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KNICKERBOCKERS WEST: HOW THREE PLAYWRIGHTS SHAPED THE IMAGE OF THE AMERICAN WEST _______________________________________ A Dissertation presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School at the University of Missouri-Columbia ____________________________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy _____________________________________________________ by MARY BARILE Dr. Cheryl Black, Dissertation Supervisor DECEMBER, 2009 The undersigned, appointed by the dean of the Graduate School, have examined the dissertation entitled KNICKERBOCKERS WEST: HOW THREE PLAYWRIGHTS SHAPED THE IMAGE OF THE AMERICAN WEST presented by Mary Barile a candidate for the degree of doctor of philosophy, and hereby certify that, in their opinion, it is worthy of acceptance. Professor Cheryl Black Professor Larry Clark Professor Heather Carver Professor Susan Flader Professor Elaine Lawless ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to my family, friends, and staff members at Ellis Library and the State Historical Society of Missouri. No work such as this can be done without encouragement, support, and humor, and each page is imprinted with the kindness and generosity of many people, foremost among them professors Cheryl Black, Heather Carver, Larry Clark, Susan Flader and Elaine Lawless. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...........................................................................ii ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................iii Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION ....................................................................1 Setting ..........................................................................................1 Questions......................................................................................8 Literature Review.........................................................................12 Methodology ................................................................................15 Organization .................................................................................18 2. THE CONTEXT: Into the West ...............................................20 Paint and Word: Romanticism, Knickerbockers, and the Landscape ........................................................................27 “Domestic Incidents” and National Drama ..................................39 3. ALPHONSO WETMORE AND THE PEDLAR: A BURLESQUE HISTORY ......................................................49 The Playwright .............................................................................50 Wetmore and the Knickerbockers ................................................55 Wetmore and Theatre ...................................................................63 The Characters .............................................................................72 Whither The Pedlar ......................................................................88 4. DUNLAP’S A Trip to Niagara and the West ...........................94 Enter Leatherstocking ..................................................................97 Onward, West ..............................................................................109 5. PAULDING’s Lion Comes East ...............................................124 Biography of James Kirke Paulding ............................................126 Cant and Invention .......................................................................147 Enter Stage West ..........................................................................159 6. CONCLUSION .........................................................................175 Seeing the Elephant......................................................................176 APPENDICES A. THE PEDLAR ....................................................................................192 B. A TRIP TO NIAGARA ........................................................................216 iv B. THE LION OF THE WEST or THE KENTUCKIAN .........................275 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..........................................................................................308 VITA ................................................................................................324 v KNICKERBOCKERS WEST: HOW THREE PLAYWRIGHTS SHAPED THE IMAGE OF THE AMERICAN WEST Mary Barile Dr. Cheryl Black, Dissertation Supervisor ABSTRACT In the 1840s, George Catlin, painter and ethnographer of the trans-Mississippi Native Americans, mourned that “Few people even know the true definition of the term ‘West’ and where is its location? – phantomlike it flies before us as we travel.” Despite the ambiguity associated with the term, however, the American West has remained a compelling force in film, literature and the modern stage, but little research has been directed towards the emergence of this historical-mythical region on the early American stage. The three earliest plays to depict or imagine the West were Alphonso Wetmore’s The Pedlar in 1821, William Dunlap’s A Trip to Niagara in 1828, and James Kirke Paulding’s The Lion of the West (later renamed The Kentuckian) in 1831. This study examines how the “West” is depicted in the plays; discusses how the distinctive nature of each playwright’s vision of the West was created through the use of character, setting, language, folklore, and plot; and examines the relationship among the three differing visions. The study also discusses how these relationships (similarities and dissimilarities) may be accounted for by investigating the playwrights’ backgrounds and their processes of dramatic creation. vi Chapter 1 – Westward Where? The Setting Backcountry. Backwoods. Wilderness. Frontier. The West. Somewhere else. Anywhere else. In the early nineteenth century, America was restless with a fever that burned quickly and left few survivors. It was an old sickness, this movement west. The men and women who stepped off the Mayflower were not yet Americans, but they brought the migration fever in their blood and passed it down through generations. From the Atlantic shoreline, settlers moved inland, north and south seeking relief for their land desire. When lands filled with plantations and farms, when the land wore out from tobacco and wheat farming, then Americans picked up and moved again, following the sun. Across York State to Pennsylvania, onward to Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, down and west to the Alleghenies, the Appalachians, and finally to the great western rivers. If the last quarter of the eighteenth century defined the way in which America “became,” then the first thirty years of the nineteenth century defined what it might become. America had many benchmarks by which to measure its own creation: the Declaration of Independence, the ratification of the Constitution, the first census and the discovery that in 1790 there were nearly four million people in the country including more than 240,000 African slaves, the death of Washington in 1799 and the 1800 census that showed a gain of approximately 1.5 million whites and 200,000 slaves. The “old states” – colonies in existence before America declared independence from Great Britain – were now joined by territories largely unknown. Here was a country that suddenly 1 found itself with unimaginable miles of land, contact with Native Americans little known and even less understood, and independence made possible by the work of slaves. Here was a place where the energy was so great, the imagination so broad, that new words had to be invented in order to express what was driving America’s emigrant soul: “slantindikular,” “screamer” “ring-tailed roarer.”1 Good, bad, but never indifferent, Americans were ready to populate and run the country in ways untested: the political theory of democracy was now giving way to practical needs and desires of daily life, among them the need for cultural expression.2 Americans were no longer Easterners or Southerners, now they were looking west, and into another, even newer, world. By the early nineteenth century, Americans watched with trepidation the “foreign lands” beyond the Mississippi River, where people chattered in French, Ioway or Spanish and other governments held sway. Perhaps the most famous emigrant into the foreign 1 A “ring-tailed roarer” was used in print by the 1830s, in Davy Crockett’s Almanac. Although the Oxford English Dictionary refers to this as an imaginary creature, anyone who has spent time around an enraged, full-grown raccoon understands the origin of the phrase. As for “screamer,” the cry of a panther or bobcat on a dark night makes the hair stand on end. “Slantindicular” or ‘slantendicular” -- spellings varied -- dates as early as the 1830s. It is an example of what was later dubbed by Lewis Carroll a “portmanteau” word, created by combining two existing words, in this case “slanted” and “perpendicular”: it means aslant. 2 The settlement of America was accomplished by many races at many times. For an historian, the word “American” is loaded with preconceptions, denials, involuntary and voluntary offenses, and may provide readers with the desire to argue a point rather than consider the study overall. Therefore, for clarity in this paper, the word “American” will be used to indicate anyone who had settled in the United States as a permanent resident – whether voluntarily or involuntarily; “emigrant” refers to an American citizen of white European extraction who moved into a new settlement area; “slave” to a Black American held in involuntary