Abstract
Even as America’s “social undersiders” stood on the gallows, they also appeared in early national dramas of citizenship and national identity. In 1794, Susanna Haswell Rowson’s Slaves in Algiers; or, A Struggle for Freedom presented a spectacle of Americans enslaved in Algerian captivity. The play premiered at Philadelphia’s New Theatre (later the Chestnut Street theatre) on June 30, 1794, the proceeds benefitting Rowson and her husband. Rowson wrote and acted in the play, and her growing fame as the author of Charlotte Temple probably helped attract spectators as well. Slaves in Algiers hardly achieved overwhelming success, but it saw occasional performances in Baltimore, New York City, and possibly in Boston (where Rowson would perform and reside after 1796) before the end of the decade.1 The play’s scenes of Algerian captivity had some durability. In 1816, for example, at the end of another American conflict with the Barbary pirates, the play reappeared in Boston.2 Slaves in Algiers participated in a broader theatre culture of “acting Algerian,” showing how offstage performances infuse early American theatre.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Performance announcements first appear in the General Advertiser (later the Aurora) as well as in the Gazette and Universal Daily Advertiser, June 28 and 30, 1794. Later performances announced in the Baltimore Federal Intelligencer (November 20, 1794), the New York Daily Advertiser (May 9, 1796). Thomas Clark Pollock, The Philadelphia Theatre in the Eighteenth Century, Together with the Day Book of the Same Period (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1933), 419
David Ritchey, A Guide to the Baltimore Stage in the Eighteenth Century: A History and Day Book Calendar (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982), 296
George Clinton Densmore Odell, Annals of the New York Stage (New York: Columbia University Press, 1927), 1:411
Jeffrey H. Richards, Drama, Theatre, and Identity in the American New Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 145.
Susanna Haswell Rowson, Slaves in Algiers; or, a Struggle for Freedom: A Play, Interspersed with Songs, in Three Acts. By Mrs. Rowson. As Performed at the New Theatres, in Philadelphia and Baltimore (Philadelphia: Printed for the author, by Wrigley and Berriman, no. 149, Chesnut-Street, 1794), 3.7
Paul Michel Baepler, White Slaves, African Masters: An Anthology of American Barbary Captivity Narratives (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 24
Gary E. Wilson, “American Hostages in Moslem Nations, 1784–1796: The Public Response,” Journal of the Early Republic 2.2 (1982): 123–41.
Philip Gould, Barbaric Traffic: Commerce and Antislavery in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003)
Paul Michel Baepler, “The Barbary Captivity Narrative in American Culture,” Early American Literature 39.2 (2004): 217–46
Daniel J. Vitkus and N. I. Matar, eds., Piracy, Slavery, and Redemption: Barbary Captivity Narratives from Early Modern England (NewYork: Columbia University Press, 2001)
Frank Lambert, The Barbary Wars: American Independence in the Atlantic World (New York: Hill and Wang, 2005), 93.
See Frederick C. Leiner, The End of Barbary Terror: America’s 1815 War against the Pirates of North Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
Elizabeth Maddock Dillon, “Slaves in Algiers: Race, Republican Genealogies, and the Global Stage,” American Literary History 16.3 (2004): 407.
Despite the play’s leanings, Rowson did not openly display partisan support in the theatre until later in the decade. Ironically, Federalists were more tolerant of some forms of female political participation in the 1790s. William Cobbett, A Kick for a Bite, or, Review Upon Review with a Critical Essay on the Works of Mrs. S. Rowson: In a Letter to the Editor, or Editors, of the American Monthly Review (Philadelphia: Printed by T Bradford, 1795), 27. See Arthur Scherr, “’sambos’ and ‘Black Cut-Throats’: Peter Porcupine on Slavery and Race in the 1790’s,” American Periodicals: A Journal of History, Criticism, and Bibliography 13 (2004): 3–30.
William Cobbett, A Little Plain English, Addressed to the People of the United States, on the Treaty, Negociated with His Britannic Majesty, and on the Conduct of the President Relative Thereto (Philadelphia: Published by Thomas Bradford, printer, bookseller, and stationer, no. 8, South Front Street, 1795), 70.
Marion Rust, Prodigal Daughters: Susanna Rowson’s Early American Women (Chapel Hill: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 209–14
Heather S. Nathans, Early American Theatre from the Revolution to Thomas Jefferson: Into the Hands of the People (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)
Dillon, “Race, Republican Genealogies, and the Global Stage,” 421. The phrase is Dillon’s but Marion Rust also reads Rowson’s prodigal energies in Prodigal Daughters and in Marion Rust, “‘Daughters of America,’ Slaves in Algiers: Activism and Abnegation Off Rowson’s Barbary Coast,” Feminist Interventions in Early American Studies, ed. Mary Clare Carruth (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006), 227–39.
Benilde Montgomery, “White Captives, African Slaves: A Drama of Abolition,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 27.4 (1994): 615–30
Terry Bouton, Taming Democracy: “The People,” The Founders, and the Troubled Ending of the American Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)
William Hogeland, The Whiskey Rebellion: George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and the Frontier Rebels Who Challenged America’s Newfound Sovereignty (New York: Scribner, 2006).
See William Pencak, Matthew Dennis, and Simon P. Newman, eds., Riot and Revelry in Early America (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002)
Paul A. Gilje, The Road to Mobocracy: Popular Disorder in New York City, 1763–1834 (Chapel Hill, NC: Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture by the University of North Carolina Press, 1987).
Gérard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
Plays such as Isaac Bickerstaff’s 1787 A Peep into the Seraglio demonstrate the fascination with forbidden and sexualized oriental spaces that Edward W Said discusses in Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978)
James C. Burge, Lines of Business: Casting Practice and Policy in the American Theatre, 1752–1899 (New York: P. Lang, 1986), 97.
James Fennell, An Apology for the Life of James Fennell, Written by Himself (Philadelphia: Published by Moses Thomas, No. 52, Chesnut-Street, J. Maxwell, printer, 1814), 334.
Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 169–75.
See Daniel J. Vitkus, Turning Turk: English Theater and the Multicultural Mediterranean, 1570–1630 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 107–62.
Christopher Castiglia, Bound and Determined: Captivity, Culture-Crossing, and White Womanhood from Mary Rowlandson to Patty Hearst (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 4
Daniel E. Williams, Liberty’s Captives: Narratives of Confinement in the Print Culture of the Early Republic (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2006).
Tyler’s phrase appears in a preface to the second edition of The Algerine Captive; quoted in Caleb Crain, introduction to Royall Tyler, The Algerine Captive, or, the Life and Adventures of Doctor Updike Underbill, Six Years a Prisoner among the Algerines, ed. Caleb Crain (New York: Modern Library, 2002), xxxii.
Robert Adams, The Narrative of Robert Adams, an American Sailor, Who Was Wrecked on the Western Coast of Africa, in the Year 1810, Was Detained Three Years in Slavery by the Arabs of the Great Desert, and Resided Several Months in the City of Tombuctoo. With a Map, Notes and an Appendix (Boston: Wells and Lilly, 1817).
William Jerry MacLean, “Othello Scorned: The Racial Thought of John Quincy Adams,” Journal of the Early Republic 4.2 (1984): 143–60
W T Lhamon, Jr., Jump Jim Crow: Lost Plays, Lyrics, and Street Prose of the First Atlantic Popular Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 11–14.
Heather S. Nathans, “A Much Maligned People: Jews on and Off the Stage in the Early American Republic,” Early American Studies 2.2 (2007): 326.
Michael Ragussis, “Jews and Other “Outlandish Englishmen”: Ethnic Performance and the Invention of British Identity under the Georges,” Critical Inquiry 26.4 (2000): 773–97
John J. Gross, Shylock: A Legend and Its Legacy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992).
See, e.g., The Cries of London, as They Are Daily Exhibited in the Streets with an Epigram in Verse, Adapted to Each. Embellished with Sixty-Two Elegant Cuts. To Which Is Added, a Description of the Metropolis in Verse (London: printed for E. Newbery, 1796), and published soon after for children, Samuel Wood, The Cries of New-York (New-York: Printed and sold by S. Wood, at the Juvenile book-store, No. 362, Pearl-Street, 1808).
William Pencak, Jews and Gentiles in Early America: 1654–1800 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005), 232.
Mathew Carey, A Short Account of Algiers, second edn (Philadelphia: Printed for Mathew Carey, no. 118, Market-Street, 1794), 4.
Peter Markoe, The Algerine Spy in Pennsylvania: Or, Letters Written by a Native of Algiers on the Affairs of the United States in America, from the Close of the Year 1783 to the Meeting of the Convention (Philadelphia: Printed and sold by Prichard &Hall, in Market between Front and Second Streets, 1787).
Cathy N. Davidson, Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 85–86
Mary Chrysostom Diebels, Peter Markoe (1752?–1792): A Philadelphia Writer (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1944)
Malini Johar Schueller, U.S. Orientalisms: Race, Nation, and Gender in Literature, 1790–1890 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998).
John Durang, The Memoir of John Durang, American Actor, 1785–1816, ed. Alan Seymour Downer (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1966), 107.
Mythili Kaul, “Background: Black or Tawny? Stage Representations of Othello from 1604 to the Present,” in Mythili Kaul, ed., Othello: New Essays by Black Writers (Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1997), 5.
William Dunlap, Blue Beard: A Dramatic Romance by G. Colman, the Younger, as Altered for the New York Theatre, with Additional Songs (New York: Printed and published by D. Longworth, at the Shakespeare gallery, 1802).
Royall Tyler, The Algerine Captive, or the Life and Adventures of Doctor Updike Underbill, Six Years a Prisoner among the Algerines, 2 vols (Walpole, Newhampshire: David Carlisle, jun., and sold at his bookstore, 1797), 2:16–17.
See, e.g., the catalogue of northern European immigrants in Letter III of J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer; and, Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America, ed. Albert E. Stone (New York: Penguin Books, 1983), 68.
Richards, Drama, Theatre, and Identity, 155–61, traces a different dramatic routing of Muley Moloc’s character, whose resurrections took him on a path from high dramatic protagonist, to villain, to low buffoon by the time Rowson received and rewrote the character. See John Dryden, Don Sebastian, King of Portugal: A Tragedy Acted at the Theatre Royal (London: Printed for Jo. Hindmarsh, at Golden Ball in Cornhill, 1690)
Isaac Bickerstaff and Charles Dibdin, The Captive, a Comic Opera; as It Is Perform’d at the Theatre-Royal in the Hay-Market (London: Printed for W Griffin, 1769)
Frederick Reynolds, The Renegade; a Grand Historical Drama, in Three Acts. Interspersed with Music (New York: Pub. by D. Longworth, at the Dramatic Repository, Shakspeare-Gallery, 1813).
See Peter Thompson, Rum Punch and Revolution: Taverngoing and Public Life in Eighteenth Century Philadelphia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 111–44.
Richards, Drama, Theatre, and Identity, 188–210, discusses stage Irish in early American theatre; Jason Shaffer, Performing Patriotism: National Identity in the Colonial and Revolutionary American Theater (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 174–78
John O’Keefe, Songs in the Comic Opera, Called, the Son-in-Law. By John O’Keefe, Esq. As Sung at the New Theatre, Philadelphia. Corrected and Revised by Mr. Rowson, Prompter ([Philadelphia]: Printed for M. Carey, 1794).
John O’Keefe, The Agreeable Surprise. A Comic Opera, in Two Acts ([Boston]: Printed at the Apollo Press, in Boston, by Belknap and Hall, for William P. Blake, no. 59, Cornhill, and William T. Clap. No. 90, Newbury Street, 1794), 15.
Samuel Larkin, The Columbian Songster and Freemason’s Pocket Companion. A Collection of the Newest and Most Celebrated Sentimental, Convivial, Humourous, Satirical, Pastoral, Hunting, Sea and Masonic Songs, Being the Largest and Best Collection Ever Published in America (Portsmouth, New-Hampshire: Printed by J. Melcher, for S. Larkin, at the Portsmouth book-store, 1798), 92–93.
See John F. Kasson, Rudeness and Civility: Manners in Nineteenth-Century Urban America (New York: Hill and Wang, 1990)
David S. Shields, Civil Tongues and Polite Letters in British America (Chapel Hill: Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, by University of North Carolina Press, 1997)
Albrecht Koschnik, Let a Common Interest Bind Us Together: Associations, Partisanship, and Culture in Philadelphia, 1775–1840 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2007)
Simon P. Newman, Parades and the Politics of the Street: Festive Culture in the Early American Republic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997)
David Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American Nationalism, 1776–1820 (Chapel Hill: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, University of North Carolina Press, 1997).
John Foss, AJournal, of the Captivity and Sufferings of John Foss, Several Years a Prisoner in Algiers (Newburyport [Mass.]: Printed by A. March, Middle-Street., 1798), 25.
Copyright information
© 2009 Peter P. Reed
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Reed, P.P. (2009). Algerians, Renegades, and Transnational Rogues in Slaves in Algiers. In: Rogue Performances. Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230622715_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230622715_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-37466-3
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-62271-5
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)