Negotiating a New Identity: Irish Americans and the Variety Theatre in the 1860s

Abstract

It is almost a cliche of contemporary historical theory to excoriate the depictions of race in vaudeville in nineteenth-century America, most especially the portrayals of Irish Americans, who entered the country in such great numbers during that century Certainly by the end of the 1800s many Irish were lodging protests against the caricatures of Irishmen commonly seen on the popular stage—the Irish drunk, the lazy Irishman, the Irish maid who talks incessantly, the belligérant Irishman. Brooks McNamara, discussing the general content of late nineteenth-early twentieth century popular entertainment source books, characterizes the humor as “largely pro-white male, anti-professional, anti-higher education, anti-art, anti-black, anti-foreign, anti-female.”¹ In his book ‘Twas Only an Irishman’s Dream, William Williams notes that the famed singer and entertainment patriarch Pat Rooney wrote a song scolding his fellow vaudevillians for the exaggerated stage sterotype, and that until the Roman Catholic Church and Irish nationalist organizations got involved, “a certain grotesque quality hung around the comic Irish character.”² The large number of Irish in the audience, as performers, and in New York City itself explains why the vaudeville stage was so heavily populated by “sons and daughters of the Green,” and why the picture of that people on the stage would become a matter of concern to many.