THE YANKEE FIGURE IN EARLY AMERICAN. THEATRE PRIOR TO 1820 Charles â\ Schultzs A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of Bowling Green State University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY August, 1970 BOWMGGREENSTAft I © 1971 CHARLES ALBERT SCHULTZ ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to trace the development of the Yankee figure In American drama prior to 1820 to determine if his character served as a prototype for the pop­ ular stage Yankee specialists of the l820’s-40's. Six early American plays, the only one's extant, containing the Yankee figure were analyzed: The Contrast. The Politician Out-Wltted. Tears and Smiles. Fashionable Follies. Love and Friendship, and The Yankey in England. Early non-dramatic forms, both European and American were examined, as well as the acting of the Yankee character before 1820. The Yankees in the six early scripts demonstrated general characteristics which were definitely similar to those developed by the later Yankee specialists. Apparently, the early stage Yankee figure was influenced in its develop­ ment by similar comic types created by American as well as European authors. Although the early Yankee actors followed to a degree the elevated acting style of foreign predecessors, they employed a somewhat more natural acting style. Without doubt, the early Yankee actors were inspirational instigators of a development in American comedy identified with a strong native realistic style, and they provided a variety of models on which the Yankee specialists of the l820's-40's could draw. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ................................................ 1 The problem....................................... 3 Method of treatment.......................................13 STAGE YANKEE IN AMERICAN DRAMAB EFORE 1820 .................. 16 The Contrast (1797) by Royall Tyler...................... 17 The Politician Out-Witted (1788) by Samuel Low . ... 34 Fashionable Follies (1809) by Joseph Hutton. ..... 51 Tears and Smiles (1807) by James N. Barker..........66 Love and Friendship (1809) by A. B. Llndsley........ 76 The Yankey In England (1815) by Col. David Humphreys . 89 Summary.................................................................................................... 102 EMERGENCE OF THE YANKEE CHARACTER OUTSIDE THE THEATRE. .106 European influences. ... ............... ..... .108 British travelers’ accounts..................... .108 British drama and theatre. ......................... 111 German-Prussian Influence; Baron Munchausen. • .116 American influences............................ 119 Indian folklore............ .119 Literary humor of the times........................ 123 Influential type characters.................... .134 Economics and polities................. .. .138 True Yankee symbol: Samuel Sewell. ....... .153 vZ ACTING THE YANKEE CHARACTER BEFORE 1820.................... 156 British performer: Charles Mathews ......... .160 American styles of acting..................... .....170 Costume and make-up..................................... 174 Dialeetal concepts............. 177 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS..................................... 185 BIBLIOGRAPHY..................... 193 APPENDIX..................................................... 198 I CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Ye fair, who seek a splendid lot Behold content, a richer prize Within the humblest ploughman’s cot, That rank and pride despise. - The palace or cot, whatever your lot, The farmer your table supplies, my dear, The farmer your table supplies. CHORUS: For Lords of the soil, and fed by our toil American farmers are blest, my boys American farmers are blest. This pastoral song, from Woodworth’s The Forest Rose, attempts to exalt country over city life and to suggest the superiority of the American Yankee over the Englishman. The Yankee’s identity, however, began developing long before Woodworth’s repudiation of city and English-bred customs. During the American Revolution, the Yankee character emerged as a symbol of the predominant economic, political, and social views in the United States. The development of the Yankee character as a political and social critic reflected the growing spirit of early America; thus, the Yankee re­ ceived the attention of the press and the arts. Before the 1820's, the Yankee character appeared in numerous essays, Samuel Woodworth, The Forest Rose. Dramas from the American Theatre 1762-1909. ed. Richard Moody (Cleveland: The World Publishing Company, 1966), p. 173. 2 poems, satires, and folk tales, but in only a few pieces of dramatic literature. By 1835, however, his theatrical ap­ pearance as a specialty act signified him as a fascinating development in early American theatre. By mid-nineteenth century, the Yankee character reached literary prominence in the serious novels of Mel­ ville, Hawthorne, and Cooper, and eventually the Yankee actors revealed a new realistic image on stage which remained until the 1900’s. The widespread popularity of the Yankee character reflected the desire of many Americans to see what they had become or could be. There appeared a need to for­ mulate laws, doctrines, and customs independent of the mother country; the Yankee figure functioned as an embodiment of this independent attitude. Following the Revolution, America expressed these independent attitudes through the press, non-dramatlc liter­ ature, oral humor, and the theatre. The Yankee figure emerged as a symbol reflecting an important part of the American culture. His crude witticisms, virile individual­ ism, and humorous tricks were novel, but unpolished prior to 1820. However, with the help of skillful actors, James H. Hackett, George Hill, Dan Marble, and Joshua Silsbee, the Yankee character developed into a theatrically polished specialty act during the l82O*s-3O's. Yet, these stage Yankee specialists probably depended upon material provided 3 before 1820 for a prototype. THE PROBLEM Statement of the problem. This study will trace the historical development of the Yankee character in American drama prior to 1820. In the early nineteenth century, the Yankee was a small character in several American dramas. There are eleven accountable titles for Yankee scripts before 1820, six of which are discussed in detail in this work. The other five have unfortunately been either lost, hidden, destroyed, or perhaps secretly guarded in a private collection. Thus, all that remains are the five titles, with possible dates and authors: Jonathan Postree (1807) by L. Beach, The Reign of Reform or Yankee Doodle Court (1815) by Mrs. Margaret Botsford, Yankee Chronology (1812) by Wil­ liam Dunlap, The Travellers Returned (1796) by John'Minshull, and The Yorker* s Strategem or Banana* s Wedding (1792) by J. Robinson. However, the Yankee characters in the six available scripts seem to reflect America’s rusticity and crudity in cultural endeavors, and appear to be representa­ tive of a special American low comedy type prior to 1820. In essence, these early Yankee scripts help exemplify why the theatre became the most influential and consecutive forum for establishing the Yankee character. Eventually, with Samuel Woodworth’s 1825 play, The Forest Rose, and with 4 the Yankee monologues of James H. Hackett, G. H. Hill, and scores of early Yankee stage specialists during the 1820’s and 30*s, the stage Yankee character’s popularity was such that he became a star figure and remained, for some time as the leading comic figure of American drama. The development of the Yankee character in oral humor and in the American and European non-dramatic literature prior to 1820 provides an additional influence. Since the American stage Yankee was not fully developed until 1825, research of other forms of Yankee material providing reasons for the rapid spread of the comic figure is necessary. Thus, the need for discussing the Yankee’s emergence in the culture outside the American theatre prior to the specialty period is obvious. The stage appearance of the Yankee character prior to 1820 was fragmentary rather than conspicuous, and although the early American theatre presented a low, comic, Yankee type, the non-dramatic literature of both Americas and Europe provided a wealth of material for establishing Yankee characteristics. The Yankee monologues of the 1820‘s and 30’s appear to have drawn heavily on the folk material presented in dialect poems published in the newspapers in the early nineteenth century, on the short Yankee biographi­ cal sketches in the Almanacs, and on the humor of the Yankee tricks and stories circulated by word of mouth during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. 5 The problem also concerns the probable acting style of the stage Yankee. Since several historians of acting conclude that the stage Yankee roles from the 1820’s to the i860* s received much of their originality and attractiveness in the playing, rather than in the writing, the implication is conceivably valid that the actors who played the early Yankee roles prior to 1820 were influential in molding this comic type’s character. Thus, a description of the acting of the Yankee character before 1820 is included for the pur­ pose of discovering how the acting style of the early Yankee actors could have contributed to the humor and character development of the nineteenth-century American Yankee theatre. Obviously, the source material on the ephemeral art of acting is incomplete, causing the conclusions to be partially conjectural. In essence then, this