Early American Stage Hits: Spinning Gold from Chaff

Abstract

Nineteenth century America spawned world-class novelists: Herman Melville, Mark Twain – poets: Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson – and essayist/philosophers: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau. But in the field of drama, no memorable or even noteworthy name can be put forward. No early dramatic work endures as part of ‘the canon,’ even of American literature. None of the plays are taught in high-school; rarely do they appear on university reading lists. Royall Tyler’s The Contrast (1787) is occasionally anthologized, by virtue of being the first post-Constitution native-authored drama. Even Andre (1798) – the most critically regarded work by “the Father of the American Drama” William Dunlap – seldom appears in any venue but esoteric collections of early American drama. Beyond the above named playwrights, it is difficult to find works by any of their contemporaries still in print, though the Internet has opened a door for more of them to have some public access. But to accept that these mostly awful works were indeed of poor literary quality is not to say that these native dramas were not successful. Certain works were bona-fide financial hits: Anna Cora Mowatt’s Fashion, George Aiken’s “pirate” version of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (the most successful of the dozen or more spin-offs of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s landmark book), and a handful of star-driven vehicles like Rip Van Winkle or Metamora: the Last of the Wamponoags, written specifically for their super-stars, Joseph Jefferson and Edwin Forrest, respectively. Long forgotten works like Clari, the Maid of Milan contributed the enduringly popular and sentimental song “Home, Sweet Home” – now traditionally in the American song canon, learned by all elementary school children. (Its final line “There’s no place like home” is also the closing sentence intoned by a teary-eyed Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz.) Financial and popular success, however, are