Theatre, Culture and Temperance Reform in Nineteenth-Century America. By John W. Frick. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003; pp. 225 + illus. $70 cloth.

Abstract

From its beginning, John W. Frick's Theatre, Culture and Temperance Reform in Nineteenth-Century America does the work of overhauling the received tradition with respect to melodrama, progressivism, the temperance movement, and social and moral reform in nineteenth-century American theatre. Frick's thesis is that “nineteenth-century temperance drama was born of the intersection of temperance motives and ideology with progressive trends in literature and the arts” (13). Though his definition of progressivism is (I think, too) broad, Theatre, Culture and Temperance Reform is neither a survey of temperance plays (readers are referred to two dissertations that have undertaken this work) nor a survey of progressive trends. Rather, it seeks to illustrate “stages or facets of temperance ideology and/or production” (16).