with his immaculate

shirt-front, his diamond studs, his cigar in the corner of hismouth, his feet on his desk, a disgusted public visits itswrath. He is the cause of the degradation of dramatic art

. .Why obviously He is a coarse, grasping money-getterOut 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 wasto survive financially by trying to give the fickle middle-class publicwhat it wanted. Unfortunately, the public rarely knew what itwanted and this produced not a coarse bully but a very anxiousindividual whose survival depends upon satisfying the "gallery gods"whose response at the box office always dictated the manager'sfuture.50

Although Fiske would have his readers believe otherwise,not every journalist condemned the Syndicate. Franklin Fyles,

dramatic critic of The ew 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 ew York Times

5 March 1897, 7.

49Lorin F. Deland, A Plea for the Theatrical Manager," tlantic Monthly

102 (October 1908 , 492.

50 Ibid., 500.



MEDIA MANIA 43

success to the presence of the Syndicate. For Fyles the enormousgrowth of the American theatre-which by 1900 included over 3,000legitimate and vaudeville houses worth about $100 million drawingone and one-half million persons each week-day night-had

outpaced its clumsy and inefficient booking system and attractedentrepreneurs who inevitably organized the Syndicate. Although apowerful monopoly, the Syndicate had also been beneficial to theAmerican stage:

Under its operations contracts are enforced, largersalaries paid to actors with certainty, playwrights are

encouraged and amply renumerated, and the traffic in thedrama has been lifted from suspicion into esteem. Thetastes of that portion of the public which demands goodart in the theatre are satisfied in a larger degree thanformerly, and, despite the application of this costlier andmore skillful stagecraft to some regrettable plays, thestandard of morality has been raised along with the otheradvancement. 5

Fyles believed that the theatrical business has arrived at acommercial respectability which it did not enjoy a quarter of acentury ago. 52

Brander Matthews originally was hostile to the commercialvalues 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 geographicrealities, the centralization of theatre was the result of an inexorableprocess and, therefore, it was foolish to indulge in offensivepersonal attacks by young persons who conceive of art as etherallydetached from all financial considerations. Moreover, he rejectedthe 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 ts People (New York: Doubleday, Page

Company, 1900), 71.

52 Ibid., 72.

53 Brander Matthews, Brander Matthews on the Trust, New York ramatic

Mirror Theatrical Trust Supplement no. 12, 29 January 1898, 1.



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. 5

Although the Syndicate offered actors an unbroken successionof engagements in theatres whose bookings were arranged toprovide the least competition and greatest economics in

transportation, critics believed that the Syndicate's bottom linevalues 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 capableof first class work in either the tragic or comic department of theliterary imaginative drama. 55

Not everyone accepted the judgment that the acting professionhad been undermined by the Syndicate. Charles Frohman certainlydidn't think so. Frohman declared that actors were among the chief

beneficiaries of the system. Not only were more actors employedthan in pre-Syndicate days, their careers were more stable.

Compared to the uncertainties of the past the actor now couldforget about financial worries: All the conditions which affect him

are handled according to the best principles. The actor need notwalk home now. The old-fashioned hard-luck stories are no more.

The position of players has never been better than to-day, and thechange is of vast importance to the accomplishment of good stagework. 56 Several noted actors went on record to confirm theaccuracy of Frohman's views. Philip Lewis an experienced touringactor, recalled a career that contradicted the negative reports of the

critics. Lewis acknowledged the complaints about Klaw andErlanger's monopolistic grip on the business but also noted the

benefits:

The actors in 19 5 were pretty well satisfied with thingsjust as they were with them [the Syndicate], you couldcount on a full season's work. n fact, for about the firsttime 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 ofth Theater New York: Funk &

Wagnalls Company, 1916), 88.

56

Frohman, 2024.



MEDI M NI

footlights, subject to agreement on terms and billing.

There had never been so many thousands of actorsworking.57

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 andwhat a bless ing 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 greaterextent, built more theatres and increased patronage moreconsistently than has been accomplished by any other

factors during the last century.58

Goodwin believed that in the future, contrary to prevailingcritical 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 corruptedAmerican acting and like Frohman, Lewis and Goodwin, found itbaseless. Lippman not only cited evidence that the general level ofacting was probably no better or worse under the Syndicate, butalso reminded the reade r that American stock companies haddisappeared 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, orcareless handling of the facts. 60

Authoritative voices also challenged Norman Hapgood's notionthat 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

7 Philip Lewis, Trouping ow the Show Came to Town (New York: Harper

Row, 1935), 197 .

8Goodwin 107-8.

9Ibid., 108.

60 Monroe Lippman, The Effect of the Theatre Syndicate on Theatrical Art

in America, QuarterlyJournal ofSpeech 26 (April1940), 277.

61 Norman Hapgood, The Theatrical Syndicate, he InternationalMonthly

(January 1900), 117 .



6 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 existsonly in the minds of the very few who feel that the theatre ought tobe a class room, and that the 'Oedipus Tyrannus' ought to be the

standard of the high-class theatre. 6 Indeed, in 1909 George Jean

Nathan reported that a veritable tidal wave of plays from all overthe 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 duringthe period of the Syndicate, concluded that more good plays had

been presented by the Syndicate than by most other contemporarymanagers. The Syndicate's production history from 1890 to 1899included 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 playsof 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 productionscompiled between 1908 to the time the Syndicate was dissolvedwere Syndicate attractions; five of the seven plays chosen by BurnsMantle as the best plays of 1908-1909 also were Syndicateattractions. Because the Syndicate was primarily a huge bookingagency 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 greateropportunity than had been provided previously.64

Finally, the record demonstrates that accusations about how the

Syndicate's commercial values prevented it from supportinganything but tasteless and vulgar popular entertainment for an

undiscriminating mass audience is completely without foundation .The Syndicate insisted that good drama be successful financially butunderstood that few audiences wanted production of the classics.Nonetheless, the Syndicate produced Sothern and Marlowe in

62Frohman, 2024.

6 George Jean Nathan, 'The Un ited States of Playwrights, quoted in

Jurgen C. Wolter, The Dawning o American Drama (Westport, Connecticut:

Greenwood Press 1993): 252-3.

64Lippman, 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 7

Shakespearean repertory and Forbes-Robertson as Hamlet. Klawand Erlanger were the first producers to bring African-Americanperformers to Broadway.65 Their New Amsterdam Theatre cost over

a million dollars to build and was one of the most impressiveexamples of art nouveau interior decoration in the country. TheHouse Beautful opened in 1903 with A Midsummer Night s Dream,

a lavish production that cost almost $100,000, starred Nat Goodwinas Bottom, and featured orchestrations of Mendelssohn's music byVictor Herbert. In sum there is more than adequate evidence thatthe characterization of the Syndicate as a ravenous octopus thatalmost destroyed the American theatre, the American actor, and the

American playwright was not an objective portrait but a one-sidedscenario created by its greatest enemies.

f these rebuttals were so compelling, why did they fail tocounteract the demonizing of the Syndicate? I suggest that theSyndicate never received a balanced critical analysis because thearguments in its defense were-and continue to be-rejected forideological 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 ratherthan reducing it. Charles Frohman's likening the Syndicate's bookingsystem to a department store, for instance, was an apt businesscomparison since both are concerned with the distribution of goodsrather than manufacturing. But that particular phrase confirmed toWinter and other critics that theatre meant no more to theSyndicate than a factory of soap and candles sunk to the level ofa bargain counter. 66 Similarly, Klaw's insistence that theatre was a

private business-an idea later affirmed by the courts- succeededonly in driving his opponents into more frenzied condemnations ofan organization they believed had corrupted a sacred public service.The ideological differences between the two sides wereunbridgeable. On one hand a cultural aristocracy rooted innineteenth-century values was desperate to maintain its grip on afixed sense of hierarchy and exclusivity; on the other, a new breedof theatre brokers, members of an emerging economic orderunprecedented 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 Syndicateto be alien, unnatural, and violently hostile to all its traditionalvalues. Thus, no matter how compelling, rebuttals that argued interms 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.



8 LANDRO

statistics, or satisfaction of the audience acted as flash points thatintensified criticism and confirmed racial stereotypes. I t did not

matter whether the rebuttals were true; an elitist media inevitably

rejected the ideology of the new consumer economy upon whichthey were based I suspect that the reason testimonials by

Syndicate defenders have been ignored since then is becausecontemporary historians and commentators share the sameideological 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 ishappening on Broadway today. Antimodernism appears still tomaintain a tenacious influence on cultural authority as critics in

contemporary media condemn a new demon: The Walt DisneyCompany. One hundred years after the Syndicate was formed,when today's economy is booming after bouncing back from arecession and advancements in technology are changing the waywe live, the Disney company has redefined Broadway economics by

restoring the New Amsterdam and producing two hit musicalstargeted 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 whowishes 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 Disneyfor treating Broadway as a retail outlet for licensed cartooncharacters, there is the same sense that corporate culture has

transformed theatre art into a banal commodity. 68 At a time whenrules are being rewritten and lines blur between Broadway and

nonprofit business practice, there is the same sense of simplisticbinary thinking-art versus commerce, good versus evil, low versus

67 Frank Rose, Can Disney Tame 42n Street?, ortune 24 June 1996: 97-

98. See also Herbert Muschamp, A Palace for a New Magic Kingdom, 42n St,

the ew 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 ew York Times 9 June 1997, A

1; Peter Marks, Broadway's New Corporate Playmakers, the ew 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, Tinse ltown and Broadway, he ew York Times 20 April

1998, A 18.



MEDIA MANIA 49

high art. Again, the size of corporate involvement scarescommentators who fear the mouse-shaped gorilla in their midstand spread stories of Disney s alleged bullying, take-it-or leave-it

deals.69 Like Frohman, Michael Eisner, Chief Executive Officer ofDisney, defends his long-running hits and the primacy of the boxoffice as the appropriate business response: We have no obligation

to make art. We have no obligation to make history. We have noobligation to make a statement. But to make money, it is oftenimportant to make history, to make art, or to make some significantstatement. 70 This open testament to commercialism infuriatesFrank Rich, for example, who frequently uses his column in the ew

York Times as a pulpit to denounce Disney's corporate culture andurge readers to liberate Broadway's stages from theme-parkculture and Disneyfication. Looking backward to a nostalgic pastwhen 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 highground 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, tomaking fake realities. I f I thought they would just stay on

42 d Street, maybe I wouldn't be so nervous. I f we couldkeep all the family entertainment, theme-park musicals and

franchise productions on that block, the way the city triedto keep all the porno stores on one street, and let the realproducers make real theatre somewhere else, maybe I

wouldn't worry.72

Winer's elitism and snobbery show through as she laments howsad it is to have the theatre turned over to basically a corporateculture, where they talk about franchising product as opposed tomaking shows. I t s just so homogenized and middlebrow and safe

9 Sylviane Gold, The Disney Difference, merican Theatre (December

1997): 14-16.

70 Michael D. Eisner, Work in Progress (New York: Random House, 1998),

100.

7 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 l NDRO

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 todismiss any outsider who appears to threaten their culturalhegemony. 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 firmlyplaced in the twentieth. As John Lahr in his review of he 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.7

Perhaps it is time that we reject the demonizing of

Broadway's recurrent reinvention of the way it does business andreplace elitist myths with a more balanced analysis that no longer

confuses moral outrage with historical evidence. The generalassumption 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 alliancesthat has lasted throughout this nation's history. Broadway andshow business have existed side-by-side throughout our lifetimes.The historical reality is that business-whether applied to theAmerican theatre or to corporate practice-is an amoral force thatrequires reasonable rules and regulations. Chance real estate, andentrepreneurial ambition have as much to do with the history of theAmerican theatre as artistic breakthroughs. This is neither good norbad, but the way our theatre is.

73 Ibid., 51.

7

John Lahr, Animal Magnetism,he

New Yorker7 (24 November1997 , 129.



Journal ofAmerican 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.

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 comprehensiveexplanation. n his book Imagined Communities, he outlines thiselusive ideology as an imagined political community-and imagined

as both inherently limited and sovereign .' 4

Following a line ofargument similar to Anderson's, Lloyd Kramer asserts inNationalism: Political Cultures in Europe and America/ 1775-1865that nationalism developed in the late eighteenth century becauseof a change in the perception of identity. People have always heldmultiple 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, magined Communities. Revised edition, (New York:Verso, 1991), 6.

2 Lloyd Kramer, Nationalism/ Political Cultures in Europe andAmerica,

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 s a part of a larger community: the imagined communityof a nation.

With this new (though imagined) sense of nation-hood,

America w s in a peculiar situation, for, s Appleby, Hunt, and

Jacobs posit, 'There w s no uniform ethnic stock, no binding rituals

from n established church, no common fund of stories, only a

shared act of rebellion. Americans h d 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 n 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 nationallanguage/ 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 s nationalistic texts.

Many early American plays, likewise, c n 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 nd Margaret Jacob, Telling the Truth bout

History (New York: Norton, 1995), 92.

6 Lloyd Kramer, Nationalism, Political Cultures in Europe andAmerica,

1775-1865 Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1998): 3, 7.

7 In Kramer's work, 'language' refers to a linguistic system ofcommunication s 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 nd 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). I t 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 nd

Smiles (1808), and A. B. Lindsley's Love nd Friendship (1810),

place these works within the evolving narratives in which

Americans invented their national traditions and imagined theirnation.'r The Yankee and the Veteran, two figures employed in

each o these dramatic texts, are crucial to this cause. These texts

not only work in generating an imagined community; they actually

propose an image o the ideal 'American ' one that, like thecommunity 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 thenationalistic text is to promote a shared national language. To grow

in unity and modernity, a nation must e able to communicate in anefficient manner. Divisions within the language must be eradicatedand foreign tongues expelled. To illustrate this phenomenon,Kramer outlines narratives which sprang up in post-RevolutionaryFrance. These texts, he explains, sought a nationally un ified form o

French by eliminating less popular, provincial versions o the

language and by excluding German from social usage. But, Krameralso explains, not only do less legitimate dialects need to be rootedout from usage a dominant form of the language must be identifiedand promoted. This language, Kramer argues, is one that is uniqueto the nation and, as a national commodity, must be protected; it

must be defended against other languages and cultures. 1°Kramerasserts that language holds such an imperative position amongstnationalistic texts because political and societal cultures are shapedby countless communicative acts. These acts, in turn, graduallyextend into everyday life and shape the ideologies o citizens.

According to Kramer's analysis, linguistically, America was in apeculiar 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, couldAmerica distinguish itself in terms of language? How could alanguage uniquely it ted for America be promoted? Historicallyspeaking, the creative spirit often finds answers for some o the

most complex social questions-and the field o linguistics is noexception. The Yankee a figure that emerged in American texts

after the war, exemplified creativity at work in the Americanlanguage 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 thespeech. 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 ofAmericans will become utterly unintelligible to an Englishman." 2

While the Yankee certainly exaggerated the American dialect onstage, certain regions of America had already solved the problem of

differentiating themselves linguistically from the British. In NewEngland, for example, a completely divergent strain of English had

emerged. When this (Northern) version of English was spoken uponthe stage, its dissimilarity from British Eng lish was emphasized. Anationalistic text, therefore, only needed to identify and promotethis difference.

In the playshe

Contrast Tears and Smiles and Love andFriendship the Yankee emphasizes the difference betweenspecifically American grammar and its British precursor. He uses

specific words such as 'tarnal, 'twer, sartain, ater, purtyish, sich, andafear'd. These words must have sounded like a butchery of English

to any British citizen in the audience. For example, in he Contrastthe Yankee Jonathan, when describing his night at the theater says

"Mercy on my soul Did I see the wicked players? Mayhap that 'ereDarby that I like so was the serpent himself and I am sure

where I sat it smelt tarnally of brimstone." 3 Likewise, Yank inBarker's Tears and Smiles fumbles through language: "Sarvant, sir.

Pray, sir-hem As you come out o' yan house, you mought tell abody-Pray, sir-hem What o'clock mought it be sir?." 4 But of

these three works, perhaps Lindsley's Love and Friendship is themost distinguished. Hodge calls Jonathan's speech in Love and

See Hodge on actors Charles Matthews, James H. Hackett, and George

Handel Hill.

2 Francis Hodge, Yankee Theater: The Image o America on Stage 1825-

1850. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964): 13-14.

3Royall Tyler, he Contrast in ed. Don Wilmeth, Staging the Nation: Plays

from the American Theater 1787-1909 (Boston: Bedford Books, 1998), 36.

4James Nelson Barker, "Tears and Smiles" in Paul H. Musser, James

Nelson Barker 784-1858. (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, findshimself in a bit of a bind when Jack, a rival shipmate and Yankee

servant, steals his "Yankee Notions." Upon this discovery, Jonathanexclaims,

There it is agin, by gum I knew how't would be. I t

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, onlycaze I a axt um (for I jest cum from Suffield, where theymakes wooden dishes, and never went tewe sea 'fore) as 'e

lay acrost the door what goes down chamber f e lay acrostthe door what the whul enduren night and how e d stopher, 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 sentencestructure, but also his speech is distinctly American in itsembodiment of the voice of a storyteller. Jonathan, like mostYankees, is a teller of tall tales17

• His speech is both aimless andendearing. 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, andlater in the monologue even singing "Yankee Doodle," for noapparent reason. Hodge refers to this trademark digression as

having "lack of a specific point" 8 and notes that it becomescharacteristic of the Yankee in coming generations.

5 Francis Hodge, Yankee Theater The Image o 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.

17This 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.

18Francis Hodge, Yankee Theater: The Image o 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 stylemade him into the symbol of the new America. 9 No longer couldthis bumpkin figure be mistaken for the Yorkshireman, his speechand manner of speaking were far too divergent-they were truly

American.

Certainly, early American audiences found the Yankee 's speechand doings as humorous as we do today. There was, however, aserious message behind the humor. As Marie Killheffer says, While

the audience laughed at his crudeness, it undoubtedly admired hisvirtues, especially his ardent patriotism. 20 The Yankee's speechpointed to the existence of a uniquely American dialect. I t

reaffirmed the country's motion toward linguistic independence andlinguistic difference. The stage has always acted as a physical siteon which national prestige-the legitimacy and the renown of thenation in the eyes of its citizens as well as its rivals-is staged,acknowledged and contested .2 In this sense, the mere act of

giving voice to the unique American style of speech on the stage notonly acknowledged its presence, but also confirmed its legitimacy.

As Killheffer suggests, the Yankee was a figure of patriotism, somuch so that by the mid-1830s Yankee Jonathan had evolved the

Uncle Sam costume, and everywhere he had become the symbol ofthe new American. 22 For example, in plays such as The Stage

Struck ankee (1845) the ordinary straight characters are describedas wearing long-tail drab coats and/or French gray trousers, but the

Yankee is costumed quite differently, with a showy vest; a large bellhat; and red, white and blue-checkered trousers-the embodimentof Uncle Sam. 23 The Yankee was so innately American that heevolved into the physical replication of a national symbol on stage.

9 Ibid., 6.

2Marie Killheffer, The Development of the Yankee Character in American

Drama from 1787 to 1861, diss., University of Chicago, 1927, 11.

2 Lauren Kruger, The National Stage. (Chicago: University of Chicago,

1998), 12.


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 o ragedies 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 he Contrast Jonathan says I am a true blue son of

liberty." 4 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'swork is filled with nationalistic exultations such as this; he also endshis play with an epilogue which reinforces American values. It bids

us to live-each honest Yankee Notion." 6 This is a play on words:

the Yankees in the play are consumed with Yankee notions- items

from Boston which they hope to se ll in North Carolina. Yankeenotions, in a less literal sense, are thoughts of Jonathan and Jack

and they are filled with praise of war heroes, tales of nationalwartime victory, and admiration of America's independence.

On the topic of a quasi-religious sentiment which nationalismcharacteristically incorporates, Lloyd Kramer writes that nationalism

offers, "consolations and explanations for violence, sacrifice andpower." 7 People need a suitable explanation for suffering and

death. They often need a cause to justify sacrifice and therebyassuage the pain over the loss of a loved one. Nationalism offerssuch comfort to citizens. Just as religion often works to console thegrieving, Kramer asserts that nationalism functions similarly: an

American mother can be contented in knowing that her son diedbravely in the fight for freedom. Kramer writes:

The modern nation was not eterna l but could rival religionin 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 andprotection. 28

and continues:

4 Tyler, in Wilmeth, 27.

5 A. B. Lindsley, Love andFriendship/ or Yankee Notions: A Comedy in

Three cts (New York: Longworth, 1809), 30 .

26 Ibid., 58.

27 Lloyd Kramer, Nationalism Political Cultures in Europe andAmerica

1775-1865 (Chapel Hill: University of No rth 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, explanationsof current sufferings as the prelude to a more harmoniousfuture, and reverence for the life giving sacrifice of bloodand bodies. 29

Sentiments expressed by both the Yankee and the Veteranbegin to offer this kind of quasi-religious outlook towards the newAmerica. They venerate veterans as saintly martyrs, they posit

Americans as a Chosen People-one with a Divine mission-andthey urge caution in caring for the newborn nation.

Yankees, as has been suggested, express abundant patrioticsentiments. Their speech is filled with nationalistic ejaculations andexultations, but the sentiments behind some of these speeches gofar beyond mere platitudes or truisms. At times they express aquasi-worship for not-so-long-ago heroes of war and/or nationalconflicts. Jack, in Love and Friendship says, when the gale

rages so I can carry sail no longer, I'll jump overboard and like thegal-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. 3 This Yankee honors the heroes of theSomers, wishing that he might have (if need be as honorable adeath as they suffered. Likewise, though the song Yankee Doodlewas probably appropriated from the British and became a popularditty used in these early American plays for its entertainmentvalue, 3 its words are filled with a kind of reverence for the war andits 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 JulyI t seems appropriate then, that nearly every Yankee to grace theAmerican 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 heroesand victims. Colonel Manly, for example, in The Contrastconstantly

29 Ibid., 81.

30Lindsley, 42.

31 Eric Lott, in Love and Theft tells of an account published in ial n 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

Minstrelsyand

the American WorkingClass

(New York: Oxford, 1993), 16.



NATIONAUSM 59

expresses veneration for his fellow soldiers and a longing for theirinjuries 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-religioussentiments, 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 tofree the prisoners of Tripoli. The General admonishes his brotherfor 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 accomplishedit ." Sydney, having been part of this effort to free Americanprisoners, wins the General s approval: "The noble boy has arrivedalso, with the proud consciousness of having shared in the glory oftheir liberation ." 33 Persecuted saints and blessed martyrs arenecessary 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' helpedgenerate a narrative of the Chosen People that would contributedecisively to the American Revolution and the subsequentdevelopment of America's national ideology."34 According toKramer, America has always considered itself a moral leader, achosen nation. This ideology has become so ingrained in thedefinition of 'America' that our country continues to act on similar

impulses today. Kramer states, "The young United States isperhaps the most instructive example of a nation in which a belief in

high destiny has been . . . a forceful presence in the lives of mengreat and small"35 Colonel Manly in he Contrast seems to upholdthis notion; he posits America as a Chosen Nation. This Veteransays, I am proud to say America, I mean the United States, hasdisplayed virtues and achievements which modern nations may

3 Royal Tyler, The Contrast, in Don B. Wilmeth, eel., Staging the Nation:

Plays from the American Theater 1787-1909 Boston: Bedford Books, 1998),

22

Ibid., 146.

4Lloyd Kramer, Nationalism, Political Culture in Europe and America,

775-1865 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1998), 67.

35

Ibid., 44.



6 CRONIN

admire, but of which they seldom set us the example. 6 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 disappointmentin 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 toowill 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 gracesand blessings from Above. Clinton Rossiter explains the forward

looking focus of the Chosen People narrative as an artifact of thenewness of the nation. According to Rossiter, when a country gains

independence, its people must create and embrace an instant

history. 37In 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 thisinstant history does not span a great length of time, it tends to beforward-looking; the new nation focuses on recent victories,

upcoming events, and future progress. The Yankee and theVeteran, 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 hisgovernment notes as a sacred deposit, 8 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 itscredit, I shall wait with patience until it is rich enough to discharge

6 Tyler, 46.

37 Clinton Rossiter, The American Quest 1790-1860 New York: Harcourt

Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1971), 40.

8

Tyler, in Wilmeth, 23.



NATIONALISM 61

them. I f 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 nationusually talk[s] bravely about a glorious future. 4

In these three early American plays, Veterans not only expect

their young country to soon prosper, but they are attentive toparticulars which may channel national success and progress. They

are often depicted as being more in touch than the ordinary citizenwith the nation and its needs. Just as Colonel Manly realizes thatthe 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 feelfor the nation's interests.' '1 The General understands the nation'sneeds far more keenly than his brother, who escaped the warbecause he preferred the shedding of ink to spilling blood: and

because he understands the nation's needs, he urges caution innational 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 areligious story of dangerous moral decline in which people betrayed

the national cause to pursue their own selfish gains or to adopt theideas and customs of other nations.' '2 Bruce McConachie posits

Manly as the moral center of he Contrast and states, Manlywarns Americans that unless they are careful, they will repeat thedecline of ancient Greece where the common good was lost in

pursuit of private interest.' '3 General Compton, in ears and

Smiles, also acts as moral center of that play, and he suggests a

9 Ibid.

4°Clinton Rossiter, he American Quest 1790-1860 New York: Harcort

Brace Jovanovich, Inc. 1971), 40.

41James Nelson Barker, Tears andSmiles in Paul H. Musser, James Nelson

Barker1784-1858 New York: AMS Press, 1969), 146.

42 Lloyd Kramer, Nationalism, Polttical Culture in Europe and merica,

1775-1865 (Chapel Hill: University of North Caro lina, 1998), 74.

43 Bruce McConachie, American Theater in Context, from the Beginnings

to 1870 in Don B. Wilmeth and Christopher Bigsby, eds. The Cambridge Historyo American Theater. vol 1 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 130.



6 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 ofmodern nations rely constantly on metaphorical and political

allusions to families and a family relationship, and that, The

overlapping, contrasting and connected identities of women, menand nations became a prominent theme in nationalist writings aboutfamilies.'145 Nationalistic texts are concerned with families-and

more specifically, women-because of the belief that the family actsas a cultural mediating institution for child development. Therefore,

Kramer argues, if native women fall to foreign men, the nationbecomes in danger of losing its national identity. Loss of Americanmothers could mean the loss of American children, thus weakeningthe national resources, leaving the country susceptible to military

attack. Or and perhaps even worse, Kramer asserts, loss of thenational mother could breed foreign children in the nation's verymidst. American children of European fathers are in danger ofbecoming Europeanized. f this were to occur, the next generations

would not be adequately instructed in their national history andcustoms. Thus the nation may be susceptible to internal conflictand discord. The unity gained by the War of Independence would

be lost. t therefore becomes vital to protect the American womandue to her expectant (and expected) motherhood. n this view of

the family, women become guardians of the crucial domesticsphere.' '6 A nation's culture flourishes only in an atmosphere of

cultivated collective memory of the nation's past heroes andnational achievements; therefore, once a modern nation has

come into existence, its first intention must be to go on existing, toguard itself against conquests, fission, decay and death.'147 Themost efficient means of guarding against conquests, according toKramer's analysis, then, is to guard the women of the nation.

Each one of these early American plays deals directly with thisissue. Since they are sentimental comedies each plot centers onthe problem of an upcoming marriage. These plays seem to ask

'Will the woman be able to marry the young, patriotic American

Lloyd Kramer, Nationalism, Political Culture in Europe and America,

1775-1865 Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1998), 85.

5 Ibid., 88.

6Ibid., 90.

7 Clinton Rossiter, The American Quest 179 -186 (New York: Harcourt

Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1971), 75.



NATIONALISM 6

male, or will she be forced to succumb to her father s unwise

demand and be forced to marry the unsuitable Europeanized male?n The Contrast the young American woman, Maria, is in danger of

marrying the Europeanized fop, Dimple. Similarly, in Tears nd

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, theavailable young American veteran? Likewise, in Love nd

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 foraudiences to revere them.n he 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 nd

Smiles equally shows the Veteran as wise and brave in his attempts

to save Louisa: General Compton offers shelter if she should chooseelopement, 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 suitablemarriage. General Compton is pivotal in urging this final concordand thus securing a happy (American) marriage. Similarly, theYankees take on a crucial role in preserving the family in Love nd

Friendship. Augusta, the young woman, is in danger of being wed

to Dick Dashaway. Both Captain Horner and Jack, sea-worthyYankees, aid Algernon in his pursuit of and final victory in obtaining

Augusta (and thus securing a suitable match). One does so bylending the young hero money, the other by exposing the rake for

his treachery. The Yankee and the Veteran both have veryhonorable roles in these plays in that they help the right man

obtain the American woman. They are in pursuit of the pureAmerican family by preventing the American woman from falling

into the hands of a foreigner.The woman was not the only object48 which required protection

from foreign apprehension. The nation itself also needed to beprotected. To maintain national safety, Kramer suggests,nationalistic philosophy and texts discouraged interracial or

intercultural mrxrng. This sentiment comes out within the threeplays. The European is not simply a dandy, but a malevolent powerthat at any time could bring destruction to the American community.

48n 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 Europeansas malevolent figures, the question still remains: Who is the trueAmerican? And how is he different from the European? To be sure,sometimes we are given tell-tale signs in Tears nd Smiles, for

example, Gallimard speaks with a French accent but at times we

are left to come to our own conclusions. Bereft of a nationalidentity, 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 ofdifference appeared frequently because the imagined

community requires outsiders or enemies in order to define theimagined unity and coherence of the nation. 9

In dealing with theissue of difference and contrast, Kramer asserts that while later

nationalistic texts would concentrate more sharply on racialdistinctions, early American nationalistic narrations concentrated on

the delineation between the American and the European. This typeof 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 he Contrast, difference is shown throughthe juxtaposition of the American to the English. This stems fromthe fact that the play was written in 1787 only two years after theRevolutionary war ended. At this time the British became thesymbol of all that was anti-American 5 because America's firstconcern 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 nd Smiles, written in1808, the American is distinguished not just from the British, butalso from the European. Thus, the Europeanized fop is

representative of all of Europe's failings (getting most of his badhabits from the French and Italians); the critique is no longer

specific only to England. In 1810, when Love nd Friendship waswritten, 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 YankeeTheater thus has philosophical connotations beyond its immediate

49 Lloyd Kramer, Nationalism, Political Cultures in Europe ndAmerica,

1775-1865 Chapel Hill: University of North carolina, 1998), 41.

5 Ibid., 109.



NATIONALISM 65

product, implications which it supports through interpretations of

the evolving political life of America. 5

As Appleby, Hunt, and Jacobs state, When Americans began

self-consciously constructing a national identity, they emphasizedthose 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 theBritish and from Europeans in part through language. Whereas theYankee's speech is rough but honest, the Europeanized fop affects

polite, socially acceptable speech and never speaks his mind or thetruth. American characters are further marked by their attitude

toward the War of Independence and its heroes. The Americanregards his national heroes with quasi-religious sentiment, while theEuropean judges them to be foolhardy rather than brave. As for theBritish, they are also characterized as oppressors of sovereign

rights. European and American are also differentiated through theirdivergent attitudes toward American womanhood. The European

who wishes to seduce the American woman, is the harbinger of ruinto the American family; the American man does all in his power todefend the next generation by protecting the American woman fromher European suitor. These cultural and textual distinctionsbetween Americans and Europeans signal profound ideological

differences between the two.n The Contrast, Tears andSmiles, and Love andFriendship, the

European is concerned mainly with outward appearances-i:lothing,conversation or societal rules. He is affected. Being the mostfashionable lady or the wittiest gentleman is important to theEuropean. Jeessamy and Dimple in The Contrast, for example, are

obsessed with exterior appearances. Contrastingly, their Yankeeand the Veteran counterparts, Jonathan and Colonel Manly are

simple, sentimental, and patriotic. The same contrast is seen inTears and Smiles After visiting Europe Fluttermore becomes

obsessed with manners and in this regard finds America to besubstandard to its European countries. n this same vein, he finds

his promised American fiancee uninteresting next to Europeancountesses he encountered on his travels. Yank and General

Compton, by contrast, are always occupied with good deeds andnoble 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,

5 Francis Hodge, Yankee Theater: The Image ofAmerica on Stage, 1825-

185 (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.



CRONIN

even more of an idler and loafer, even more unAmerican. Love nd

Friendship shows that the European is decadent and frivolous, whilethe American is practical, serious-minded, and sentimental.

Through these three plays a definition of the American beginsto take shape. An American is a virtuous citizen-one who does not

put on airs, one who is content with traditional American life, andone who takes marriage seriously. The European is decadent andfrivolous, 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 withsentimental affections.

Though the distinction between patriotic Americans andEuropean fops is clearly and starkly drawn, some questions of whatit means to be an "American" still remain. Love nd Friendship for

example, defines the American character further by offering anothercontrast-one with racial distinctions. Harry, the African Americancharacter in this work, is identified as an Other by Jonathan whocomments, "There here Charleston's sich a rotten hot place there'sno liven in't; then there's sich a tarnation sight f negurs black as the

ole feller umself, a body kaynt stire but theyhas um

at their noseor

their heels. I t beets all nater .53

In suggesting that the black man

is similar in appearance to the devil, Jonathan clearly separates theraces. The American places himself within the Christian realm and

posits the black man as outsider. According to this play, then, theAmerican is white. Harry himself understands that he is differentfrom 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 forgit drunk and fight. I wish I never bin blinge for lef it. I binhappy 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 hemoney, 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.

54Ibid. 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 theAmerican. He does not drink, nor steal American women, nor pilfer

American money. Harry holds marriage sacred and he seems tounderstand 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 adistinction, rather than a critique of blackness such as we see inlater American texts. Though Harry is not a Christian, he is not

criticized nearly as much as the European character. Arguably, atthis point in American history, Americans did not have to fear theslave as they feared the European. The European could 'pass' as

American at times, and thus, appropriate the American woman, butthe African American could not do so. Harry is certainly posited as

an outsider from his speech patterns and foreign identity, but thisoutsider is not an enemy. There is no fear that he will infectAmericans with his particular evil and there is no fear that he could

adversely influence the American family. He is an outsider who canfunction within American society because he poses no threat55 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 nd miles is clearly

depicted as an outsider through his difficulty with the Englishlanguage, but he voices sentiments which ring as more American in

spirit than those of his counterpart, Fluttermore. Gallimard wishesnothing more than to reside in America and to settle down with alittle 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 litdemoiseele you point me in de street . . . [Like a Quaker girl,America is] so ingenue, so modest. I viii choose de contree and dequake for life. I viii marry one and settle de oder. 56 The play'spositive attitude toward Gallimard is perhaps due to his being a

Frenchman-the French were seen as allies since the Revolutionarywar. 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 whiletraveling abroad and they have assumed European identities. Forthis 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 notenough; even if one possesses native citizenship, one must strive to

be American in spirit as well. Nationalistic texts create an imaginedAmerican 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 ofJonathan. Hodge gives the following account of this production:

Wignell's acting was probably related to the light comedystyle required by Colman and Sheridan, and far from thevulgarity and broad humor of the later Yankees. Wignellprobably had none of the individualized, particular touchesof the Yankee eccentric. I t is likely that he carried Tyler'scountry dialect onto the stage, where it sounded more likea stage Yorkshireman or other English country types, ratherthan a New Englander . . . Wignell was first an Englishman,then an actor, and he could not be expected to tell anaudience much about genuine native Americans. 57

The situation of an Englishman playing the imagined andidealized American and for that matter, playing it badly was fairly

common. Joseph Jefferson58 another Englishman-played Yank in


185 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964), 48.

58 See Gerald Bordman, ed., The Oxford Companion to American Theate0

2n 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 withJames Nelson Ba rker.



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 expectrealistic acting. Acting style was still largely presentational. Thoughhis 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-manshow Trip to America. However, he did not find any within thestreets 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 [TearsandSmiles was written]. 6

While Hodge asks How can 'outsiders' possibly delineate NewEngland character?, 6 the more pertinent question may be Did

this allusive American figure even really exist? Few accounts offerconcrete evidence of first-hand Yankee encounters. Just as Eric Lott

in Love and Theft describes representations of (real) AfricanAmericaos in minstrel shows as stemming from imaginedencounters with imagined African Americans, so too, the Yankee

may be a completely imagined being62• Lott suggests that Rice

never actually encountered the Negro -or for that matter anyactual African American- from whom he created the character and

dance of Jim Crow; likewise there is little evidence to suggest thatthe Yankee character actually existed in America save on the stage.

59Ibid., 49.

6 James Nelson Barker, Tears andSmiles in Paul H. Musser, James Nelson

Barker 1784-1858 New York: AMS Press 1969), 138.

6 Francis Hodge, Yankee Theater: The Image o America on Stage, 1825-1850 (Austin: University of Texas Press 1964), 48.

62 Eric Lott, Love and Theft, Blackface Minstrelsyand 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 tlantic

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,' acultural invention



70 CRONIN

f 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-RevolutionaryAmerican plays, Tyler s The Contrast Barker s Tears nd Smiles

and Lindsley s Love nd 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. s vehicles of nationalism, these plays

and their characters played an important role in molding the new

nation and its citizens.



JoumalofAmerican Drama and Theatre 13 Spring 2001)

WISHING ON THE EYE OF THE HORSE :

THE CONCEPT OF ENTITY IN

GERTRUDE STEIN'S liSTEN T 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 withGertrude Stein. During her long career, Stein developed a principle

of hermetic totality as the defining feature of both the literarygenius 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 orword, possesses a lucky autonomy and hermetic independence. Inboth 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 inrelation ( WAM, 88).2

In this paper I use the concept of Entity, as defined in Stein'slate manifesto The Geographical History o America (1936) as an aidto reading Stein's play Listen to e (1936). The close chronologicalrelation that this theoretical text bears to the plays of the mid-thirties makes it particularly relevant to explicating the content andform of the creative works. Like any literary aesthetic, Stein'stheories are open to criticism both in theory and in practice; Stein

may not accomplish her goal of creating a hermetic text, but thetheories provide a useful starting point for the examination ofexperimental and conventional texts alike.

1Helen Gardner and Timothy Healy, eds., John Donne SelectedProse(Oxford: Clarendon Press 1967), 101.

2Quotations 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).£ : Everybody s Autobiography (New York: Random House, 1937).

GHA: The Geographical HistoryofAmerica Or the Relation ofHumanNature 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).



7 P T RS N

Entity and the challenge t patriarchal convention

Stein's work has long been hailed by feminist critics for its

systematic undermining of literary convention. Focusing theirattention 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 thatthe opposition implicit in experimental writing to the culturalhegemony 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 thatmirrored 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 thehermetic 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 theself-contained whole. Ideally, for Stein, writing was neither

remembering nor forgetting, neither beginning nor ending (GHA150). Back in1927 Stein had made it clear that patriarchaltraditions 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 ( PatriarchalPoetry n ~ 263). Their origin, their history-not hers. 5

At the level of the text, the concept of Entity ostensibly defiespatriarchal convention by proclaiming the proud hermetic status of

the text. Unlike T.S. Eliot's careful mosaics of intertextuality, Stein'sideal 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, Steinattempts to create a textual object that exists independently of theshared meanings that form the history of the word. Relying upon

reiteration for its effect or what Stein would call insistence ), the

3Marianne DeKoven. A Dtfferent Language. Gertrude Stein's Experimental

Writing (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983), 16.

4Shari Benstock. Women o he eftBank: Paris 1900-1940 (Austin:

University of Texas Press 1986), 86.

5For 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 thecourse of a phrase by what in formalist terms may be described as

a process of defamiliarization, for the fourth repetition just tips thenoun 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 itsbeginning? ts middle? Its end? t does not set out to be adefinition, for it does not begin with an article, nor does it end witha botanical description of the presence of thorns or theconfiguration of leaves on a stem.

Entity and the shift towards narrative convention

n their discussions of Gertrude Stein's plays, critics BetsyAlayne Ryan and Jane Palatini Bowers support the notion that,ultimately, Stein's texts are hermetic objects. Ryan states that Theliterature 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. t exhibits an aestheticism in

which the thing, the touchstone of her art, is finally superseded by

the complete work .

Bowers makes her claim for the resistance ofStein's plays to performance based on the primacy of the writtentext: Her texts seem to res ist the very performance they instigate.Stein attempts to oppose the physicality of performance, to stop thedriving force of action and to prevent the written text, the writer'swords, from being subsumed by other elements of the performanceevent .7

Theoretically, the phrase rose is a rose is a rose is a rose maye 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 adoptedthe linear narrative conventions that she had previously sothoroughly repudiated, ostensibly to gain a wider audience. Isuggest that in the works of her last two decades, Stein establishesfemale characters as embodiments of Entity as a consequence of

her late coming to terms with her own sexuality. As Stein adoptsthe linear narrative and syntactic strategies of patriarchal discourse

Betsy Alayne Ryan Gertrude Stein s heatre o he Absolute (Ann Arbor,University of Michigan Research Press 1991), 32.

7 Jane Palatini Bowers Gertrude Stein (London: Macmillan, 1993), 110.



7 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 haswritten, basing his findings on Stein's late plays Dr Faustus Lights

the Lights (1938) and The Mother of Us ll (1946), writes aboutStein'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 mosturgently about discovering who surrounded her. Each of

her plays helped her learn whether or not she could everknow another human being. That passionate project-

writing her way toward people-kept her art from becomingthe thinnest, most desiccated kind of abstraction.

In her careful analysis of the formal traits of Stein's works fortheatre, Ryan has stated that Stein's works that includeconventional aspects of staging and narrative need to beconsidered departures from her general technique and aesthetic(Ryan, 129). However, by basing her criterion for comparison onplay traits, Ryan neglects to consider the development of Stein's

aesthetic based on chronological relations. at the same time asStein was beginning to explore narrative conventions, she was alsobeginning 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 arenewed appreciation of the power of her own voice. In thedensely rich text The Geographical History ofAmerica (1936), Stein

formulates a theory of the artist in relation to the artwork that runscounter to those of her contemporaries T.S. Eliot and E M Forster.While Eliot's perception of the relation between the text and theartist is dominated by the concept of tradition, Stein conceives of

the artist's vision as a panoramic gaze that is not situated inrelation to time or literary tradition. Moreover, certain commentslike in this epoch a woman does the literary thinking (GHA 223),indicate that Stein was reassessing the connection between herown gender and Entity. As such The Geographical History of

America not only offers us an alternative to modernism as it wasbeing formulated in the work of Stein's male contemporaries, but it

Marc Robinson, 'The Other American Drama, Cambridge Studies in

American Theatre Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 17.



GERTRUDE STEIN 7

offers that alternative from the position of a specifically femininewriting subject.

n The Geographical History o America Stein sets forth hertheory on the relation between the author and the text, using thelandmass of the American continent as a metaphor for the materialfrom which art is made. Stein describes the separation of theartist's vision from worldly affairs using the image of a light planeskimming 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 andknowing what it knows it has nothing to do with seeing

what it remembers, remember how the country looked aswe passed over it, it made big designs big designs likehuman nature draws them without ever having seen themfrom 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. Thehuman mind, knowing what it knows, has no need to organizeits material in a succession, for like a landscape viewed aerially, all

experience is contained within the sight-lines of the immediatepresent. Therefore it is not governed by recollection, seeing whatit remembers, because it operates like a panoramic lens that seeseverything simultaneously.

The quotation cited above also makes reference to a secondmode of apprehending the material of life: from down on groundlevel. These are the big designs like human nature draws themwithout ever having seen them from above. Stein calls this agentof apprehension human nature and she sets it up in opposition tothe apprehension described as the human mind. Human naturesees things unfold in succession, just as a tiny figure would drivingthrough the countryside. Governed by the structuring principle of

succession (moving through the countryside as opposed to rangingabove 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 existin a state of being in relation; each component part relies uponanother 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).n this context, Stein places the concept of Identity in opposition

to the concept of Entity. For its function, Identity relies upon asecond 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 amode of being in relation.



7 PETERSEN

Entity and teleology

Stein was an artist acutely aware of both the process and themoment of creation: The business of Art as I tried to explain in

Composition as Explanation is to live in the actual present, that isthe complete actual present, and to completely express thatcomplete actual present LA, 104-105). The complete actualpresent is an aspect of Entity. Stein attempts to make the

product inseparable from the process of its own making by writingthe moment of the text's creation into the work itself:

I find that any kind of a book if you read with glasses onand someone is cutting your hair and so you cannot keep

the glasses on and you use your glasses as a magnifyingglass and so read word by word reading word by wordmakes the writing that is not anything be something.GHA, 151)

Stein's author is no Joycean God indifferently paring his nailsfar up in the stratosphere.9 As a creator, Stein is there having herhair 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 na rrative 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 he Novel,

Forster was concerned to separate the organizing principle of time(the sequence concerned with the beginning, middle and end of thetext) from the hierarchy of importance accorded to events in dailylife: daily life, whatever it may be really, is practically composed of

two lives-the life in time and the life by values-and our conductreveals a double allegiance .10 To Forster, events must follow eachother in sequence: The time-sequence cannot be destroyedwithout carrying in its ruin all that should have taken its place; the

novel that would express values only becomes unintelligible andtherefore valueless (Forster, 49). Teleology, by placing thephenomenon (or in narrative terms the resolution) at the end of achain of causes and effects, makes design (or in narrative terms theprogress of the text) subordinate to phenomenon. Contrarily, Steinbelieved 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 iscreated at the moment at which it is perceived as a creation.

9James Joyce. A Portrait o f he rtist s 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.

t E.M . Forster, Aspects o f he Novel (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1962),

36



GERTRUDE STEIN 77

Characters as Entities

Wendy Steiner has stated that in Gertrude Stein's plays, thetransformation of concepts into characters, the linking of character

and speech to subject and predicate, and the constant grouping andre-grouping of the elements of the theme are the play-genre's

means of exploring an issue . Following Steiner's lead, I suggestthat as Stein's plays move away from their meta-textual focus andtowards narrative convention, the concept of Entity and thechallenge which it presents to the patriarchy become embodied in

female characters.

n The Geographical istory o America, Stein's definition of theway characters operate in her conception of a masterpiecefocuses on the properties associated with Entity : Now in amasterpiece what does anybody do they do what they do that is

they say what they know and they only know what they are as theyknow what they are, there is no time and no identity, not at allnever 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, forif

thecharacters completely express themselves in and of their ownactions, they do not require the presence of other characters tojustify their existence. Stein once explained her decision to writeplays as a bringing together of Entities :

I came to think that since each one is that one and thatthere are a number of them each one being that one,the only way to express this thing each one being thatone 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 narrativewas how to maintain the self-contained Entity of her characters atthe same time as the exigencies of getting published required her totell a story which would mean bringing them into relation with each

other. Stein described the problem in one of the American lecturesof 1934, Plays : as I say everybody hears stories but the thingthat makes each one what he is not that (LO P, 121). n Listen to

Me Stein approaches the problem of the opposing impulses ofIdentity and Entity by embodying them in two different

Wendy Steiner, Exact Resemblance to ExactResemblance: the LiteraryPortraitureofGertrude Stein New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), 203 .



8 PmRSEN

characters, both connected with the two very different notions of

textual generation. Narrative convention and Identity areconnected with Sweet William who wishes to tell stories. By

contrast, Entity, the notion of an unmediated relation between aword and its referent, becomes vocalized in the character of Lillian.

The concept of Entity and th game of monosyllables

At the centre of Listen t Me is the game of monosyllables.And so all together they say I wish words of one syllablewere as bold as old. I will tell in words of one syllableanything 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 curtainprecludes its use in the text, for it has two syllables and thereforedoes not meet the criteria for playing the game of telling in wordsof one syllable anything there is to tell. However, the meaning of

the word curtain also factors into th play, for it has a specificdramatic 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 t Me the monosyllable

acts as a linguistic analogue for the concept of Entity, for themonosyllable contains within one sound all that is required for theexpression of whatever concept is represented by the word. For thecharacters in the text, the monosyllable represents the possibility of

an unmediated connection between signifier and signified. Onecharacter in the play claims that monosyllables are more readilyunderstandable: And the first one the first one of the seven of

them said in meditation. What is a word of one syllable is it easierto understand than one of several (LO P, 389). n 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 wouldmake up a longer word. Are we for example (£4,114). WhileStein's definition appears to be maddeningly vague, the definitioncontains the notion that a monosyllabic word is a rendering down of

essence.n my reading of Listen t Me I wish to consider Stein's use of

monosyllables not just as a game-plan for the procedure of the playbut as a means by which Stein critiques the complex diction andrhetoric of the patriarchy. Virginia Woolf is another modernist whosees in the monosyllable the potential for an unmediated connectionbetween a word and its referent, as opposed to the latinatediscourse of the patriarchy which in its aggregation of syllablesdraws a word further away from its referent. At the end of thevillage pageant in Woolf's novel Between the Acts 1941), adisembodied voice invites members of the audience to reflect on

their own nature:



GERTRUDE STEIN 9

Before we part, ladies and gentlemen/ before wego .. Those who had risen sat down) . lets talk in words oone syllable/ without larding/ stuffing or cant. Lets breakthe rhythm and forget the rhyme. And calmly considerourselves. Ourselves. Some bony. Some fat 2

The voice suggests that language is the site of illusion whichdisrupts the process of self-scrutiny. Wh ile circumlocutious pufferydraws language away from its referents in the world, words of onesyllable contribute to a more direct apprehension of the thing itself.The magic utterance here seems to be the word one. Oneembodies a sense of undivided wholeness: one word; one syllable

sound; one person; one all-encompassing vision.

haracters and monosyllables

Not all of Listen to Me is written in monosyllables. However,the concept of ennumerating syllables informs the action of the firstgroup of characters in the play: those named after ordinal numbersSecond character, Third character and so on). These characters

display the kind of Entity that Stein described in The GeographicalHistory of America as be ing 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). 3

The characters are named after numbers, they know aboutcounting, they count for business and they make puns aboutcounting for their own amusement. Thus the words that they utterdefine what they do:

2Woolf, Virginia, Between theAct51941 (London: Hogarth Press, 1990):

123-124.

1 he concept that a character is according to what i t 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 Writ ten

Character as a Medium for Poetry, Ezra Pound, Instigations 1920 '(Freeport,

NY : Books for Library Press, 1967), 382.



8

Character: And everybody counts.

Second character: What is a count

PETERSEN

Third character: A count is a gentleman who has a nameFourth character: And what is his name

Fifth character: His name is count. ( L O ~ 393)

The preoccupation of these characters with counting providesthe backdrop against which Sweet William and Lillian make theirown very different enumerations of the world.

The differing kinds of narrative produced by Sweet William thegenius and his lady Lillian are also determined by the couple'srelation to syllables. At first sight, the male and female charactersfill the stereotypical subject positions designated by heterosexual

convention. An early soliloquy in isten to Me contains a definitionof gender differences, aligning masculinity with activity: That iswhat 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 toois his subject position as the swain of Lillian: Sweet William hadhis 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 forWilliam.

Now imagine a scene which is on this earth and as manycome 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 putand 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 herability to tuck luggage away in handy storage places However, anexamination 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 thething itself ( Entity ). Through her connection with the theoreticallyprivileged concept of Entity, Lillian brings into question herpassive designation as luggage-bearer.

weet William and patriarchal narrative

n Listen to Me conventional narrative and Identity areconnected through Sweet William's quest to tell a story. The basicpremise of Sweet William's character is that he is a writer seekingto 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 acareful story of how they enjoyed themselves. But he didnot have his Lillian, he looked for Lillian and so he could nottell a careful story of how they enjoyed themselves. ( L O ~390)

81

That Lillian is indispensable to William is as Wendy Steinersuggests, reinforced by the parallel internal structure of the names

William and Lillian (Steiner, 198). But why does Sweet Williamneed Lillian in order to make narrative? The answer lies in thefunction of being in rel tion that Stein perceived as being commonto 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. f weconcede that according to Gertrude Stein's schema, patriarchalnarrative exists by virtue of being in rel tion then Lillian does formpart of the definition of Sweet William's very nature as a writer. He

needs to be recognized by her in order to write the structurednarratives of Identity.

Sweet William is further aligned with patriarchal narrativethrough his connection with polysyllables. As I argued above,monosyllables are associated with Entity. By contrast, the dictionof Sweet William is polysyllabic, for he is the bearer of patriarchalnarrative, the classifier and the teller of stories. Like Kubla Khanhe 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 arepolysyllabic outcroppings of his genius :

Sweet William had his genius.Sweet William had his syllables.Sweet William had water and had no water in his poolssweet William had water in his water fallsWater-fall Three syllables made up a two syllables and one

syllable. ( L O ~ 400)

n this example we see how the generation of the landscape isparalleled with Sweet William's mode of textual generation. HereSweet William uses his syllables to create a fertile land. However

it is not just syllable count that has a bearing upon the nature of hiscreation, but the meaning of the words too. The connectionbetween polysyllables and their referents creates problems forSweet William as he sets out to create his textual version of the

world. There is no water in Sweet William's pools, because pools



8 PETERSEN

is a monosyllable that does not contain the polysyllabic wordwater. However water-fall does contain water and so there s

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 thangetting through to the thing itself. When he considers eventshappening in his textual world he must first address a host of issuessurrounding his choice of words, issues which almost prevent theevent from happening:

Sweet William: Suddenly there is a warSuddenly is a word of three syllablesThere is a war

Words of one syllableSweet 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 thatsuddenly there is a war.Because suddenly if the earth is all coveredover with people then sudden is not anymore. ( L O ~ 405)

The passage opens with Sweet William's customaryenumeration of syllables, according to the game that governs the

text. However, Sweet William goes on to become concerned withthe import of the word suddenly and its relation to the meaning of

the monosyllables there is a war. What might be needed in orderfor a war to occur suddenly? First one must have warring factions:a populace. However if there was a populace then the war mightnot come as a surprise, and Sweet William could not use the adverbsuddenly 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 theramifications 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 thatsprings from a statement of the thing itself and not in relation.

lilli n nd monosyll bles

t the same time as Lillian's presence is necessary to William,

she represents far more than the female muse lover or even inbuiltaudience, 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 8

with syllables. Syllables are not so L O ~ 399-400). She does notcare 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 earthis the earth which is there is a hesitation not within butwithout, which is there is no hesitation within without,which is do not like what there is not to like, within, veryquietly five enter.

n no time at all there is no time. (LO P, 394)

Lillian lives outside the schema of syllables which classifieslanguage, 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'spools which contain no water, Lillian's earth contains earth.

Thus, according to Stein's theories, the relation between signifierand signified is more closely mediated. Nor is Lillian's timelessness( In no time at all there is no time ) any coincidence, for Lillian'sability to describe and perceive the earth in its entirety is

characteristic of the human mind which perceives the earth from abirdseye perspective.

Lillian's main utterance occurs quite late in the play, and in factit surprises us with its originality and its volubility. The only othertime when Lillian speaks is in rather desultory dialogue with SweetWilliam:

All of a sudden there is no all of a sudden.There are people everywhere.Sweet William: WhereLillian: EverywhereSweet William: But do I like it.

Lillian: You do not like it.Sweet William: Everywhere. L O ~ 406)

n dialogue with her male counterpart, Lillian dully echoesSweet William, trailing along after him, weighed down by theluggage 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 wishLillian: There is a horseLillian: There is a head

Lillian: There is an eyeLillian: There is a kneel

Lillian: There is a wish when I kneel on the eye of the



8 PETERSEN

horse and wish it.Sweet William was not there. (LO P, 412)

Lillian's utterance is apatriarchal in two ways. First, it defieschronology by sending time forwards in the form of a wish, and

then folding it back upon itself through the use of the presenttense. The wish opens up possibilities for the future withoutcommitting the text to the exigencies of chronological time.

Second the utterance defies patriarchal syntax. Because of itssyntactic position, the word kneel becomes a noun, only to revertto its customary usage in the last sentence. Without taking theinterpretation too far, one might conjecture that it is not necessarilya 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 abilityto 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 Abdyand his wife Diana. One sight-seeing trip included a visit to anancient chalk horse etched onto the hillside. Evidently Diana Abdyknelt on the eye of the horse to make a wish (EA, 300). Visualizingthe version of this event contained in Listen to Me requires us as

readers to employ the birdseye view of the human mind. Thechanging syntactic position of the word kneel demonstrates justhow the panoramic vision of the human mind challenges thereader to both value the discrete units of language and to see thetext 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 . Thenoun/verb kneel provides the point at which the focus changes.

In order to visualize the statement there is a kneel the readermust 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 toand very far from the kneeling woman. We must rise above thehillside in order to fit the kneeling woman and the great horse intoour field of vision.

More than a representation of the beloved other necessary forthe male character's own comfort and inspiration, Lillian embodies

the approach to the text characteristic of the human mindprivileged in the theoretical schema outlined in The Geographical

Historyo America. I suggest that the shift is a part of Stein's movetowards valuing her own voice as a creator and as a woman. t

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 otherLillians in the world.



Journalof merican Drama and Theatre 13 (Spring 2001)

WILLIAM DUNLAP S A TRIP T NI G R

JULIAN MATES

The last play William Dunlap wrote was in many ways his best,though critics have tended to ignore it when evaluating Dunlap sinfluence on the American stage. Dunlap was America s firstprofessional playwright, and the number of his plays-original,adaptations, translations-is about sixty. Almost all of these werewritten between 1797 and his insolvency in 1805. Only a very few

of these were brought back season after season, notably histranslations 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 passeswherever he went. One of these friends was responsible forDunlap s last burst of theatrical energy.

Charles Gilfert, an old friend, was managing the Bowery Theatreand asked Dunlap to write some plays to counter those beingoffered at the Park. George Gilfert, his father, had been a music

teacher and organist in New York in the 1790s, and he was amember of the John Street Theatre orchestra; too, he sold musicalinstruments at a shop on Broadway.1 As manager of the OldAmerican Company, Dunlap knew him and was later friends with hisson, Charles. In 1826, Charles was selected as general manager ofthe Bowery Theatre. The competition with the Park was fierce.One of Gilfert s lasting accomplishments was the stress on dance.An article in the ew York Evening Post 1 December 1828, said, in

part:

I t is with sentiments of unaffected surprise that I have read amost illiberal attack upon the charming ballet of the BoweryTheatre . . . . That what is called the legitimate drama has

ceased to charm, the managers of theatres can testify to theircost. Are they then to blame, finding that even Shakespeare

1 George C D Odell, Annalsof he New York Stage New York: Columbia

University Press, 1927 : I, 327, 368; II, 38, 413.



8 MATES

will not attract; that Macready's fame and talents will not

produce audiences commensurate with the expences of hisengagement; are then the caterers for public amusement to be

arraigned for seeking in pageantry and the dance, thatremuneration which the most sublime poetry, and the bestactors will not afford them? . Melo-drama had its dayWhat was to e 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 Theatredo 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 speciesof entertainment . . . woe to the organization of that Statewhose foundation is to e sapped, by the graceful attitude of anaccomplished woman.

But the dance, however important to the history of Americantheatre, was not sufficient to keep the Bowery Theatre afloat, evenwith such luminaries as Charles Vestris and his wife, Ronzi and

Mlle. Celeste.The Park theatre, Dunlap's old stamping ground, had beenpresenting plays on American themes, especially James Hackett'sperformance in John Bull at Home, or Jonathan in England, and theBowery 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 formany of the scenes was a long anecdote told to Dunlap by John

Wesley Jarvis, later recounted in Dunlap's History of the ise and

Progress of he Arts ofDesign in the United States.2 'The last piece

I wrote for the stage, Dunlap wrote elsewhere, was a farce calledA Trip to Niagara, the main intention of which was to display

scenery. 3 Dunlap wrote and translated several pieces for theBowery in the 1820s at the request of Gilfert, and in the plain wayof trade, receiving meagre compensation for poor commodities.As was frequently the case Dunlap denigrated his work, andscholars have taken his word; yet the play had much to recommend

2William Dunlap, A Historyo he Rise and Progress o he rts ofDesign

in the United States 1834; Reprint, New York: Dover Publications, 1969): II

91-2.

3 William Dunlap, Historyo he American Theatre {1832; Reprint New

York: Burt Franklin, 1963): II 280.

4Ibid.



DUNLAP 87

it. The ew York Mirror 22 November 1828, managed to whet itsreaders' appetites:

The species of moving scenic exhibition, which causes thepleasing delusion of making the spectator feel as if he

moved and passed the scenes which in reality pass beforehim, was, we believe, first displayed at the Park Theatre to

an American audience. I t was followed by a pleasingspectacle of the same kind at the laFayette, and, again, inthe 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 thisnature, which, from the talents of those engaged, is

expected to equal any thing of the kind seen by us of thewestern world. With great judgment the scenes of ournative country have been selected for the pencil and thebrush, and a native dramatist [the coy reference is to

Dunlap] employed to compose the plot and dialogue whichis to give intellectual entertainment while the external

senses are delighted by the magnificent views which ourrivers and mountains present . . Too much praise cannotbe given to the managers for the selection of the subject,and for the liberality evinced by calling upon the talent ofthe country to delight or instruct its citizens, rather thanservilely 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 thecharacters of the play sat in a steamboat, and the scenery rolledpast them, giving the illusion of actually passing each place; acanvas area of 2,500 square feet was used. The ew York Evening

Postsaid, As the 'getting up' of this piece has been very costly, we

hope the manager may reap the benefit of his labours. The firstfew advertisements listed the treats to be expected, and afterawhile instead of the description, mention was made of a separate

list available to potential theatre-goers. The high cost of theproduction can be ascertained from the first descriptions.5

The Eidophusicon orMoving Diorama

The new and splendid scenery painted by Messrs . JonesGordon, and Reinagle assisted by Messrs. Haddock, White,

5 The list below, including the painters for each scene, is from ' heBowery

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 complicatedMachinery of the Diorama invented and executed by Mr.

Danes. The Steamboats and other mechanical and movingobjects 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. Commencingwith 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 variedshipping 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. FromHoboken the view proceeds, passing Wehawk, to thosestupendous and gigantic cliffs the Palisades, which, forsingularity of appearance and grandeur of natural beauty,are not to be rivalled in the world. n this part of herprogress the vessel encounters one of those violent andsudden storms so frequent on the North River. Thesteamboat and surrounding scenery are gradually lost tothe view of the spectator in a dense fog, which is followedby thunder, lightning, and all the varied and alarmingfeatures of a summer storm, which in that season so oftenterrifies while it excites the admiration of the traveller inthat wild and romantic region. The storm subsides and theview shows Haverstraw Light House and adjacent scenery,with Caldwell s Landing and Entrance; from which thespectator approaches the Highlands, with all their richvariety of mountain, wood, and cliff. He then passes West

Point, with its concentration of beautiful and interstingobjects, and which are seen under the imposing effect of abright Sunset. Leaving West Point night approaches, and

the soft and silvery light of the rising Moon begins to tintthe rugged fronts of the rocky eminences which overhangthe river. The Constitution pauses under the wooded banksof Polypus Island, which receding from the sight, the broadand 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 andother 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. Thewhole animated by the various craft which navigate the

North River.

5. The Bar Room of an Inn at Catskiii-(Rip Van Winkle'sCottage in Embryo.) Painted by Mr. White.6. Catskill Mountain House, at the Pine Orchard, bySunrise-the morning mist upon the country beneath.Painted by Mr. Gordon .

7. That picturesque and romantic spot the CauterskillFalls. Painted by Mr. Jones.8. State-street, Albany. Painted by Mr . Reinagle.9. The Canal and Aqueduct at the Little Falls, on theMohawk. 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 immensealtitude 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 professionallyinvolved with the theatre, he was not only able to work the effectsinto his play, but to write a more-than-competent play, to boot.

A Trip t Niagara begins in an apartment in the City Hotel, New

York. Amelia Wentworth is writing to her sister in England aboutthe delights she finds in America, such as superb steamboats andthe vision of the people. Her servant, Nancy, wants to return to

England, because in America she is considered no better than ablack, and because America has no royalty. She is afraid that hernear-fiance, Thomas, wants to stay here. [H]e will go into thewoods, and buy wild lands, and be a Congress-man.' 6

Wentworth, Amelia s brother, enters. He is disgusted withAmerica, calls it the "fag-end of creation.'' He misses the celebrated

ruins of Europe. Her response If America takes warning by theerrors of Europe, she will soon be the pride of the Universe " He is

contemptuous of everything in America, where he is treated likeeveryone else. He leaves to secure them berths on a steamboat toAlbany.

John Bull surprises Amelia. He is an Englishman who hadcourted her in England, where she had insisted that he travel before

William Dunlap, A Trip t Niagara (New York: E.B . Clayton, 1830), 6.



9 MATES

they committed themselves. He still wants to marry her, and theystrike 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 atthe hotel and paraphrases Othello: I would not my free condition

put in confinement for seas of wealth ."7 (He is the manager of ablack theatre company, "The Shakespeare Club.") His characterand speech reflect Dunlap's attitude toward the picture of slaves

and slavery itself. Soon after his father died, he freed the familyslaves; he was on the executive committee of an abolitionistsociety; 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 ofhis plays contain Irishmen: Darby s Return, The Glory o Columbia,Bonaparte in England, Lewis o Monte Blanco The Wife o 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 andis 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 isno ship available to take him back he is resolved to travel north to

canada where he can live safely under His Majesty's flag. Ameliareturns but does not recognize Bull until he reveals himself. Dennisagain tells his story, now confusing "hate" and "heat.'' Wentworthcomes in is amused by Dennis's account of America and resolves tohelp 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 thebottom of Courtland Street. "View of Jersey City. Ships in the

stream, & c. The language of the runners gives some excellentlocal color. 'The North America is the fastest, Sir " "This way,Sir -We beat them by twenty minutes last trip.'' "We beat them,

7Dunlap, Niagara, 13.

8 Oral Sumner Coad, Willam Dun/ap(1917; reprint New York: Russell &Russell, 1962), 179.

9 Dunlap, Niagara 15.



DUNLAP 9

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 hisway, and there is some farcical stage business as he drops oneparcel 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 beeninvented in 1787; the diorama was invented by a Frenchman in

1822-a painting with a transparent effect (the terms tended to beused interchangeably). 11 The steamboat seems to be passing up

the river as eighteen scenes are shown. The boat stops, and thepassengers 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 wretcheddog-hole tonight.

Amelia: Dog-hole, brother? Every thing is verycomfortable 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 duringthe scene. Wentworth believes the Frenchman is trying to murderhim. Suddenly, Leatherstocking appears, in part to help display yet

more scenery, but also to portray James Fenimore Cooper's hero asthe kind of American Wentworth can admire; too, his ideas

represent somethingof

America's: the buildingof

a great nationat

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

10Dunlap, Niagara 21-22.

11 Walter J . Meserve, An Emerging Entertainment The Drama o heAmerican People to 182B(Bioomington: Indiana University Press, 1977 , 312.




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 thatthe hunter's thanksgiving went up to Heaven with the song of allaround him" He offers to show some of the splendors of nature toAmelia, and even Wentworth cannot criticize Natty Bumpo and is

reduced to repeating, "After breakfast-after breakfast."13

t is not surprising that Dunlap should compliment Cooperthrough 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 amodern tale will not admit of such a dilation of many a merry or

striking scene, as might create the pleasing hope of beholdinghereafter some more of our rude sketches quickened into the life by

the spirited pencil of Dunlap."14

At the endof

Scene 1 Bull enters as the Yankee, Jonathan, andfinds 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 Ameliaand Wentworth to view the place, over Wentworth's constantcomplaints. 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 givesus a bit of historical local color: The opportunity we so frequently

have, of stepping from the canal-boat, and thus walking on thebank, adds to the pleasure derived from the ever changing scenery

that is presented to us ." She speaks of America's debt to Fultonand Clinton. Wentworth, of course, complains, this time of thepossibility of having his head knocked off by a bridge as he stands

on the canal boat. Dunlap did not need to mention the call " lowbridge /' all too familiar to his audience. 15 Dennis at last catches upto them and joins the party.


4James Fenimore Cooper, The Pilot New York: President Publishing Co.,

1849 , 434.




DUNLAP 93

A hotel at Buffallo, scene 5, finds Wentworth complaining asusual, 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 countryinjustice."16 At this point the plot is revealed, and Wentworth isdelighted that his sister and Bull will marry.

The final scene reveals the "Falls of Niagara as seen frombelow, on the American side." Leatherstocking is taking his lastlook at places he loves, before going off to the prairie. He andWentworth 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." 8 And yet the ew 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 asJohn Bull (and the Frenchman and the Yankee), Read as JobJerryson, 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, andends with "Travellers" as played by the "Corps de Ballet."

While the Evening Post continually stresses the scenery, theAmerican rarely mentions the scenery but most often refers to the"new dramatic piece in three acts by William Dunlap" andsometimes the "drama" of A Trip to Niagara or "the much admirednew drama." For the Evening Post Dunlap s play was the thing.

A Trip to Niagara was sometimes given as an afterpiece, thoughmost often it was the main work of the evening. Occasionally extraacts such as songs by Mr. Sloman were mentioned inadvertisements or M. and Mme . Vestris dancing a "grand pas dedeux."19 On Wednesday, 31 December, the Bowery happily

16 Dunlap, Niagara, 50.

17Dunlap, Niagara, 53.

18William 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 M TES

announced Dunlap's play's twenty-fifth performance. Odell wrote

that the Dunlap piece had saved the season.n 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 2 December, it notedsomething special :

Mr. Dunlap's play of a Trip to Niagara-Friday and Saturdaylast were distinguished at the Bowery Theatre by theremarkable circumstance, that the entertainments of thefirst 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 dramaticwriter. On Friday evening the house overflowed, and,

literally, hundreds went away disappointed. The managergave immediate assurance of the repetition of both pieces

on Saturday, and was rewarded by another bumper theauthor has wielded the lash of satire so playfully, that even

the p tient must join in the laugh which is raised at hisexpense, 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 andVictor 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 notsurprising that his knowledge of the conventions and his experience

pleased the Bowery's audience. And the lash of satire wasdirected at English travelers and travel writers who took every

occasion to hold in contempt all things American. The trend tocriticising America reached its peak with Frances Trollope'sDomestic Manners of he Americans in 1832.

When the Arch Street Theatre in Philadelphia produced Dunlap'sA Trip to Niagara, Coyle and Leslie were the scene painters, and



DUNLAP 95

Charles Durang thought the staging accurately and beautifully

done.2

Not all contemporary accounts were favorable. The rish Shield

said of Dunlap's play:. . . the most satiating namby pamby production that everdisgusted our audience; words without ideas, scenes

without conexion of probability; low jests, and mawkishsentiment clothed in the poorest language . . . . Such aplay as this would stigmatize with contempt the name of

any author, who had not given before, unquestionableevidences of dramatic talent and literary capacity. 2

* * *

Later evaluations of A Trip to Niagara have tended to be moremixed than those f Dunlap's day. His first biographer, OralSumner Coad, found the play merely a series of disconnected andpuerile scenes and irrelevant characters, with humor that isfrequent and boisterous. 22 Arthur Hobson Quinn found There is

little to be said in its favor, though he admits to an interest in thefive caricatures that Dunlap portrays ( The Yankee, French, English,Irish, and negro types'') and tends to accept Dunlap's ownevaluation of his play. 3 Robert H. Canary, here as elsewhere in histreatment of Dunlap, is ambivalent. He calls the play well-donehackwork, says Perhaps he [Dunlap] was led to underrate theplay, calls it a workmanlike job, and Since this is a Dunlap play,the suddenly good-natured Wentworth acquiesces to theirengagement, and finally, Not a great play, it is still the best of thesurviving original plays by Dunlap and by no means an unworthyend to his long career as a dramatist. 24

° rancis Hodge, Yankee Theatre, The Image ofAmerican on Stage, 1825-JSSO Austin: UniversityofTexas Press, 1964), 162.

2 The Irish Shield, January 1829, 30-31, quoted in Meserve, 113.

22Coad, 177.

23 Arthur Hobson Quinn, A Historyof he American Drama From theBginning to the Civil War New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1951), 107.

4 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 otherdioramas, such as views of European cities, and such displays as

the Burning of Moscow. 5

Walter Meserve points out other effects of Dunlap's play:

. . . with their articulated awareness of Americanidiosyncracies, American dramatists responded to thedesires of the people for a vivid scenery as well as anunderstanding of a national character. William Dunlap'sTrip to Niagara (1828) provided a beginning that wasexploited by the popular dioramas and the spectacular

theatre settings from Nick of the Woods to the numerousscenes of city life in A Glance t New York and many otherplays. Generally Jacksonian Americans did not care to be

thoughtful; they wanted only to know what they looked like,individually and as a country.26

n Yankee Theatre Francis Hodge suggests that the characterof Wentworth is a mild satire of Charles Matthews, then praises

Dunlap's play as among his most amusing pieces and certainlymerits much greater attention than it has usually received. 27

Dunlap must have thought that the play's popularity on thestage, one of the most popular he ever wrote, might result in thesale of the text (and it is also possible that he thought more highlyof his work than he let on). n any case he published the play, andas almost always the case with a Dunlap project, probably lostmoney. A letter dated 18 November 1830 to friends, reads:

I sent a bundle of my farce of a Trip to Niagara to yourcare with the request to place them for sale with aBookseller who is known as a dealer in dramatics. Retailprice 25 cents.

I know from experience that either of you will do this ormore to [serve] Your friend

William Dunlap28

25Wolfgang Born, American Landscape Painting (1948; Reprint

Connecticut: Greenwood, 1970), 90.

26 Walter J Meserve, Heralds ofPromise The Drama of he AmericanPeople During theAge ofJackson 1829 1849 (New York: Westport,

Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1986), 197.

7 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 NN 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 th 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 theturn 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

9





SIAVIC AND EASTEUROPEAN PERFORMANCE

Daniel Gerould editor.

This journal brings readers lively authoritative accounts

of drama theatre and film throughout Russia and Eastern

Europe and articles on important new plays innovative

productions significant revivals emerging artists and the

latest in film. Outstanding interviews and overviews.

Published three times per year.

10 per annum domestic/ 15 U S foreignSEEP@ gc.cuny edu

JOURNALOFAMERICANDRAMA ANDTHEATRE

Vera Mowry Roberts and Jane Bowers editors.

The widely acclaimed journal devoted solely to drama andtheatre in the USA past and present. Provocative

thoughtful articles by the leading scholars of our time

provide invaluable insight and information on the heritage

ofAmerican theatre as well as its continuing contribution

to world literature and the performing arts.


12 per annum domestic/ 18 U S foreign

[email protected]

WESTERN EUROPEAN STAGES

Marvin Carlson editor.

An indispensable resource in keeping abreast of the latest

theatre developments in Western Europe. Each issue

contains a wealth of information about recent European

festivals and productions including reviews interviewsand reports. Winter issues focus on the theatre in

individual countries or on special themes. News of

forthcoming events: the latest changes in artistic

directorships new plays and playwrights outstanding

performances and directorial interpretations.


15 per annum/ 20 U.S foreign

[email protected]

To order any of these publications please send your request to our Circulation Manager at:

Martin E. Segal Theatre Center

CUNY Graduate Center

365 Fifth Avenue

New York NY 10016-4309

MESTC@ gc.cuny edu

Please make checks payable to the journal title.



The Graduate Center of CUNYoffers doctoral education n

Faculty includes

Mirella AffronWilliam Boddy

Jane Bowers

Royal Brown

Jonathan Buchsbaum

Marvin Carlson

George Custen

Miriam D Aponte

Morris Dickstein

Jonathan KalbSamuel Leiter

Stuart Liebman

esand aCertificate Program nlm stu iesinterdisciplinary options with distinguished

Graduate Center faculty in other fieldsand through a consortia arrangement includingNew York University and Columbia University

Recent Seminar Topics:

English Restoration and 18 C. Drama •

affiliated with theThe Martin E Segal Theatre Center,

Journal ofAmarican Drama and Theatre

Slavic and EIISt European Performance Western Europeen Stagas

Classicism •

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