BLACKFACE/WHITEFACE: LANGSTON HUGHES’S PIERROT AND MINSTREL POEMS

by

JOSHUA M. MURRAY

(Under the Direction of R. Baxter Miller)

ABSTRACT

This thesis analyzes seven of Hughes’s poems that utilize the Pierrot character from the commedia dell’arte tradition as a way of combating the damage caused by American blackface minstrelsy. Hughes uses the white mask of Pierrot to reverse the color binary of a white minstrel wearing blackface. Over the course of the seven poems, the Black Pierrot deviates from the conventional Pierrot’s passive depictions and creates a new identity for himself. This progression provides a metaphor for African Americans as they, too, strive to distance themselves from the stereotypes of minstrelsy. It also solidifies Hughes’s identity as a writer across genres.

INDEX WORDS: Langston Hughes, Pierrot, American minstrelsy, commedia dell’arte, blackface, whiteface, The Jester, A Black Pierrot, The Black Clown, Heart, Minstrel Man, For Dead Mimes

BLACKFACE/WHITEFACE: LANGSTON HUGHES’S PIERROT AND MINSTREL POEMS

by

JOSHUA M. MURRAY

BA, University of Georgia, 2008

A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Degree

MASTER OF ARTS

ATHENS, GEORGIA

2011

© 2011

Joshua M. Murray

All Rights Reserved

BLACKFACE/WHITEFACE: LANGSTON HUGHES’S PIERROT AND MINSTREL POEMS

by

JOSHUA M. MURRAY

Major Professor: R. Baxter Miller

Committee: Susan Rosenbaum Valerie Babb

Electronic Version Approved:

Maureen Grasso Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia May 2011

iv

DEDICATION

To Kendra, who very lovingly puts up with my affinity for procrastinating and stressing out.

v

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

INTRODUCTION ...... 1

CHAPTER

1 THE COMMEDIA DELL’ARTE AND PIERROT ...... 5

2 AMERICAN MINSTRESY AND HARLEQUIN...... 14

3 THE POEMS ...... 21

CONCLUSION ...... 32

WORKS CITED ...... 33

1

INTRODUCTION

Over the course of his lifetime, Langston Hughes wrote numerous poems and works of fiction, successfully stretching his literary prowess to cover countless subjects within multiple genres. Yet even though the Hughes canon comprises poems, short stories, plays, and modernistic amalgamations of these, he remains, in the public sphere, to be known mainly as a blues poet. While this realization is not an intrinsically negative one, for the blues aspects of

Hughes’s poetry rightly merit such attention, his works bordering on other specific themes and sequences necessitate just as much study. One specific image that appears in several of his early poems is Pierrot, a stock character that comes out of the Italian commedia dell’arte. According to the convention, a Pierrot, a persona usually depicted as a white-faced, moonstruck clown, speaks directly to American blackface minstrelsy, which also has roots in the commedia tradition. Some of the most interesting qualities of this interplay between the Pierrot and minstrel, however, are its appearance within ten years of Hughes’s career and its quick transformation in tone over time1.

Few scholars have paid much attention to these commedia-influenced poems, leaving it fairly uncharted territory. Even Martin Green and John Swan, in their book The Triumph of

Pierrot: The Commedia dell’Arte and Modern Imagination, cite the poetic use of Pierrot in works by T.S. Eliot, Hart Crane, Amy Lowell, and Wallace Stevens but fail to mention Hughes’s explicit references to the white-faced clown. Recently, though, Madhuri Deshmukh published an

1 By citing the Pierrot/minstrel poems as being localized within a decade, I refer to their initial publication dates. Though two of the poems appeared later in Fields of Wonder in 1947, Hughes originally published all seven poems between 1923 and 1932. 2 article detailing the aesthetic importance the Pierrot usage has in relation to all of Hughes’s poetry, not just the poems that specifically reference this character. By delving deeply into the theoretical motivations behind Pierrot, she ultimately claims that Fine Clothes to the Jew is

“most pierrotic” of his volumes (5). Her article, though making a case more for the subtle Pierrot influence on Fine Clothes than examining the explicit references to the image, as I do in the next few chapters, proffers many connections between the commedia traditions and the particular poems. Deshmukh claims the use of Pierrot in poetry “was a means of recreating the aesthetic space that minstrelsy in the U.S. had stolen from black creativity” (4). Similarly, she sees the mask of Pierrot as culturally important for Hughes’s poetry:

In discarding the black mask of minstrelsy and donning the Pierrot mask,

Hughes’s transformation of the wistful, tragic clown into Black Pierrot was an act

of “signifying” that reversed the nineteenth century American transformation of

the commedia into minstrelsy, thus recuperating the realm of aesthetics,

traditionally defined in American society as the binary opposite of things black,

for black expression. (12)

These concepts, then, significantly apply to my forthcoming analysis of the seven poems and their shift in tone and purpose. I hope to take these ideas a step further, however, by looking at the ways the poems mesh characteristics of both the commedia dell’arte and American minstrelsy in order to create the new blended protagonist. This will also help to provide some perspective by which one can view the way Pierrot, a traditionally white clown, relates to the early twentieth century’s African American struggles overall.

Before delving into the treatment of Pierrot in these poems, we must have some sort of background in the commedia dell’arte and its influence upon minstrelsy. Then it is helpful to 3 examine more recent portrayals of the Pierrot character. Hughes’s poems reference the traditional idea of Pierrot directly by complying with the prescribed characteristics at times while certain poems deviate very purposefully from the dictated ways in which Pierrot customarily acts. As stated previously, the Pierrot has its origins in Italian commedia, which Robert Storey, a prominent scholar on the history of the figure, defines as “improvised theater . . . in which a scenario (plot outline) served in place of a script in dialogue. It was performed by a professional company of about a dozen members, each usually fulfilling in play after play an inherited or invented role and seldom straying from the ‘type’ thereby sustained or created” (Storey 4). The first incarnation of Pierrot appeared in Molière’s Don Juan ou Le Festin de Pierre in 1665 after the commedia had made its way to Paris; the original iteration is most likely based on Pedrolino, which I will discuss to a further extent in the next chapter. Of course, at this stage in the history of Pierrot, he is much more comic and naïve than the Pierrot that Hughes reincarnates. The shift in Pierrot’s appearance and personality can be attributed most appropriately to Jean-Gaspard

“Baptiste” Deburau, who “has often and justly been acknowledged as the godparent of the multifarious, moonstruck Pierrots who gradually found their way into Romantic, Decadent, and

Symbolist literature”; he also spearheaded the “transformation from naïf to neurasthenic pariah,” granting the Pierrot character much more depth and complexity than had previously been the case (94).

Though the Pierrot persona became a staple of French commedia in the mid-seventeenth century, it gained rejuvenated popularity two centuries later when poet Jules Laforgue became fascinated with the clowns and began incorporating them into his poetry. Subsequently, the poems influenced more modern poets and artists. More than just a continuation of a popular literary movement to employ the Pierrot poetically, however, Hughes’s poems on this masked 4 figure point specifically to the blackface minstrel tradition of nineteenth century America. The relation between Pierrot and minstrelsy shows itself in multiple ways, possibly the most important of which is their shared origins in the commedia dell’arte. Whereas the Pierrot figure arises from earlier Italian commedia zanni, the American minstrel can be seen as stemming from another zanni, the Harlequin. In a traditional commedia dell’arte scenario, both of these zanni would play the role of comedic relief and could simultaneously fill the roles of the fool and the trickster. Their physical appearances, however, are quite the opposite, as Pierrot sports a white powdered face in stark contrast to Harlequin’s dark mask. As these scenarios evolved in the

French commedia, so too did the characters. At the peak of their popular iterations, Harlequin and Pierrot exhibited more contrasting traits than their colored faces. While Harlequin exudes masculinity, Pierrot evinces a subdued femininity. The one displays his sexual prowess, but the other experiences unrequited love. As the former exhibits his strength in nearly every way, the latter withdraws within his sadness. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. counts the similarities between certain harlequinades and minstrelsy as he notes that the “black and white mask of Harlequin, then, is split into the masks of Bones and Tambo, the two characters central to minstrelsy” (52).

As such, as the Harlequin becomes the minstrel, Hughes’s Pierrot abandons a moonstruck identity for some of Harlequin’s former traits. Therefore, Hughes’s implementation of Pierrot’s whiteface mirrors directly American minstrelsy’s appropriation of Harlequin’s blackface. But while minstrelsy used its mask to stereotype African Americans, Hughes uses his disguise in the poems of the Harlem Renaissance to claim a space for himself and his race in society.

5

CHAPTER 1

THE COMMEDIA DELL’ARTE AND PIERROT

The commedia dell’arte possesses a very eclectic past. While its origins apply to the way in which Hughes understood and called upon its characters for his poetry, an exact definition or recreation of a commedia experience is difficult to pinpoint. One can see the quality arise in the language of several scholars. Robert Storey, one of the world’s leading Pierrot historians, admits that “the latitude with which we can reconstruct the details of a commedia performance and thereby interpret the effects of the play upon an audience is unusually great, requiring of a critic some reliance upon information that lies outside the play and, therefore, more than usual caution and tact” (6). He also notes that the commedia roles were much more dependent upon and influenced by the actors portraying them than is common in film and theater today, due to the emphasis on improvisation: “It was not uncommon for an actor to bring such a degree of sophistication to his interpretation of a role and to sustain it indefatigably for so many years that he and his character became synonymous in the eyes of the public2” (4). A similarly ambiguous description of the intangible nature of the commedia comes from Martin Green in his introduction to The Triumph of Pierrot: “The commedia dell’arte is not an idea or a meaning, but a collection of images with many meanings. And though one can devise formulas that cover most of them, those formulas will be a bit vague and abstract. They ought to be abstract, and the reader ought to turn, baffled, to the images, to let them speak for themselves” (Green and Swan

2 This aspect of the form’s reliance upon the actors to create and evolve each character leads to the various incarnations of Pierrot over the course of several centuries, as I shall discuss later in this chapter. 6 xi). Finally, in a more in-depth look at the history of this theatrical tradition, Kenneth and Laura

Richards define the commedia dell’arte in relation to its contemporary counterpart:

The commedia erudita, or learned drama, was the literary drama of scripted plays

. . . inspired by classical modes and written and performed mainly by dilettanti, or

amateurs, in socially exclusive courts and academies. The commedia dell’arte on

the other hand was the drama of professional players: it was improvised, not

scripted, mingled masked and unmasked figures, was conspicuously physical and

pantomimic, and was given in a wide range of performance places, from the

streets and squares of towns, through hired rooms and halls to the gardens,

courtyards, great halls and formal theatres of the nobility. While the commedia

erudita was the preserve of the educated elite, the commedia dell’arte apparently

appealed to all social levels and has been considered a form of “popular” theatre.

Its seeming tap roots in the culture of the people, and its independence of the

dramatist, have given it a reputation for being spontaneous and preeminently of

the stage: an example of a once achieved actors’ theatre. (1)

These two forms of drama, then, seemingly perform a chiastic switch in relation to what one might expect: the amateurs entertain the social elite, while the professional players opted to act on the popular stage of the proletariat. One can therefore see how the commedia dell’arte simultaneously occupies a place of well-documented history while still maintaining an air of mystery about it. Nevertheless, despite the complicated understanding of this tradition we now have, its improvisational traits and highly stereotyped roles have influenced much of modern entertainment and art. Therefore, one must first delve into the theater’s European origins that initially defined its parameters, as knowledge of the form’s traditions further emphasizes the 7 nineteenth century deviations. Second, it is important to understand how the commedia remained constant for several hundred years before transitioning into the modern consciousness of both

Europe and America. This new appearance of the art form resulted from the work of several artists and actors who began focusing on the various characters more as embodiments of poetic ideas rather than as components of theater. Finally, and most importantly, these elements culminate into the amalgamated white-faced clown, whom Hughes deems worthy of becoming his Black Pierrot.

The commedia dell’arte’s roots can be traced back to the Italian Renaissance and possibly earlier, though its lineage, like Pierrot’s birth and many other aspects of the commedia in general, is not without controversy. Several sixteenth century commentators “assume a derivation at least from Roman times, but although they have the apparent advantage of being contemporaneous with the development of the drama itself, they nonetheless carry little real authority, since Renaissance writers were ever ready to find sanction for the interests and activities of their own age in supposed classical precedents” (Richards 11). Whether or not the commedia explicitly derives from Roman theater, however, should not be the emphasis; rather, the shared characteristics of the two can help sate scholarly interest.

Perhaps the greatest and most interesting correlation between the commedia dell’arte and its earlier Roman predecessors is the reliance upon “residual orality” (Henke 31). The early modern period in Italy introduced the printed word, but the culture itself merely allowed this new tool to enhance its theatrical traditions instead of replace them. The commedia dell’arte is consequently one of the best examples of this quality. Each scenario has two written parts, including one that “provides the plot background, a list of the dramatis personae, and a list of props” as well as one that explains the “complex plot . . . with notations for entrances and exits 8 of the major characters and short descriptions of the principal actions of the play, mainly consisting of interactions between various characters” (13). The actors then improvise the actual dialogue based upon what the scenario has laid out as the ultimate plot goals. As a result, the commedia becomes a form of theater quite unlike its contemporaries in Elizabethan England.

The focus on improvisation also allows the aforementioned character evolutions to be based highly upon the actors who portray them in scenario after scenario. Therefore, however one decides to view the commedia’s implicit relation to earlier Italian theater, there must be at least the concession that the commedia dell’arte becomes clearly distinct from other early modern drama in several key ways.

In addition to the emphasis on improvisation, the commedia dell’arte relies upon a set of recurring stock characters to populate each scenario, which is very dissimilar to contemporary plays that for the most part stand alone. In fact, the pleasure of attending a performance lay in this component, which has certain similarities to the appeal of television series now: “[T]he commedia dell’arte existed as a showcase for a fixed number of characters, not as they were shown in any satirical light, but rather as they revealed themselves in all their human and serio- comic complexity in play after play, giving pleasure with each appearance by exposing hitherto unknown facets of their personalities” (Storey 7). It is this element that translates into Hughes’s series of Pierrot poems, as one can see an obvious transformation in the character’s emotions and actions over the course of the cycle. In a typical commedia scenario, characters fall into certain categories or types: “two vecchi or old men, Pantalone and the Doctor; two pairs of ‘principal’ and ‘secondary’ Lovers; a soubrette; a Captain; and a ‘first’ and ‘second’ zanni (comic valets, such as Pulcinella and Coviello, or Brighella and Harlequin)” (4). As the various scenarios relied heavily upon improvised dialogue and physical gags for the comedy, it is easy to understand how 9 the zanni quickly became popular characters with the audiences. It is also within this category that Pierrot finally arises after an interesting transnational move for the commedia.

In his book Performance and Literature in the Commedia dell’Arte, Robert Henke provides ample evidence that the earliest group of male commedia actors were performing as early as 1545; but he also admits that “the commedia dell’arte did not fully emerge until the

1560s, when the actress took center stage” (69). It is in this manifestation that the commedia gains immense popularity in Italy, so much so that certain troupes eventually make the move into

France. As the commedia’s popularity escalated, Henri IV even invited a specific company of players to entertain him in his royaume in 1599 and 1603 (Storey 16). The timing of the royal engagement foreshadows how the seventeenth century saw the rise of the French commedia as more influentially important to modern entertainment than its Italian predecessor. In fact, a company of Italian players officially settled in Paris for the first time circa 1614 (17). Following the shift in nationality, the commedia underwent significant evolutions that greatly affected the future of comedy and drama. Indeed, one such change was the implementation of a white-faced comic character by the name of Pierrot.

Scholars typically agree that when Pierrot first appeared in the mid-seventeenth century he was not a wholly new creation. Sometimes the same authorities tend to dispute where exactly

Pierrot drew his inspiration. Storey notes that

during the long period from 1614 to 1660 . . . the name of Pedrolino is absent

from the records describing the movements and development of the commedia

dell’arte. But it is unlikely that the mask disappeared entirely. . . . [T]he French

theater rather than the Italian was responsible for the continuation of the Pedrolino 10

tradition, in the somewhat altered guise and role of Pierrot, beginning in the year

1665. (17)

The above explanation is perhaps the most popular one to which scholars subscribe. Martin

Green and John Swan agree with this idea, focusing on his “elegant and sensitive” nature as well as his “heavily powdered” face (129). Another explanation of Pierrot’s lineage claims that

“whiteness and a similarity of names are all that link him to a minor Italian valet figure,

Pedrolino, and to an Italian peasant hero, Bertholdo. . . . Pierrot generally belongs to the thin branch of the family, whereas another white-costumed and white-faced Italian, Pulcinella, gained fame for his peculiar pot-bellied silhouette” (Jones 41). Finally, Allardyce Nicoll seems to agree to the possibility of both, accepting without question the “substitution of the French Pierrot for an original Pedrolino,” yet still understanding the two characters as “completely distinct” (24).

Later Nicoll admits that Pulcinella “receives emphasis when he is compared with another character which, if we disregard the mask and the hat, often bears a close likeness to him—the

French Pierrot. The likeness itself is not surprising since the latter either derived his being from the former or else stemmed from the same source” (88). Whatever the actual parentage, Pierrot clearly exhibits qualities that link him to earlier zanni characters of the commedia dell’arte. But he begins to deviate from these previously established types as a result of the work of several actors and poets.

Molière first introduced the Pierrot character to the French public in his play Don Juan ou le festin de pierre in which Pierrot took on “the booby role at a time when 17th-century

Harlequin had been promoted to elegance” (Jones 42). He instantly became a popular character, as he quickly made his way into other comic performances of the time. But just as Jones implies,

Pierrot remained a static comic character for quite some time. He did not truly begin to transform 11 and develop into the character lauded by modern artists until the early nineteenth century when

Jean-Gaspard Deburau took on the role. Deburau, perhaps the most famous of Pierrots to have ever played the part, had humble theatrical beginnings. Originally he worked at the Funambules as a stagehand and not an actor. It was not until 1825 (almost thirty years after his birth in 1796) that he debuted as Pierrot (Storey 95). When he did take over the part, Deburau made

“significant alterations” that would shift the Pierrot persona closer toward the character memorialized in nineteenth and twentieth century art and literature: “he laid aside the zanni’s woolen hat and exchanged the white skullcap for the black; to free his long and limber neck for comic effects, he dispensed with his predecessors’ frilled collarette; and he replaced the close- fitting woolen jacket with a cotton blouse, its sleeves long and wide” (95-96). More importantly during the transition, Pierrot’s personality began to shift from the purely comical and foolish to the moonstruck portrait that later intrigued Pablo Picasso and T.S. Eliot.

Just as Deburau took the liberty of changing Pierrot’s appearance, so too did he alter the traditional persona by appropriating elements from other characters and creating new qualities of his own. Before Deburau took on the role, the Pierrot thought of women as mere commodities, and one scenario even portrays Pierrot as a pimp. Jones also notes that “Pierrot as lover fulfill[ed] the entire range of roles which have been attributed to the fool as a universal type: trickster, dupe, lady killer, pimp, androgyne, catalyst for unlawful sexuality and, as only one possibility among all the others, lover of an inaccessible princess” (42). But it is this final incarnation that becomes the prevailing concept associated with Pierrot. Deburau drew upon several sources in creating the figure. Storey describes the creation as uniting “in himself the intelligence of Pierrot, the malice of Clown, and the gross instincts of Gilles” (96) while Jones notices how “Pierrot’s traditional slowness became the reserve of a superior man, his white face 12 an enigma, his stance a pose much like the dandy’s ideal—and many were the dandies who came to admire him” (43). Though Deburau made significant strides toward bringing a new depth and seriousness to the zanni character, he did not create the now-ubiquitous sad Pierrot alone. In an attempt to locate the origin of the figure, Louisa A. Jones believes that George Sand confuses some of Pedrolino’s qualities of a submissive and Romantic lover with Deburau’s Pierrot. She therefore surmises that “this description must have encouraged the transition of late-century pierrots into just this kind of lover—hardly a role ever played by Deburau” (98). Whatever the case, certain others were involved in spreading this new persona as Deburau’s two decades of playing the character so inspired artists and poets that they began to incorporate the model into their works. Most popularly in the mid-nineteenth century, French poet Jules Laforgue began to write poems in the guise of Pierrot, perhaps introducing officially the new moon-clown relationship into the public eye. The figure was on the way toward modernism. American poets such as T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Amy Lowell, and Marianne Moore all found use for Pierrot at some point during their literary careers. In nearly every reiteration of it within their works, there is the sad clown who mourns his newest bout of unrequited love. Thus did the clown make his way from small static zanni with a vague Italian-French background to the celebrated and complex clown of modern literature, almost always with a tear in his eye. In between, it had set an underlying tone, a hidden nobility, that belied African American minstrelsy and vaudeville.

Finally, after a strange 400-year development, Pierrot makes his way into a short series of poems by Langston Hughes. Different from the work of the aforementioned modern poets who incorporated the figure into their works, Hughes’s poems depend upon Pierrot as a metaphor for the African American struggle of living between the worlds of American slavery and the

Civil Rights Movement. Very much a byproduct of the Harlem Renaissance, the poems rely 13 upon the persona in much the same way that his development from static to complex figure depends upon various interpreters over the years. Since African Americans have so much more depth than the earlier minstrel depictions of them did, Hughes’s poems emphasize the timeliness of racial equality. These employ the “Black Pierrot,” a man who takes on the whiteface of the traditional Pierrot to subvert the bogus minstrel performer, a white man assuming the blackface

(but not the authentic mask) of African Americans.

14

CHAPTER 2

AMERICAN MINSTRELSY AND HARLEQUIN

Much like the commedia dell’arte, American minstrelsy draws from various influences, including earlier forms of theatrical performance. Though blackface entertainment can be traced back much earlier than mid-nineteenth century America, the actual use of the comic strategy in

America existed even before the American Revolution. Until the War of 1812, black characters in popular songs were either “comic buffoons or romanticized Noble Savages.” Both of the experimental forms used dialects that more closely resembled the English than African

Americans. When the quest for a distinctly American culture dominated the arts after the War of

1812, characters in blackface became increasingly Afro-American (Toll 26). Therefore, the shift indicated the installation of African American stereotypes into the entertainment scene in place of the earlier stock devices.

In the new incarnation, American minstrelsy grew into “what was to be for eighty years

America’s most popular form of entertainment” (Black Magic 18). Two important contributors to this reinterpretation gave it the impetus to spread across America and Great Britain as a device for farcical theater. First, in 1822, British actor Charles Mathews toured the United States and

“studied Negro dialect, transcribed songs, lore, speeches, and sermons, and eagerly collected

‘scraps and malaprops’” (Toll 26). Then he used the observations to construct the modernized type based upon African Americans who sang true to life “Negro songs.” Similarly, Thomas

“Daddy” Rice became a blackface performer who had procured material from a black child, as

Langston Hughes retells: 15

Some say the city was Louisville, others say Cincinnati, where Rice observed the

jiggling lad. Anyhow, he picked up from this little black boy both his song and his

dance, and with it Rice became famous. “Daddy” Rice blackened his face like the

little colored boy and dressed in rags when he sang “Jump Jim Crow,” and he

pranced on stage with such syncopated hilarity that audiences demanded encore

after encore. . . . Hundreds of white minstrels performing in burnt cork borrowed

not only the Southern Negro’s songs but his dance steps, his jokes, and his simple

way of speech as well—which they distorted into what became known as “Negro

dialect.” White entertainers North and South literally made millions of dollars

from Negro material. The Negroes themselves, barred from most theatres as

spectators and segregated in others, could seldom see a minstrel show, and at that

time they were not allowed to perform in them. (Black Magic 17-18)

Here Hughes conveys the way that nineteenth century minstrel performers exploited African

Americans purely for entertainment purposes. And though he wrote this diatribe several decades after he wrote his last Pierrot poem, his emotional tone within Black Magic gives some indication of his thoughts on minstrelsy during the 1920s and 1930s. Such entertainment spread quickly throughout English speaking theaters and exerted great impact on the way society thought of African Americans.

While the connections between the Pierrot and blackface seem tenuous at times, several scholars believe the relationship is important to the ultimate portrayal of black characters and the associated stereotypes. Eric Lott, in “A Genealogy of Jim Crow,” a section in his seminal work

Love and Theft, explains that American minstrels, while they have certain similarities with earlier slave tales, 16

should rather be placed at the intersection of slave culture and earlier blackface

stage characters such as the harlequin of the commedia dell’arte, the clown of

English pantomime and the clown of the American circus, the burlesque tramp,

perhaps the “blackman” of English folk drama. . . . Clowns and harlequins are as

often loveable butts of humor as devious producers of it. . . . Early minstrel

figures overlapped with each tradition, tending more or less toward self-mockery

on the one hand and subversion on the other. (22)

These descriptions of precursory clowns and harlequins easily correspond to the way blackface minstrels acted upon the American stage. In fact, the minstrel character became extremely stylized with much emphasis upon racial themes. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. gives his own reasoning for the minstrel’s ascent/descent from the commedia’s figure:

[T]hose peculiar English harlequinades performed and published between 1783

and 1870 and which contain figures of the black as Harlequin combine both

blackness and minstrelsy. I am thinking here especially of Harlequin Mungo; or

Peep into the Tower (1789); Furibond, or Harlequin Negro (1807); and Cowardy,

Cowardy Custard; or Harlequin Jim Crow and the Magic Mustard Pot (1836). In

the first two harlequinades, a black slave, about to commit suicide, is transformed

into Harlequin by a wizard, marries the master’s daughter (who is or becomes

Columbine), and after long and confusing chases lives happily ever after. In the

third harlequinade, however, the figure of Jim Crow from the American minstrel

stage makes his appearance. (52)

Within this excerpt, then, one can come to understand some key concepts. First, the Harlequin’s

African associations appear quite clear through the descriptive title Furibond, or Harlequin 17

Negro. Gates also provides cartoon images from an 1888 issue of Judge Magazine that portray

Harlequin with clear African facial features. Second, the Jim Crow character, whose name is nearly synonymous with American minstrelsy and racism, arrives on the scene and confirms the racial metaphor behind Harlequin. Gates explains that the figure, much like the minstrel descendent, received such a stylized treatment that “he could simply point to one of the black patches on his suit and become invisible, a trope that has become central to the black literary tradition” (51). Therefore, it becomes apparent that not only does the American minstrel share common lineage traits with Harlequin, but that the two share the same racial portrayals in their respective entertainment venues.

Susan Gubar, author of Racechanges: White Skin, Black Face in American Culture, accepts the familial relationship of the minstrel and black commedia zanni and makes some interesting connections between the two: “Like the harlequin’s dark mask, the black head of the minstrel sits atop an alien trunk (the contrast between head and body often marked by huge ties, bows, or collars), a signature of a kind of physical decapitation/castration” (81). She then furthers the observations by examining the theoretical implications of the minstrel’s African qualities, suggesting, “If the blackened body part looks like absence imposed (through burial or eradication or a process of petrifying or putrefying), burnt cork on the face means a brain-dead minstrel who becomes all body. Blackface destroys the human subject on stage, replacing it with the black Other as corporeal object whose insignificance makes him invisible . . . or hypervisible” (81). Indeed, the black mask of minstrelsy commandeers the identity of the African

American while simultaneously counteracting it in order to emphasize comedic actions over cognitive thought and speech. In other words, instead of societally suppressing African

Americans altogether, blackface minstrelsy supplies a black puppet whose actions and voice 18 drown out and replace any attempt by black Americans to make a claim for themselves. Though

American minstrelsy underwent drastic changes that mirrored the restructuring of society after the Civil War (e.g., black minstrels began appearing on the stage to give a more accurate portrayal of themselves), the remnants of the racially prejudiced blackface continued to have an impact on daily life for decades to come (Toll 135). As minstrelsy began to fade in popularity, and as other forms of entertainment such as the variety show began to rise, blackface did not completely disappear. Rather, it shifted into early films and other media that Gubar explores.

Thus, the misappropriation of the black identity as white entertainment persisted into the twentieth century.

In his poems that subvert the minstrel tradition, Hughes emphasizes the dichotomy between black and white. Within the minstrel portraits, the black mask became so popular due to the exotic nature of allowing a white actor to express a “black” character. It was out of the

“white obsession with black (male) bodies which underlies white racial dread,” as Lott describes it, that this tradition gained ground in the first place (3). The obsession subsists within American minstrelsy, and it appears in the earlier commedia dell’arte as Italian and French players also

“blacked up” for their highly popular Harlequin role (at least until Deburau stole the spotlight as

Pierrot). While the jokes of the minstrel stage did rely heavily upon “ridicule and racist lampoon,” they achieved such success as a result of the audience’s knowledge of the color behind the mask (Lott 3). In a way, the white actors’ ability to place words in the African

American mouths produced a more popular (and more racist) show; as the minstrels acted out the black characters using stereotypes, the audience received cheap laughs and pleasure as a result of their fear and subconscious curiosity. The same effects could not possibly arise without the black/white nervousness that fueled the nineteenth century minstrel show. In a negatively 19 mirrored image of the blackface routines, a black man utilizes a white mask as Hughes assumes the persona of Pierrot in a series of poems. In a way similar to the former, the binary juxtaposition in his poems elicits more concepts than would be possible without the dichromatic attributes, which I will delve deeper into in the following chapter.

Finally, while the emphasis upon Pierrot and Harlequin relates mostly to their history of the commedia dell’arte and minstrelsy, it is interesting to observe the recurring love triangle in which they are involved. Pierrot, being the weaker, more effeminate of the two types, often makes many attempts at acquiring the eye of Columbine, a comic servant and love interest, while

Harlequin succeeds in wooing her due to his more overt masculinity. Green and Swan define the

“eternal triangle” among Pierrot, Columbine, and Harlequin quite succinctly: “The naïve, defenseless, moonstruck Pierrot adores the lovely Columbine, who has wit and feeling enough to appreciate his worth but is too light-minded to resist the coarse and brutal Harlequin, who is himself bound to Pierrot in a mocking, rueful, treacherous comradeship” (10). This strange circle of relation among the three characters adds even more racial implications when one considers that the black Harlequin often triumphs over the white Pierrot. Thus the three have a history of interaction and are ultimately tied together in a more or less obligatory fashion. Deshmukh recognizes this play among characters not only in Hughes’s poetry but in one of Hughes’s first short stories, the tragic “Bodies in the Moonlight” in which the author

creates a commedic trio—with Nunuma, the young and beautiful African woman

as Columbine, Porto Rico as the earthy, physical and overtly sexual Harlequin,

and the narrator as a young, naïve, even effete, Pierrot. . . . In contrast to the

sexual Porto Rico, the Pierrot-narrator is poetic and sexually inexperienced, and

he thinks Porto Rico incapable of truly realizing Nunuma’s unearthly beauty. . . . 20

As in a typical commedia routine, Pierrot is in love with Columbine but is foiled

by the Harlequin, whose sexuality Columbine cannot refuse. (8-9)

This interplay among the three characters, and more importantly Pierrot’s common inability to gain his love’s affections, appears several times within the Hughes sequence. But unlike

Hughes’s Pierrot poems, the story’s narrator fails to defeat Porto Rico and instead dies in a violent altercation. The knowledge of the traditional portrayals of Pierrot and Harlequin allows the reader to see both how it furthers Hughes’s own poetic emotions and how he attempts to deviate from the customary depictions in order to make a new statement about racial equality in modern America. As will be seen below, the love becomes nearly as much allegory as metaphor or indeed even synedoche: Harlequin, the persistent impact of American minstrelsy upon African

Americans; Columbine, the American society itself; and Pierrot, the writer’s historical “New

Negro,” indeed the re-imagined identity for African Americans.

21

CHAPTER 3

THE POEMS

Over the course of these seven poems, Hughes’s Pierrot both explicitly and implicitly appears as the driving force behind the metaphor. Some of the poems refer to Pierrot by name while others focus instead on a clown, mime, or jester protagonist. Whatever the case in each individual instance, however, all of the poems rely heavily on the conventions of past commedia dell’arte and minstrelsy to represent binaries such as black/white and tragedy/comedy that predominate. They also tend to portray Pierrot the way most nineteenth century Romantics did, as a sad but complex clown rather than a more static trickster of earlier portrayals. Elements from both do intermingle at times in Hughes’s seven iterations. Throughout the chapter, I explicate the poems in the order of the initial publication dates. While the actual composition dates are unknown, it is important to view the poems in the order in which the American public first read them. The arrangement allows readers, in turn, to see the way quite independent poems can build upon one another to culminate into a final statement about African American place in twentieth century America.

1923

“A Black Pierrot,” the first of Hughes’s poems of the kind that refers to the masked character, is interestingly the only one in the sequence to be published in more than one of his volumes3. Its obvious importance lies in its being the one that introduces to the readers the

3 “A Black Pierrot” initially appeared in Amsterdam News in April 1923 and then later showed up in two of Hughes’s collections of poetry, The Weary Blues in 1926 and The Dream Keeper in 1932. 22 character and the consequential themes. The initial poems handle the image of the Pierrot fittingly in a traditional manner as the lover mourning unrequited love. But the poet immediately deviates from this classic portrayal of the sad clown by bringing in the concept of race, an aspect dimension that pervades most of the poems. So even before the connection with American minstrelsy becomes explicit in such later work as “Minstrel Man,” Hughes performs a reverse minstrelsy by masking a black man in whiteface. Here the narrator announces himself at the beginning of each stanza with the introduction, “I am a black Pierrot” (lines 1, 5, 10). The opening lines foreground that the audience must receive the character first as an African

American and then as the sad, moonstruck clown. He falls into even more obscurity, however, with the indefinite article a before his “title.” The anonymity falls into line with his self- deprecation, as he lacks confidence to pique the interest of Columbine, who he says, “did not love me” (2, 6, 11). The imagery of this poem connects it to others that employ Hughes’s concurrent affinity for linking his race to the land4, as in the second stanza: “So I wept until the dawn / Dripped blood over the eastern hills / And my heart was bleeding, too” (7-9). Though the narrator remains disconnected from love and society, the land externalizes his emotions.

The ambiguity in this first Pierrot poem sets the stage for the recurring theme of the

Pierrot as an icon of African American experience. While Hughes may have become intrigued initially with the clown figure as a repetition inherited from the works of certain nineteenth and twentieth century poets, he clearly utilizes the conventions to create a unique voice. The effort, a slowly developing one, takes place over the course of the seven poems, each one capturing

4 The first poem that comes to mind here is “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” first published in Crisis in June 1921 and later included in The Weary Blues in 1926. In the poem, Hughes places the African American in several rivers throughout history, ultimately indicating the inseparability of the race from the land and the parallels it creates with human existence: “My soul has grown deep like the rivers” (3, 10). 23 various qualities of a theme. Indeed, Hughes does not even refer to Pierrot’s conventional white face; readers unfamiliar with the character could easily assume that a “black Pierrot” is really the subject. Such misconception would affect the public reading of later poems in the cycle. As the narrator proclaims,

So with my once gay-colored soul

Shrunken like a balloon without air,

I went forth in the morning

To seek a new brown love. (12-15)

The simile of the soul as a deflated balloon looks forward to “Heart,” a poem that later in the sequence reveals the narrator’s vulnerable heart. Despite a lack of confidence, the narrator goes forth to find a new love. Keeping with the racial allegory, the ending to the poem implies the resilience necessary for survival. As Hughes gets more comfortable with the image of the Pierrot, the social commentaries become more explicit.

1925

The next two poems of this cycle, “The Jester” and “Minstrel Man,” appeared almost simultaneously in late 19255. The two poems also present a distinctly similar portrayal of binaries regarding race. At the same time, neither poem specifically represents the Pierrot figure, but both derive in part from the commedia. More so in these two poems than in most of the others, the narrators are explicitly entertainers speaking directly of tragedy and comedy.

Inherently, they ask the perceivers of the poetic text to realize the multidimensional qualities.

While the characters have comedic roles as performers, both maintain the same sad tone that

5 Both reaching the public for the first time in December 1925, “The Jester” appeared in Opportunity and later The Weary Blues in 1926, while “Minstrel Man” was published in Crisis and later included in The Dream Keeper in 1932. 24 requests understanding. The binaries of these two poems give a great insight into the potential for change within the sequence. They also further Hughes’s attempts to transform the commedia figures in order to make them contemporary.

The narrator in “The Jester” has become transformed from the black Pierrot of the first poem into the “Black Jester” (15) of the current one. In this transition, Hughes focuses more on the performance aspects of the clown, emphasizing the two defining genres of theater. The new title, “Jester,” also places the protagonist in the realm of obligatory entertainment, which Hughes echoes again in “The Black Clown.” Instead of defining himself or his emotions explicitly, the jester describes the scene around him by using the language of the theater. Through the evocation of two coverings, which he calls “Masks for the soul,” the Black Jester implies the fragility of the line between tragedy and comedy, sadness and happiness (5). All at once, this Jester both embodies the two dramatic extremes and remains outside of them, as he examines the masks in his hands introspectively (Miller 57). This position is exactly the balance Hughes creates within the poems, in other words, a “game of masks in which the blackface of minstrelsy [vies] eerily with the whiteface of aestheticism, where comedy and tragedy [meld] in a new tragicomic blues aesthetic” (Deshmukh 5). The distinctions between the binary masks become blurred, as the narrator experiences each emotion almost concurrently:

Laugh with me.

You would laugh!

Weep with me.

You would weep!

Tears are my laughter.

Laughter is my pain. 25

Cry at my grinning mouth,

If you will.

Laugh at my sorrow’s reign. (6-14)

Indeed, through the symmetrical formula, the clown finds himself living a nightmare that constantly recurs. His tears cause a laughter, which in turn only produces more pain. In a way,

Hughes uses the instance to mirror the similar plight of African Americans—a subtle demand for social justice. The jester, mocking the minstrel tradition that would limit his human range, calls himself the “dumb clown of the world” (16). But despite all of this, the narrator who knows that there have been better times ponders whether the once demeaned pierrot will ever “be wise again” (19). The effect is possibly so.

“Minstrel Man” further tests the premises of comic and tragic forms. Actually, the narrator inhabits both worlds. Though the racial dichotomy is present, the ambiguousness of the speaker’s racial identity complicates things. While the poems mostly portray the dramatic player, the Pierrot, as donning the white mask, the poem enables him to assume a black one as well. The strategy allows the persona to blend the emotions of laughter and tears once more. In one sense, the narrator becomes the generic minstrel man or even an actual minstrel performer. If the minstrel is true to Hughes’s own historical epiphanies, then perhaps the minstrel portrayed has finally realized the detrimental effect of his profession upon the black race. Then, too, could he actually be an African American who dons the minstrel mask to convey the emotions that the form itself has repressed.

Clearly, the authenticity of this “Minstrel Man,” the title, can be questioned, as there are several possible readings of the narrator’s identity. Yet any reference to minstrelsy carries certain connotations with it. But here there are no racial jokes or stereotypical portraits of African 26

Americans. Rather, the speaker discusses introspectively the pain hidden beneath external joviality. Hence, the work subverts the very dehumanization that blackface worked so hard to achieve. Whether minstrel or not (lines 6, 12, 16), all Americans suffer, cry, and die. That the viewer cannot discern the pain beneath the performer’s laughter exposes the voyeur’s own inhumanity. While the two poems of 1925, then, ultimately make a case for social transformation—one in which society accepts African Americans as equal—they signify the end of Hughes’s subtleties in the sequence.

1926

During the year following the publication of these poems on the jester and minstrel,

Hughes published two more that moved toward the completion of the cycle. Appearing at the center of his Pierrot decade7, “Pierrot” and “For Dead Mimes” indicate a shift in function. Both poems represent the traditional love triangle involving Pierrot and Harlequin, along with the greatly pursued Columbine, within a slightly altered template. There is no Harlequin figure present to foil Pierrot, and Columbine has assumed the name of Pierrette. In contrast to many of the usual portrayals, Pierrot actually achieves the impossible feat of winning Pierrette’s affections. In “the typical scenario, Pierrot loses his love object to an overtly sexual male rival, accentuating [Pierrot’s] own effeminacy” (Deshmukh 6). But there are really no hints of feminine qualities here. Instead, the poems indicate clearly Hughes’s bestowing upon Pierrot some trickster characteristics of the Harlequin and of Pierrot’s zanni iterations.

In his eponymous poem, Pierrot appears by name for the first time in the Hughes canon.

No longer qualified by some color descriptor in front of his name, he uses his own name and begins to challenge the somber and passive qualities traditionally associated with him. In order to

7 “Pierrot” first appeared in The Weary Blues in 1926; “For Dead Mimes” was initially published in Messenger in September 1926, subsequently appearing in Fields of Wonder in 1947. 27 elicit the newfound qualities, Hughes utilizes Simple John as a contrasting character. By conveying John’s good characteristics, Hughes is able to show the ways in which Pierrot has become defiant. In fact, the language Hughes uses to describe Pierrot as a sort of restless womanizer gives the whitefaced character a sexual quality often associated with Harlequin. And clearly, the most highly different characteristic for Pierrot in the poem is his drastic shift in his love life. Prior to now, he had been moonstruck without ever finding true love. Until now, no woman had responded to his advances. But here the figure clearly has a relationship with the previously unattainable Pierrette. When Simple John claims to “have one wife” and “love her yet,” the narrator casts Pierrot in a different light (11, 13):

But Pierrot left Pierrette.

For Pierrot saw a world of girls,

And Pierrot loved each one,

And Pierrot thought all maidens fair

As flowers in the sun. (16-20)

No longer the sentimental figure repeatedly and unsuccessfully pursuing a single woman, Pierrot has traded his idea of monogamy for one of polygamy. His concept of true love has become transformed into a desire for sheer sexual pleasure. Deshmukh thinks that in this depiction of

Pierrot, “Hughes captures the transgressive and sometimes criminal aspects attributed to

Deburau’s Pierrot that artists and writers valued as expressive of their own rebellion against bourgeois morality” (8). This explanation could very well be the case, as Hughes uses this poem to prepare for his final incarnations of Pierrot as the most aggressive statements within this cycle.

It appears that this more abrasive and outgoing iteration of Pierrot takes some cues from

Harlequin. While Hughes uses no color descriptor in this poem, it is possible that the protagonist 28 is still the black Pierrot from before, but one with a new outlook on life. If this is the case, then, perhaps the new racial quality of the reinvented Pierrot not only enables him to take on some qualities from Harlequin, such as his strength and sexuality, but also necessitates it. As I mentioned previously, Hughes’s first introduction of the character describes him as “a black

Pierrot,” foregrounding the way traditional views and characteristics would be discarded.

“Pierrot,” then, suggests that a passive approach does not necessarily bring about quick results.

By now Pierrot has become an aggressive African American seeking social equality.

Though “For Dead Mimes” does not depict Pierrot in the midst of questionable behavior, it still provides a clear shift in usage in preparation for the final two portrayals of the image in

Hughes’s poetry. A short poem of only nine lines, “For Dead Mimes” seems quite somber.

Apparently operating after Pierrot has died, the poem also conveys him as having gained

Pierrette’s love prior to death, mirroring the way American society became enthralled with black culture during the Harlem Renaissance. In fact, the two appear to lie together in a joint grave:

O white-faced mimes,

May rose leaves

Cover you

Like crimson

Snow.

And may Pierrette,

The faithful,

Rest forever

With Pierrot. (1-9) 29

This poem can easily raise more questions than it seems to answer; yet a few subtle clues within the diction more fully flesh out the dynamic understanding of Hughes’s seemingly ubiquitous

Pierrot. First of all, the opening stanza harkens back to earlier entries in the sequence by utilizing another color binary. Of course here, the two colors are white and red, with black conspicuously absent or assumed to be hidden beneath the introductory line’s implied masks, indeed, the

“white-faced mimes.” Though the color white is nothing new, the red evokes several emotions such as passion and rage. In fact, the use of “crimson” probably points to blood. So whatever the alleged history behind the death of the two lovers, it at least leads the reader to believe it had intensely violent qualities. Secondly, the closing stanza refers to Pierrette as “The faithful,” but it makes no such claim about her male counterpart.

One could easily wonder about the way that the poem could fit into the sequence. But this one in particular adds important information. While the narrator writes an epitaph for the two mimes, he does not lament their deaths. Instead, the verse represents the death of the passive

Pierrot who is all too reminiscent of the manner in which America has taken too long to accord

African Americans equal rights.

1932

After a six-year hiatus from writing any new poems about the Pierrot, Hughes published his final two within just three months of each other. “The Black Clown” and “Heart”8 finalize his ultimate stance on how the comic allegory could help in the struggle for Civil Rights. Though these two poems do not treat the clown figure in exactly the same way, the close publication dates link them together. Through such a long deferment in recurrence, the poems suggest that

African Americans must create a space for themselves. Regarding poetic and narrative form,

8 Hughes published “The Black Clown” in Crisis in February 1932. “Heart” appeared in Abbott’s Monthly in May 1932 as well as Fields of Wonder in 1947. 30 time itself becomes a kind of space that is still incomplete. The tone of “The Black Clown” comes off as much more serious than in the previous Pierrot poems. As a “dramatic monologue to be spoken by a pure-blooded Negro in the white suit and hat of a clown, to the music of a piano, or an orchestra,” the poem becomes a unique form in the cycle. Though the description of the player perfectly fits the Hughes construction of the Black Pierrot, the protagonist is obviously an African American disguised as a clown. Hence, the poem appears somewhat indebted to Paul

Laurence Dunbar’s “We Wear the Mask,” which came thirty years earlier. The speaker in

Hughes’s poem depicts the black man as a clown in the society for which Lincoln set them free.

The verse begins with the narrator’s recounting his place as “the fool of the whole world” (8).

Then he remembers the origins of the disguise and voice:

A slave—under the whip,

Beaten and sore.

God! Give me laughter

That I can stand more.

God! Give me the spotted

Garments of a clown

So that the pain and the shame

Will not pull me down. (21-28)

Laughter has become his defense mechanism. But even though the condition has been centuries in the making, the speaker confirms racial advance, “clinging to the ladder, / Round by round”

(43-44). Once the clown’s clothes are discarded, the speaker is morphed as “man!” (79). The final transformation completely subverts European tradition. The black clown now becomes a 31 man and declares that waiting will not accomplish anything. The time has come for the oppressed to create their own freedom, which is exactly what the speaker does; though staring at his own hands, the figurative tools of his freedom he recognizes the power of his own self- reliance.

While its predecessor attempts to rally the masses to action, “Heart” provides a more pessimistic scenario in which equality comes too late. While he reveals his dramatic soul to the world (as did Dunbar’s “poet” and does Hughes himself in a more guarded way),

no one was curious.

No one cared at all

That there hung

Pierrot’s heart

On the public wall. (8-12)

When he removes the heart from public scrutiny, the voyeurs wonder years later where it is. The sad turn is a necessary precaution, especially in light of “The Black Clown.” Though “Heart” may seem to be the downtrodden iteration of Pierrot, the figure’s death is really a timely one. It cannot symbolically live into a future in which African Americans are no longer exploited for their exotic nature in entertainment. As often true of Shakespeare’s players, the figure must be removed from life’s stage so that both he and life can become transformed. “Heart” illustrates that African Americans should not long for the past (racist) attention of minstrelsy. Instead, they should push forward toward true equality and give something more worthy of remembrance.

Hence, patience and activism become the two sides of the same figurative coin. “Heart” completes the poetic admonition for readers to keep their hands on the plough and to hold on.

32

CONCLUSION

When Hughes chose to write a poem about the Pierrot figure in the early 1920s, he most likely did not have a plan for a seven-poem sequence that would dynamically shift over the years. And yet the sequence would become a great testament to the power of African American determination. Whether he knew so or not hardly changes the force of his overarching poetic narrative. Through the white mask of the Pierrot, he liberated black aesthetics from blackface, and he confirmed the worthiness of blacks for freedom, though the inalienable right never had to be proved. His poetry only confirmed the human truth that had always been there. He could have easily adopted the guise of Harlequin, a character who has certain African roots, to defeat the stereotypes invented for American blackface in the nineteenth century, yet he chose the less likely white-faced hero. Hughes left no journals detailing the thinking behind the poetic compositions, but the verses themselves display his liberating devices. And although Hughes’s

Pierrot unexpectedly reclaims a space for African Americans, the greatest implication that arises from the poetic sequence relates back to Hughes as poet. Not only does he reinvent a centuries- old commedia dell’arte character, but he also references a theatrical tradition steeped in improvisation and performance. Hughes uses a poetic voice, yet these poems exhibit his prowess over all forms of the written word. To truly appreciate his work, then, one must consider each piece from varying perspectives, solidifying his place as a writer across genres.

33

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