American History on the Stage

PUBLIC taste in America has of late years taken two lines that have a tendency to converge into one, and we have been watching curiously to see what the result would be. Every one has observed the marked increase of interest in American history. The impetus was given by the anniversaries which clustered about the opening of a second century in national life, and have not yet ceased. At these anniversaries great oratorical exhibitions have been given, where men and women have assisted with attention and applause ; lectures, books, magazine articles, and public gatherings of various sorts have attested the interest. The newspapers, reflecting the popular taste, have given an amount of space to historical subjects which would have buried them in bankruptcy if it had not been that the readers of newspapers wanted all that was given them.

Not only this, but a vigorous effort has been made to reconstruct to the eye the historic past. We have had exhibitions of historical curiosities, and a lively competition has been set up for the possession of historical bricabrac. Even our houses have rapidly acquired an historic imposture. People have put on their ancestors’ clothes, and have tried by games, theatricals, tableaux, and masquerades to see how the heroes looked who have suddenly come forward in such near perspective. There is something almost pathetic in the eagerness with which, but a few years ago, everybody was centennializing himself, and looking over his shoulder to catch a glimpse of the century behind him in the mirror which he held. How charmingly the young American girl slipped into the Revolutionary costume ! the only one of us, we are sure, who really reproduced the past. Howells caught her at her gentle masquerading, and drew her portrait in his sonnet to Dorothy Dudley, the feigned chronicler of the Cambridge of 1776: —

Now the interest in this amiable masquerade is part also of the new taste in theatricals. It would be quite as easy to show that the period which witnessed the Centennial fever saw also a great increase in dramatic entertainments of an amateur character. The theatre has its own history and development, dependent upon conditions often only remotely connected with other phases of social life; and it does not follow, because there has been an extraordinary impulse given to private theatricals, that there has also been a corresponding popular interest in the regular stage. Yet there is a connection between the two. Amateur theatricals educate audiences rather than actors. Now and then a person discovers a talent for acting by taking part in amateur performances, but it cannot be said that such performances are in any way a school for the stage. What we are justified in inferring is that the increased activity in private dramatic entertainments points to a wider interest in the drama, a greater familiarity with plays, and an accession to the ranks of theatre-goers from a part of the community not hitherto especially given to frequenting the theatre.

Generalizing on such a subject is usually only the writer’s private impressions, so my assertion may be taken for what it is worth, that the readers of good literature have not, as a rule, in America, been supporters of the theatre, but that in this class there has sprung up of late a decided interest in the drama, and that this interest is to affect the stage. The adhesion of the literary class — both the writers and the readers of books — to the drama, which has gradually come about, is likely to cause a different order of plays, and in various respects to modify the present state of things. It must be remembered that Puritanism and literature combined have caused the theatre in England, and still more in America, to hold a position which is not necessarily permanent. That is, the theatre has been made more exclusively a place of amusement than it has been in France, Italy, or Germany. The drama has been so far divorced from literature that we have been taught to make a distinction between plays to be acted and plays to be read, — a distinction almost as irrational as songs to be recited and songs to be sung. Each has gone its own way and formed its own tradition. The drama, thrown in upon itself, has been developed independently of literary influences. It has come to rely largely on stage effects; that is, it has used the material at its disposal with reference to points of display, and has subordinated the text of the play to the actors, the scenery, and the dresses. It has turned novels which were dramatic into plays which excite the ridicule of the critics who praised the novels, and it has been dependent for its new blood either on translations or on dramatic artisanship, neither of which contains any real inspiration. It has allied itself with business rather than with letters, and a strong tendency has been shown toward the merely spectacular.

On the other hand, literature, for lack of this healthful outlet, has been driven within narrower bounds ; has contracted its power, lost a fine faculty of expression, and tended to insulate society instead of making it mobile. Society, when intellectually occupied, might almost be pictured as a household sitting in the evening round a table, with backs to the light, for the sake of saving weak eyes, each reading to himself, “ all silent,” as Shelley says, —

Shut out from the stage, literature has tried to make itself vivid through other forms. The novel, in the hands of Dickens and his school, was distinctly affected by the effort to introduce stage effects by merely mental processes; and it is largely owing to the same cause that literature has developed a farcical quality of humor, — the painful effort of a book to do what a comedian does with an easy contortion of face.

Now, in the popular awakening to the worth of American history, in the new interest felt by educated people in the drama, may there not be discovered a restoration of old relations between literature and the stage, too long dissevered ? Such a combination of literary and dramatic forces must depend for permanence upon the audience, and it is the audience which has been in process of education. The principal facts and personages in American history are every year becoming more positively a part of the furniture of the average mind, and there is a more familiar acquaintance with what may be called the scenery and properties of history through the aid of museums, collections, exhibitions, pictures, and picture-books. It is from this common acquaintance with history that any popular appreciation will come of literary work which is based upon history. What is it in art that makes subjects drawn from the Bible so quickly received by the people, except that familiarity with the book which renders it unnecessary for the artist to add a literary commentary to his picture ? And when American history is a household tale, then we may look for a ready appreciation of literature suggested by it. The concentration of attention, in manifold ways, upon this subject, in schools and among young people generally, is rapidly preparing the ground for a literature which shall react upon the subjects treated, and make history a still more real and interesting thing to common people. The rehabilitation of the stage opens a conspicuous field for the exercise of these forces.

Granting the possibility of a time, which for our own pleasure we will make near at hand, when author, audience, and actors shall be ready, does our reading of American history justify us in believing that it will be a storehouse for dramatic incident and movement? Schlegel, in his lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature, remarks that the great requisite in the historical drama consists in this : “ It must be a crowded extract and a living development of history,” — by which I suppose him to mean that it shall present a series of tableaux, which shall discover an actual growth and culmination of historic life. Now in the fullest and most familiar portion of our early history, that of New England, there are no tableaux, because there are no groups and no contrasts appealing vividly to the eye. The contrast which we bear in mind is to the contemporary history of England, or the subsequent history of America. There is scarcely even a contrast of figures : the Indian makes the sketchiest possible personage, and the Quaker, at this distance, is only another shade of dun from the Puritan. Then there is no culmination of historic fact. The history has been called the march of a headless mob, but there is not even the picturesque violence of a mob. We recognize the growth of ideas and the expansion of material prosperity, neither of which admits of very animated presentation ; and there were no crises which could furnish corresponding dramatic points, — scarcely any persons of marked prominence for centres of dramatic interest.

Mr. Longfellow, with his unfailing perception of artistic values, seized upon the two tragic elements in early New England history, the persecution of the Quakers and the witchcraft delusion. These he significantly termed The New England Tragedies, and in arranging them he kept within historical bounds. If he did not expect them to be played, at least he took no advantage of the doubt to free himself from any restriction of the acted drama. Except that the scenes and acts are shorter than is common, nothing is lacking for a feasible representation on the boards, — but, one instinctively adds, on the boards of an amateur theatre. The high lights required on the regular stage would disclose the meagreness of the two plays as spectacles, while the possible refinement and delicacy of impersonation in an amateur performance, and the equalizing of text and setting, would disclose the grace and gentle charm of the situations. But any representation would be likely to show the inadequacy of the themes taken as historical pictures. When we bring Puritans and Quakers together in the little town of Boston, and take for the turning-point of the drama merely the expulsion of the Quakers, there is not enough appeal to the imagination to call out any very profound feeling. Moreover, there is no real culmination either in this play or in Giles Corey of the Salem Farms ; we are simply given scenes out of a very provincial history, with only remote reference to universal passions. It must be borne in mind that the poet viewed the themes as a part of his trilogy, and was occupied with their humanitarian aspect.

The persecution of the Quakers was simply an exhibition of the Puritan character and training; it sprang from nothing, it led to nothing ; and spectacularly there is in the contrast of Puritan and Quaker only two shades of the same color, since modern decorum scarcely allows the Quaker to appear on the stage in his historic occasional dress. The witchcraft delusion does offer an opportunity for some passionate and fiery scenes; there is a chance for a lurid light against the sombre Puritan background, and for finely modeled figures in such persons as Sewall and Mather. A dramatic incident of value is to be found in the sudden revulsion of feeling which followed the indictment of Madam Hale as a witch; that and Judge Sewall’s confession would make telling points on the stage.

A better subject than either of these is to be found in the legend which Hawthorne used in The Grey Champion. A drama founded on Goffe’s adventures would give a series of historic scenes in two continents, beginning with the trial of a king, and closing with an apparently miraculous interposition. It would have the great advantage of dealing with great subjects, and of introducing figures already familiar to the ordinary reader.

There is another subject in New England provincial history which offers dramatic situations, but it would perhaps be more correct to call it a passage in Canadian history; and it has the misfortune of all Canadian subjects, that it suggests a tragedy without a fifth act. In 1690, Sir William Phips, at the head of an expedition of twenty-two hundred men, — shipmasters, merchants, master mechanics, and substantial farmers, — sailed out of Boston harbor to attack and capture Quebec. Phips’s own history is one of romantic interest, and this bluff, choleric, prompt, rude man stands opposed to the picturesque governor of Canada, Count Frontenac, one of that long list of adventurous men who light the canvas of Canadian history with brilliant points. Frontenac sought the aid of the Indian in the defense of Quebec, and a grand council of all the tribes of the lakes was held. At this council a curious scene occurred, which I give in Mr. Parkman’s words : —

“ Frontenac [at this time a man of seventy] took a hatchet, brandished it in the air, and sang the war song. The principal Frenchmen present followed his example. The Christian Iroquois of the two neighboring missions joined them, and so also did the Hurons and Algonquins of Lake Nipissing, stamping and screeching like a troop of madmen, while the governor led the dance, whooping like the rest. His predecessor would have perished rather than play such a part in such a company, but the punctilious old courtier was himself half an Indian at heart, — as much at home in a wigwam as in the halls of princes.”

The actual fighting before Quebec was insignificant. Phips waited for reinforcements, and kept up only a feeble cannonading. Meanwhile, he tried the effect of a summons to surrender, and his messenger, received blindfold into the town, was conducted by tortuous ways, and amid the jeers of the populace, to the château, where, when the bandage was removed, his eye dropped before the haughty presence of Frontenac, surrounded by French and Canadian officers, glittering with all the gay insignia of rank and office. The interview was short and contemptuous; the New England general was bluffed by the Frenchman, and withdrew from the contest just as he was about to be aided by a powerful ally, — famine. As he sailed away, “ Quebec,” says Parkman, “ was divided between thanksgiving and rejoicing. The captured flag of Phips’s ship was borne to the cathedral in triumph ; the bishop sang Te Deum ; and amid the firing of cannon the image of the Virgin was carried to each church and chapel in the place by a procession in which priest, people, and troops all took part. The day closed with a great bonfire in honor of Frontenac.”

This historic event has the misfortune, as I have intimated, of having been a failure on Phips’s part. It is necessary for us to be on Frontenac’s side to see the possibility of a drama culminating in the triumph at the withdrawal of Phips’s fleet; and even then we see how different for dramatic purposes is a successful defense from a successful attack. What pleases me is the spectacular element in the grouping of Frenchmen, Now Englanders, and Indians in Frontenac’s breakdown and in the pageant. For one, I like a good show ou the stage, and I commend this historic episode as offering a good background for a bright love story.

The career of Joseph Warren is not without dramatic hints. The Boston Massacre, Warren’s oration at the Old South, with his suppression of the rumble of violence, and his fall at Bunker Hill give points around which could be grouped the conflict between Great Britain and America. For the point of time was not only critical; it held the larger development of the war in miniature. And that is precisely what the drama attempts ; for the historical drama is a microcosm, an epitome of the great conflict, just as tragedy is an epitome of human life; and when a single contest contains the germ of an epoch, the dramatist has only to give it artistic selection. In the secret councils of the Committee of Safety, the arrogance and timidity of Governor Gage and the court party, the national instincts of the conscientious loyalists, the restlessness of the populace, the foresight and steadiness of a few patriots, we find the elements of true dramatic representation; and it only needs to arrange these in a culminating series of events to give in reduced scale the entire historic movement.

Yet the Revolution, as we used to call it, is singularly lacking in dramatic properties. We are misled by the title; the American Development would be a truer phrase, and it is observable that careful historical writers almost uniformly speak of the War for Independence. The French Revolution was rightly so called; it shook to the centre an old order of things. The American Revolution set the seal to a foregone conclusion. It disturbed existing political relations, but not until new ones of a higher order were germinant. The very nature of the conflict interfered with strong dramatic situations, — situations that is, which seem to hold soluble elements of national life for a moment, and suffer them to become indestructible before our eyes. There are romantic incidents, but the only group of events during the war which offers any opportunity for an historical drama is that relating to Arnold’s treachery and André’s execution. In those events there would be a chance to lift the figure of Washington into dramatic prominence.

We often hear it said, Happy the nation that has no history; but of course by that phrase is meant the nation that suffers no violence of war and devastation, for it is these things which, in the old conception of history, went to make up the account, — these and the quarrels of kings. In the more modern conception of history, which regards the movement of a nation toward the realization of freedom, there are many things besides war and quarrels which are reckoned; but it must be admitted that the possibilities of dramatic representation lie in circumstances of sharp change, and in the action of the passions. This is merely making use of the very etymon of the drama, which is a thing done, and done before our eyes. In the history of our country, when we leave behind the period of war, and the adjustment of parts which make the nation, what remains for representation in the historic drama? Plainly, not the progress of laws, nor the growth of cities, nor westward emigration, nor the finding of gold in California. The philosopher and economist and social novelist have the monopoly in such fields. Neither does the invention of the cottongin, the reaper, or the sewing-machine serve the purpose of the historical drama, though Mr. Whitman can cram them boldly into a lyric. They all help to make up our history, as do numberless other factors in civilization, but they are not dramatic in their nature.

It needs no special insight to see that the one subject which lies at the heart of our history since the Revolution is the one subject in which dramatic incidents are imbedded. Slavery and its extinction constitute the theme of our history since the Union was reached ; and because the extinction of slavery has made possible a nation no longer divided by irreconcilable differences, there is always in every drama based on the slavery contest, however tragic may be its incidents, the possibility of a triumphant conclusion, accordant with history and the prophecy of history. The conflict for freedom is so large and so moving in its nature, and has always been so dramatic in its incident; its roots lie so deep in the moral nature, where only the great drama thrives ; and it is so involved in national development, that all other subjects in our history are weak and insignificant before the possibilities of this theme. We stand, perhaps, too near the scenes of the late war, and are too much a part of the conflict, to be able to bear the spectacle of that drama reënacted on the stage; but in due time the events not so much of the war as of the moral and political conflict will find adequate presentation, when the vast proportions of the theme will be reduced in epitome and made vivid in action, which concentrates the thought of the historic movement into a few characters and situations.

There is a subject — I had almost said the only subject — magnificently conspicuous, and capable of holding the entire history of American slavery and its downfall. The material for illustrating it is copious and well known ; in parts, indeed, almost ready for use. It is just one of the cases where history pauses for a moment, puts its finger on the page, and says There ! The immediate incidents and events, when compared with other scenes, look trivial; yet how perfectly typical and dramatic are every one of the facts which we possess regarding the life and death of Captain John Brown! Here is the moral indignation of the people finding expression in one sharp explosion ; here is the prophet saying, “ Let my people go.” Victor Hugo’s sketch of John Brown on the gallows, which look in the darkness like a cross, presents in a theatrical and offensive way the intense feeling which found in Brown a sacrifice for a great sin. The figure looms, in the midst of its fellows, into gigantic proportions. Even for those who call his character an insane and fanatic one his adventures have a strange fascination, and the farther we get away from the scenes the more typical do they become. The very smallness of the scale upon which his attempt at Harper’s Ferry was made renders the action all the more fitted for dramatic copying, and none the less prefigurative of the mighty contest at hand; the failure of the attempt, moreover, holds a finer power than success.

The quaint Puritanic speech of the man is singularly fitted to express the religious and historical opposition to slavery. No one can read the simple narrative of Brown’s conduct after his capture without perceiving that history has furnished drama with the very words he used, and almost the very order of those words. The conversation which took place mainly between Mason, the author of the fugitive slave law, and Vallandigham on one side and John Brown on the other is curiously dramatic in its character and force. The letters of Brown and his reported conversations are crowded with characteristic, spontaneous expressions, so that it would be entirely possible to present the man in his own terms, and to find in these truly poetical and fit language. Then the incidents connected with his execution are precisely of the kind to touch us with their representative character : the taking up of a negro child and caressing it; the cry of the old black woman, “ God bless you, old man ! I wish I could help you, but I cannot; ” and it is a matter of tradition that among the Virginia militia who surrounded the gallows, and marched and countermarched, was Wilkes Booth.

These and other trivial incidents help to show how rich in subsidiary action is the entire dramatic scene. The great value of it lies in its microcosmic presentation of the mighty conflict so soon to shake the land. The representatives of the slave power in hotspur Governor Wise and the cold and crafty Mason stood confronting Brown; the Northern apologist for slavery was there ; and if it were necessary to confine the action to Harper’s Ferry, it would be quite possible to bring upon the stage spokesmen for all the leading parties in the country without violating the facts of history. What prophetic significance could be given by the wild refrain which made John Brown’s soul the ghostly leader of the Union armies !

A great drama is not to be had for the ordering, any more than a great work of art of any kind, but the chances for it are increased by the gradual recovery of the stage to wider relations. The hope of good drama does not lie in the repetition of old plays ; it is not a dead power; its life is in the present, and there can be no real vitality in the drama in any country unless it takes root in the soil. The drama is still a foreign thing with us, — foreign from our traditional tastes, and foreign in its appointments. To my thinking the chance for greater things lies through historic scenes rather than through social contrasts. It is significant that Tennyson, an Englishman through and through, expressed his political feeling in Queen Mary. It was not a success, because people are not yet accustomed to go to the theatre as they read the newspaper, and Tennyson shares in the disadvantage of taking up the drama as something foreign from English literary culture. His assumption of archaic forms of speech was an indication of his effort to bring his play into relation with the older English theatre ; it suffered from its excess of antiquarianism. But Tennyson’s failure points toward a change, and it is not impossible that in America, where prejudice sits more lightly on its throne, we may witness an increased consciousness of national being through the presentation of history in dramatic form, as well as through other forms of literary art, which have hitherto been more familiar to us. There has been gathering a delightful moss of legend and romance to cover the stony facts of our history. It may well be that the reader of Hawthorne and Irving will yet have the pleasure of seeing the historic life of America epitomized on the stage in dramatic action.

R. Fellow.