Abstract
If Slaves in Algiers performs the troublesome low in North Africa, other scenes depict them closer to home. Dunlap’s 1803 patriotic spectacle The Glory of Columbia; Her Yeomanry! , which premiered at the Park Theatre on July 4, 1803, is one such play. Dunlap cobbled together his patriotic spectacular from André, a five-act tragedy that had failed to attract or hold Park Theatre patrons during its short and unprofitable run in 1798. André dramatizes the death of Major John André, one of Benedict Arnold’s coconspirators, for treason and spying during the American Revolution. Centering on problems of punishment rather than treason and loyalty, even the play’s patriotic figures seem troubling. The unnamed “General” (representing Washington, or at least embodying his authority) appears as a stern, even heartless father figure, and the young and hapless Bland finds himself caught between personal and patriotic loyalties. André produces a performance of vexed early national allegiances and identity, a troubled and troubling drama. Appearing at New York City’s Park Theatre a total of three times, the tragedy made an increasingly bad showing night by night.1 The Glory of Columbia, in contrast, earned $1,287 in its opening night, almost as much as André brought in through its entire short run.2 Dunlap’s patriotic spectacle, unlike his tragedy, remained popular for decades. Transforming the Revolution’s high tragedy of mourning and memorial into low comedy, Dunlap’s rewrite responds to the shifting demands of popular audiences.
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Notes
See William Dunlap, André: A Tragedy, in Five Acts: As Performed by the Old American Company, New-York, March 30, 1798. To Which Are Added Authentic Documents Respecting Major Andre; Consisting of Letters to Miss Seward, the Cow Chace, Proceedings of the Court Martial, &C (New York: Printed by T. &J. Swords, no. 99 Pearl-street, 1798)
Jeffrey H. Richards, Early American Drama (New York: Penguin Books, 1997), 58–108.
William Dunlap, The Glory of Columbia; Her Yeomanry! A Play in Five Acts (New York: Published by David Longworth at the Dramatic Repository, Shakspeare-Gallery, 1817)
William Dunlap, The Glory of Columbia; Her Yeomanry. A Play in Five Acts. The Songs, Duets, and Chorusses, Intended fir the Celebration of the Fourth of July, at the New-York Theatre (New York: Printed and published by D. Longworth, at the Shakspeare-Gallery, 1803).
George Clinton Densmore Odell, Annals of the New York Stage (New York: Columbia University Press, 1927), 1:182.
Heather S. Nathans, Early American Theatre from the Revolution to Thomas Jefferson: Into the Hands of the People (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 47.
A few productions of André’s story also appeared in Norfolk, as Jeffrey Richards shows in Drama, Theatre, and Identity in the American New Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 290–95.
Lucy Rinehart, “‘Manly Exercises’: Post-Revolutionary Performances of Authority in the Theatrical Career of William Dunlap,” Early American Literature 36.2 (2001): 263–93.
Charles Durang, The Philadelphia Stage… By Charles Durang. Partly Compiled from the Papers of His Father, the Late John Durang; with Notes by the Editors (Philadelphia: 1854–57), quoted in James Rees, The Life of Edwin Forrest: With Reminiscences and Personal Recollections (Philadelphia: Peterson and Brothers, 1874), 59.
William Dunlap, A History of the American Theatre (New York: J. & J. Harper, 1832), 223.
Rinehart, “Manly Exercises,” 276; Andrea McKenzie, “Martyrs in Low Life? Dying “Game” In Augustan England,” Journal of British Studies 42.2 (2003): 167–205.
Maya Mathur, “An Attack of the Clowns: Comedy, Vagrancy, and the Elizabethan History Play,” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 7.1 (2007): 35.
See John Durang, The Memoir of John Durang, American Actor, 1785–1816, ed. Alan Seymour Downer (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1966), 5–6, 115–16.
Dale Cockrell, Demons of Disorder: Early Blackface Minstrels and Their World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 50–54.
Peter Benes, “Night Processions: Celebrating the Gunpowder Plot in England and New England,” New England Celebrates: Spectack, Commemoration, and Festivity, ed. Peter Benes (Concord, MA: Boston University, 2002), 9
Fisher, Journal, 94; Gary B. Nash, First City: Philadelphia and the Forging of Historical Memory (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 99–100.
Alexander Graydon, Memoirs of a Life, Chiefly Passed in Pennsylvania, within the Last Sixty Years, with Occasional Remarks Upon the General Occurrences, Character and Spirit of That Eventful Period (Harrisburgh, PA: Printed by John Wyeth, 1811), 111.
John Gay, The Beggar’s Opera, eds. Edgar V. Roberts and Edward Smith (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1969), 3.16.22-24.
S. E. Wilmer, Theatre, Society and the Nation: Staging American Identities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 78.
See Sean Wilentz, Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788–1850 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 61–103.
Robert E. Cray, Jr., “Major John Andre and the Three Captors: Class Dynamics and Revolutionary Memory Wars in the Early Republic, 1780–1831,” Journal of the Early Republic 17.3 (1997): 375.
Egbert Benson, Vindication of the Captors of Major André (New York: Published by Kirk & Mercein, at the office of the Edinburgh and Quarterly reviews, no. 22 Wall-Street. T. & W Mercein, printers, 1817).
Cray, “Andre and the Three Captors,” 376; Andy Trees, “Benedict Arnold, John Andre, and His Three Yeoman Captors: A Sentimental Journey or American Virtue Defined,” Early American Literature 35.3 (2000): 246–73.
See chapter two; Thomas Mount, The Confession, &c. of Thomas Mount, Who Was Executed at Little-Rest, in the State of Rhode-Island, on Friday the 27th of May, 1791, for Burglary, ed. William Smith ([Newport, Rhode Island]: Printed and sold by Peter Edes, in Newport, 1791).
Louis P. Masur, Rites of Execution: Capital Punishment and the Transformation of American Culture, 1776–1865 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 38.
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Laurence Senelick, The Changing Room: Sex, Drag and Theatre (New York: Routledge, 2000).
Elizabeth Reitz Mullenix, Wearing the Breeches: Gender on the Antebellum Stage (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 6.
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Later-nineteenth-century acts have proven much more popular with scholars. Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White (New York: Routledge, 1995)
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See Eric Lott, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 46–47.
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© 2009 Peter P. Reed
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Reed, P.P. (2009). Treason and Popular Patriotism in The Glory of Columbia. In: Rogue Performances. Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230622715_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230622715_4
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