Abstract
Considering British musical comedy and its performance of other nations, this chapter suggests that the British preoccupation with class and status had a more significant impact on the representation of different cultures than previously realised. Many analyses understand musical comedy depictions of the Far East on the basis of racial difference, but this chapter offers a revisionary reading based on a world-view determined by social class, offering nuance to current thinking, while also providing an expanded context for the British imperialism evident in representations of India, Europe, and America. Acknowledging musical comedy as an international commodity, the chapter concludes by arguing that the international tours and transfers facilitated by Charles Frohman and Maurice E. Bandmann between 1890 and 1920 amount to ‘cultural colonialism’ by the British, across the Empire and elsewhere.
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Notes
- 1.
See John Oldmixon (1708).
- 2.
This sense of superiority was embraced by the Victorians, who enhanced its morality by including a theological dimension, as they ‘dreamt not just of ruling the world [as the Hanoverians had before them], but [instead] of redeeming it’, setting out to ‘bring light’ to savage nations in a destiny described by the novelist Charles Kingsley as ‘the glorious work which God seems to have laid on the English race, to replenish the earth and subdue it’ (Ferguson, 2004, p. 113; Kingsley in Evans, 2011, emphasis mine).
- 3.
In this case, Britain’s ‘positional superiority’ can be applied to its configuration of social hierarchies of sameness and difference, based on ‘notions of metropolitan-peripheral analogy’ rather than ‘white-skinned’ and ‘dark-skinned’ Enlightenment ideals (Cannadine, 2001, p. 5).
- 4.
Additional songs were written, and also interpolated, for the original production, by Lionel Monckton and James Philip. The following analysis shares some similarities with a reading offered by William Everett (2013) . Nevertheless, while Everett examines the musical constructions of The Geisha in quite some depth, this analysis serves a different purpose, notwithstanding the comparisons between them.
- 5.
As the nation participated in major international exhibitions and became a friend of the West, its position grew complicated, as it was ‘[n]either fully Oriental nor Occidental [and] challenged the common categories of an imperialist world view’ (Pham, 1999, p. 163). Yet its ‘sameness’ and difference can both be understood within a framework of Ornamentalism.
- 6.
Importantly, this ‘conception’ of the Chinese as untrustworthy and greedy is seen two decades later in Chu Chin Chow (1916), a musical comedy which represents Arabian thieves, but in doing so borrows tropes and formulae from representations of China , to emphasise threat, greed, and anarchy.
- 7.
Written by Edward Morton, with lyrics by Harry Greenbank and Adrian Ross , music by Sidney Jones and additional material by Lionel Monckton, San Toy opened at Daly’s Theatre on 21 October 1899, for a run of 798 performances. This ‘Chinese’ musical comedy did, in fact, offer some critique of Western social structures through its sense of progressive gender politics, when San Toy is drafted into a female army corps rather than the regular army; a suitably liberal idea for the Victorian age.
- 8.
See Mukherjee (2012) .
- 9.
Notably, Indian characters were present in a series of eighteenth-century plays about nabobs (a man who made his fortune from time spent in India, only to return to Europe) including The Nabob’s Return (1840), The Nabob’s Fortune (1881), The Nabob’s Pickle (1883) and A Saucy Nabob (1886)—all of which centred on an Indian prince. See Gould (2011).
- 10.
In both cases, the superiority of English gentlemen in a self-imposed hierarchy enables them to tutor and dominate the native women, who are depicted as juvenile and naïve in constructions that share much in common with the characters O Mimosa San and San Toy. Nanoya speaks in the third person throughout, and cannot understand why Harry wants to marry only her, suggesting he would get bored of just one wife (Tanner et al., 1904, pp. 18–19) , while Naitooma speaks in simple sentences, and is resistant to Bobbie’s idea of moving with him to England.
- 11.
Elsewhere, the secondary couple—tea-girl Naitooma and the English pupil Bobbie Warren—are also seen involved in a performance of the problems of mixed-race marriages, as they tie their fingers with thread in the song ‘The Cingalese Wedding’.
- 12.
As if to reinforce the parallels, Lady Patricia has a song in Act Two, p. 51 entitled ‘Japan’, in which she sings ‘You have won our hearts, Japan’. In the middle of a show set in Ceylon, this form of liberal inclusion and reference perhaps demonstrates the concatenation of ‘Oriental’ places and locations that are often grouped together in other versions of this narrative .
- 13.
Page 38 from Act One, and page 12 from Act Two in the original manuscript.
- 14.
Platt (2004, p. 75) once more suggests that this plot also performs a sense of English superiority over (mistaken) Oriental femininity. Indeed, it is revealing that unlike in The Cingalee , in this narrative the central love interest is accepted because it is between a British naval officer and a titled lady, rather than an officer and an ‘Oriental’ girl.
- 15.
An early example of Western theatrical forms set in far-flung places can be seen in Morocco Bound (1893). See Platt (2014) for a discussion of this representation.
- 16.
The so-called Grand Tour was often embarked upon over a period of several months or years, following an education at Oxford or Cambridge, and according to historian E.P. Thompson, it served to inculcate British cultural superiority and dominance into the psyche of young English gentleman, as ‘ruling-class control in the eighteenth century was located primarily in a cultural hegemony, and only secondarily in an expression of economic or physical (military) power’ (1991, p. 43).
- 17.
See Russell F. Farnen (1994, p. 114).
- 18.
The ‘New Germany’ would only appear on the musical stage much later, as peopled by threatening ‘fanatical nationalists [and] Anglophobic militarists’ (p. vi) in Ivor Novello’s The Dancing Years (1939), considered in Chap. 7.
- 19.
Elsewhere, Villars speaks of London displaying ‘hospitality’ to its French residents, suggesting a conscious sense of the French as ‘guests’ rather than as emerging Franco-British communities (1902, p. 138).
- 20.
In 1903, the comic opera The Duchess of Dantzic was set in Paris and was bold enough to feature Napoleon Bonaparte as a principal character, perhaps once more demonstrating a confidence on the English musical stage regarding its depictions of the French. After a successful run in London, Daniel Frohman (the brother of Charles Frohman , and a successful producer in his own right, in New York) produced the Broadway transfer, with largely the same cast as London, opening at Daly’s Theatre in New York, on 16 January 1905.
- 21.
While Spain features in The Toreador , it is not overly prominent in the narrative of British imperialism, although a few studies examine certain aspects, such as scholarly examinations of Spain’s relationship to the British imperial project (see Michael Ragussis (1994)).
- 22.
While Sullivan used ‘Miya Samma’, and Sidney Jones borrowed from Japanese folk song to evoke Japan in The Mikado and The Geisha , Carajolo’s character song ‘The Espada’ bears little influence in rhythm or instrumentation from Spain (or even from Bizet’s Carmen), while the only discernible stylistic nod to Spanish guitars as a musical symbol of Spain is in the song ‘Espana’. Written in 6/8 time, the piano accompaniment in the published piano and vocal score seemingly mimics the strumming of a guitar, while still not being rhythmically akin to Spanish or Latin music (Caryll & Monckton, 1901, pp. 25–34) .
- 23.
In the early nineteenth century, African-American performers such as Ira Aldridge (1807–1867) and Samuel Morgan Smith (1832–1882) were well known on English theatrical circuits, with Aldridge even assuming British citizenship. In these cases, Said’s ‘Orientalism’ may play a more active part in this story.
- 24.
It has to be noted that—considering their relative positions in the Empire—there is a distinct absence of material relating to Caribbean or African influences/representations in musical comedy. While The Messenger Boy or Stand Up and Sing! were set in Africa (in this particular case, Egypt , as a ‘veiled protectorate’ of the British from 1882–1956), there are few documents relating to this aspect. Similarly, it is concerning that Virginia—a musical comedy set in the Caribbean, from 1928—is scarcely visible in the record. Their absences are distinct here, and inform this story by suggesting that particular British attitudes and values marginalised these communities, or their representation, in popular culture.
- 25.
This ‘anglicisation ’ was also seen in the thriving trade in transferring European operetta to, and translating it for, the London stage, including Gustave Kerker’s The Belle of New York (1898), The Merry Widow (1907), The Girl in the Train (1908), The Count of Luxembourg, (1911) and Gipsy Love (1912). Yet in such cases, the adaptations were designed to offer a sense of British cultural superiority: ‘Edwardes believed in “improving” the originals’ for English audiences, believing that ‘English theatre can outrival the Continent’ (Scott, 2014, p. 67; Traubner, 1984, p. 287) .
- 26.
While the production opened on Monday 16 May 1903, Jeffrey Green suggests these changes were made in the early stages of the run. New reviews published from 23 May discuss changes in dialogue and the addition of new dances, including the cakewalk (1983).
- 27.
Balme and others have noted that, for example, in 1889 there existed at one very conservative estimate 302 permanent theatre buildings in Germany, England, France, and Austria–Hungary. By the mid-1920s there were 2499 permanent theatres in Europe alone. In the period postdating 1890, over 1500 theatres were built, most of them before 1914.
- 28.
For a detailed discussion of the adaptation process for The Arcadians in Germany, see Becker, 2014 .
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Macpherson, B. (2018). Empire: Ornamentalism and Orientalism. In: Cultural Identity in British Musical Theatre, 1890–1939. Palgrave Studies in British Musical Theatre. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59807-3_5
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