Arrant Beggars: Staging the Atlantic Lumpenproletariat, 1777 to 1852 Peter Patrick Reed
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Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2005 Arrant Beggars: Staging the Atlantic Lumpenproletariat, 1777 to 1852 Peter Patrick Reed Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES ARRANT BEGGARS: STAGING THE ATLANTIC LUMPENPROLETARIAT, 1777 TO 1852 By PETER PATRICK REED A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2005 Copyright © 2005 Peter Patrick Reed All Rights Reserved The members of the Committee approve the Dissertation of Peter Patrick Reed defended on 20 April, 2005. ____________________________ W. T. Lhamon, Jr. Professor Directing Dissertation ____________________________ Karen A. Bearor Outside Committee Member ____________________________ Leigh H. Edwards Committee Member ____________________________ Barry J. Faulk Committee Member The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members. ii To my parents, Robert and Linda, and to Rip, who believed in me from the beginning. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS While any shortcomings are entirely my own, this project owes an incredible amount to numerous people and institutions who lent me valuable time, money, and advice during the course of its gestation. For financial support, I am grateful to a University Dissertation Research grant, FSU Congress of Graduate Students conference funding, and a University Fellowship for respectively keeping me in the archives, sharing my work, and eating actual food. During the course of my research, I compiled massive debts of time and effort to the collective staffs of Florida State University’s Strozier Library, the Library Company of Philadelphia, the British Library, and most of all the Houghton Library and the Harvard Theatre Collection, where resides much of the remarkable and hidden archival material I discuss. Along the way, the people I have met have had (and will continue to exercise) incredible impact on my career and life. For feedback and encouragement, I thank Rip Lhamon, Karen Bearor, Leigh Edwards, Barry Faulk, and numerous other faculty members at FSU. Betty Falsey and Rachel Howarth have remained my lifelines to Harvard’s collections. I also appreciate the advice and encouragement of my newfound colleagues and friends in the Mid-America Theatre Conference, as well as Annette Fern, Odai Johnson, and others who listened in Boston while I searched for documents and insight. Last, but certainly not least, I owe a tremendous thanks to the administrative support in Williams 408, without whom, nothing happens. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures................................................................................................................................ vi Abstract.........................................................................................................................................vii 1. ARRANT BEGGARS: EMERGENCE OF THE ATLANTIC LUMPENPROLETARIAT ... 1 2. MACHEATH’S CIRCULATIONS: STAGING THE THEATRICAL CIRCUM-ATLANTIC ............................................................................................................................................... 19 3. MAROONS AND INDIAN PRINCESSES: STAGING THE INTERRACIAL LUMPENPROLETARIAT................................................................................................... 39 4. PIRATES, JACK TARS, AND OBI-WOMEN: STAGING THE NAUTICAL LUMPENPROLETARIAT................................................................................................... 60 5. LIFE IN LONDON AND NEW YORK: GLANCING AT THE URBAN UNDERCLASSES ............................................................................................................................................... 82 6. JACK SHEPPARD’S RE-EMERGENCE: LUMPEN HEROES AND RIOTING MOBS . 109 NOTES........................................................................................................................................ 135 REFERENCES ........................................................................................................................... 161 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...................................................................................................... 176 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. J. Sayer, "Mr. Bannister in the Character of Miss Polly Peachum," 1781; courtesy of the Harvard Theatre Collection............................................................................................. 28 Figure 2. William Blake, from The Beggar's Opera, Act III, "When My Hero in Court Appears, &c."; engraving, 1790; courtesy of the San Francisco Museum of Fine Arts. ..................... 31 Figure 3. Frontispiece, Cumberland's edition of Inkle and Yarico (c. 1827), courtesy of the Harvard Theatre Collection................................................................................................... 47 Figure 4. Sylvester Harrison and Edward Orme, "Rosa in Jack's cave, Act II, Scene 4, from the Obi Pantomime"; courtesy of the Harvard Theatre Collection............................................. 53 Figure 5. John Thomas Smith, Joseph Johnson from Vagabondiana (1817); The Rev. C. H. Townshend Bequest; courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum. .................................... 56 Figure 6. "Popular Dance in Fetters, from The Beggar's Opera," 1836, courtesy of the Harvard Theatre Collection................................................................................................................. 62 Figure 7. Title page, Black-Ey'd Susan, London, c. 1750; courtesy of the Houghton Library.... 76 Figure 8. "Billy Waters," by Thomas Busby, hand-colored etching on paper. Courtesy of the Victoria & Albert Museum; given by H. Graves.................................................................. 85 Figure 9. George Cruikshank, "Lowest 'Life in London'," from Pierce Egan's Life in London , 1820. .................................................................................................................................... 89 Figure 10. Frontispiece, The Tread Mill, or Tom and Jerry at Brixton (London: J. Lowndes, [182-?]). ................................................................................................................................ 94 Figure 11. James Brown, "Dancing for Eels: A scene from the new play of New-York As It Is, as played at the Chatham Theatre, N.Y.," 1848; courtesy the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.......................................................................................................... 102 Figure 12. "Set-to with a Bear," 1849; courtesy of the Harvard Theatre Collection.................. 104 Figure 13. Title page, Thomas B. Gunn, Mose among the Britishers; or, the B'hoy in London, 1850; courtesy of the Harvard Theatre Collection.............................................................. 105 Figure 14. Thomas B. Gunn, Mose among the Britishers; or, the B'hoy in London, 1850, 18; courtesy of the Harvard Theatre Collection........................................................................ 107 Figure 15. Playbill, Adelphi Theatre, 1839; courtesy of the Harvard Theatre Collection.......... 112 Figure 16. George Cruikshank, "The Portrait," from Bentley's Miscellany, 1839. .................... 113 Figure 17. Mary Anne Keeley as Jack Sheppard at the Adelphi Theatre, 1839; courtesy the Harvard Theatre Collection................................................................................................. 115 Figure 18. "Disposition of the Characters," John Baldwin Buckstone, Jack Sheppard: A Drama in Four Acts (London: Webster, 1839), page 73................................................................. 118 Figure 19. "The March of Knowledge," from The Penny Satirist 15, December 1839; courtesy of the Enthoven Collection, Victoria and Albert Museum...................................................... 120 Figure 20. Forrest as Spartacus in The Gladiator, courtesy of the Harvard Theatre Collection. 126 vi ABSTRACT Atlantic popular theatre culture in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries circulated stagings of outcast yet admired underclasses. Karl Marx’s naming of these characters lent increased visibility to the lumpenproletariat, the object of both audiences’ applause and authorities’ censure. Theatrical archives reveal numerous performances that helped imagine and define an emerging Atlantic lumpenproletariat. I examine a broad spectrum of interconnected popular performances. The cycle I follow begins with the charismatic piracy of John Gay’s Polly (first performed in 1777) and moves to the interracial affiliations and struggles in plays such as John Fawcett’s 1800 Obi; or, Three-Finger’d Jack. From there, nautical circulations produce melodramas such as Douglas Jerrold’s 1830 Black-Ey’d Susan and urban voyeurism pictures the lumpen in plays like W. T. Moncrieff’s 1822 Tom and Jerry; or, Life in London; finally I discuss the re-emergence of Jack Sheppard, the historical model for Macheath, in a spate of plays after 1839. Popular stagings of the lumpenproletariat provided a means of imagining class; urges to protect boundaries competed with cultural transgressions and complications of class. These theatricals also reveal connections to other modes of cultural expression, influencing the work of nineteenth-century artists and authors