Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

“Down with the British Bastard!”

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Thomas Hamblin and the Bowery Theatre

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History ((PSTPH))

  • 99 Accesses

Abstract

Hamblin hires young Louisa Medina, a prolific playwright of lurid melodramas, as a companion for Naomi Vincent, who is now living with him as common-law wife. Clifton leaves Hamblin’s orbit to perform as a star in England. To boost audiences, Hamblin introduces wild animal acts. He begins speculating in Manhattan real estate. His adultery proven, his acrimonious divorce from Elizabeth is finalized. Nativist resentment sparks a riot in the Bowery Theatre. Hamblin’s latest star is exotic French dancer Céline Céleste. Medina’s first major apocalyptic melodrama, The Last Days of Pompeii, is a massive hit, with Hamblin as the evil Arbaces.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Booth to Hamblin, Apr. 15, 1833, Rosenbach Library, Philadelphia.

  2. 2.

    United States Telegraph, Oct. 20, 1832.

  3. 3.

    NYEP, May 15, 1833.

  4. 4.

    Lester Wallack , Memories of Fifty Years. New York, Scribner’s, 1889, 119; Clarke 19; Sunday Flash, Oct. 24, 1841. See also Rosemarie Bank, “Theatre and Narrative Fiction in the Work of the Nineteenth-Century American Playwright Louisa Medina.” Theatre History Studies (III: 1983) 55–67; Miriam López Rodríguez, “Louisa Medina, Uncrowned Queen of Melodrama,” Women’s Contribution to Nineteenth-Century American Theatre. Miriam López Rodríguez and María Dolores Narbona Carrión, eds. València, España: Universitat de València, 2004.

  5. 5.

    John Hill Hewitt . Shadows on the Wall; or, Glimpses of the Past. Baltimore: Turnbull Brothers, 1877, 49–51.

  6. 6.

    Only eleven Medina scripts can be documented, and only three (Last Days of Pompeii, 1835; Nick of the Woods, 1838; and Ernest Maltravers, 1838) are extant. Clarke (p. 3) enigmatically refers to Medina as the “ci-devant Mrs. Thornton,” but no evidence of a prior marriage or a pseudonym has survived.

  7. 7.

    Clarke 30; EBH letters, HTC.

  8. 8.

    NYEP, July 22, 1834.

  9. 9.

    NYM, Aug. 10 and Oct. 12, 1833.

  10. 10.

    BTRB, Folger.

  11. 11.

    Ely’s Hawk and Buzzard, Sept. 14 and 21, 1833; The Whip, July 23, 1842; Sunday Flash, Sept. 19 and Oct. 24, 1841.

  12. 12.

    For examination of this case and Clarke’s script, see Branson, passim.

  13. 13.

    Clarke 26, 32.

  14. 14.

    Clarke 32–33; Henry Dickinson Stone, Personal Recollections of the Drama. 1873, rpt. New York: Benjamin Blom, 1969, 291.

  15. 15.

    Clarke 17; Dayton, 137.

  16. 16.

    Hamblin to Duffy , New York, Jan. 12, [1834], HTC; Wemyss, Theatrical Biography, 195.

  17. 17.

    Whitman in New York Leader, May 3, 1862.

  18. 18.

    NYDG, Apr. 26, 1888.

  19. 19.

    Odell III:680.

  20. 20.

    NYEP, Jan. 20, 1834.

  21. 21.

    Phelps 110.

  22. 22.

    Clarke 26.

  23. 23.

    Clarke 17, 21, 32. William Snelling alleged in 1841 that Hamblin committed this slow-witted child to a poorhouse in Newburyport, Massachusetts.

  24. 24.

    Clarke 26.

  25. 25.

    Playbill, HTC; Phillips received $50.

  26. 26.

    While many modern citations call Jones’ self-acquired title “Count Johannes,” all contemporary letters in Jones’ Papers, NYPL, spell it “Joannes.”

  27. 27.

    BTRB, Folger.

  28. 28.

    Bill of Complaint of Elizabeth Hamblin to Chancery Court, MACNY.

  29. 29.

    Philadelphia Public Ledger, Nov. 7, 1836; Child, 174–75; NYT, Dec. 24, 1876.

  30. 30.

    NYEP, July 10, 1834.

  31. 31.

    NYS, July 14, 1834.

  32. 32.

    NYEP, July 29, 1834; The Actor, 120; Booth to Flynn, Aug. 6, 1834, Folger.

  33. 33.

    Divorce Decree in Court of Chancery, Elizabeth Hamblin vs. Thomas S. Hamblin, July 29, 1834, and statement of court costs, July 30, 1834, MACNY. Hamblin paid court costs of $198.30.

  34. 34.

    NYA, Aug. 6, 1834.

  35. 35.

    New York Leader, May 3, 1862; Leman, 61; Foster. New York Naked, 144; Judson, E. Z. C., pseud. Ned Buntline. The Mysteries and Miseries of New York. New York: Berford & Co., 1848, 31; Shank 145; “The Boys of the Bowery Pit,” Broadside, New York Historical Society; MCNYE, Feb. 16, 1841.

  36. 36.

    Harlow 246; Dorothy Louis Beck Webb. The Early History of the Arch Street Theatre, 1828–1834. Ph.D., Indiana University, 1970, 171–73; Durang, PSD, July 10, 1856.

  37. 37.

    Robert Davis. “The Riddle of the Oedipus.” New Voices in Classical Reception Studies. Issue 3 (Spring 2008), 4.

  38. 38.

    Durang. PSD, Apr. 5, 1857.

  39. 39.

    NYM, Dec. 6 and 13, 1834.

  40. 40.

    SotT, Jan. 3, 1835.

  41. 41.

    Clarke 33.

  42. 42.

    Louisa H. Medina , The Last Days of Pompeii (1834). ProQuest American Drama Full-Text Database, 9–13.

  43. 43.

    Ibid., 15, 22.

  44. 44.

    NYES, Feb. 10, 1835; Clarke 33.

  45. 45.

    NYM, Feb. 28, 1835; playbill, HTC.

  46. 46.

    TSH to Wemyss, May 27, 1835 and Wemyss to TSH May 29, 1835, HTC.

  47. 47.

    Records of the New York Association, vol. 2, HTC; BTRB, Folger.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Independent Scholar, Silver Spring, MD, USA

    Thomas A. Bogar

Authors
  1. Thomas A. Bogar
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Bogar, T.A. (2018). “Down with the British Bastard!”. In: Thomas Hamblin and the Bowery Theatre. Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68406-2_6

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation