A History of American Literature. Boynton Percy Holmes
by Mrs. Mercy Warren.
The Battle of Bunker’s Hill, by H. H. Brackenridge.
The Fall of British Tyranny; or, American Liberty, by John Leacock.
The Politician Outwitted, by Samuel Low.
The Contrast, by Royall Tyler.3
André, by William Dunlap.[3]
Fiction
Churchill, Winston. Richard Carvel.
Cooper, J. F. Lionel Lincoln; or, The Leaguer of Boston.
Cooper, J. F. The Pilot.
Cooper, J. F. The Spy.
Ford, P. L. Janice Meredith.
Harte, Bret. Thankful Blossom.
Jewett, Sarah Orne. The Tory Lover.
Kennedy, J. P. Horse Shoe Robinson.
Mitchell, S. Weir. Hugh Wynne.
Simms, W. Gilmore. The Partisan.
Simms, W. Gilmore. The Scout.
Poetry
Poems of American History (edited by B. E. Stevenson), pp. 125–265.
American History by American Poets (edited by M. V. Wallington), Vol. I, pp. 125–293.
TOPICS AND PROBLEMS
In a survey course enough material is presented for Hopkinson, Trumbull, Dwight, and Barlow in the collections mentioned in the Book List for this chapter. The only reprint available of Lewis’s interesting “Journey from Patapsco to Annapolis” is in “American Poetry” (P. H. Boynton, editor), pp. 24–29. These poems are chiefly significant for the combination of English form and American subject matter.
Compare Trumbull’s comments on the education of girls with the corresponding passage by Mrs. Malaprop, in Sheridan’s “The Rivals,” and with Fitz-Greene Halleck’s comments on the education of Fanny, in the poem of that name (see “American Poetry,” pp. 127, 128, and 155, 156).
Compare Dwight’s “Farmer’s Advice to the Villagers,” “Greenfield Hill,” Pt. VI, with Benjamin Franklin’s “The Way to Wealth.”
Compare the nationalistic note in the seventh and ninth books of Barlow’s “Vision of Columbus” with that in Timrod’s “Ethnogenesis” and that in Moody’s “Ode in Time of Hesitation.” Do the dates of the three poems suggest a progressive change? (See “American Poetry,” pp. 123, 349, and 577.)
Read Freneau’s more bitter war satires in comparison with Jonathan Odell’s “Congratulation” and “The American Times,” for which see “American Poetry,” pp. 78–83.
Read Freneau’s more jovial war satires in comparison with Whittier’s “Letter from a Missionary of the Methodist Episcopal Church” (“American Poetry,” p. 255); John R. Thompson’s “On to Richmond” (“American Poetry,” p. 325); Edmund C. Stedman’s “How Old Brown took Harper’s Ferry” (“American Poetry,” p. 317); and Lowell’s “Biglow Papers.”
Read Freneau’s “Pictures of Columbus” in comparison with Lowell’s “Columbus” (“American Poetry,” p. 382); Lanier’s “Sonnets on Columbus” (“American Poetry,” p. 458); and Joaquin Miller’s “Columbus” (“American Poetry,” p. 564).
“The Progress of Balloons” derives its title from a whole series of preceding “progress” poems. Cite others and compare them as you can.
With reference to Freneau’s diction in nature passages as compared with that of Ames and Lewis in the text, read Wordsworth’s essay on “Poetic Diction” prefatory to the lyrical ballads of 1798, with which Freneau agreed and which he anticipated in certain of his poems.
CHAPTER VII
THE EARLY DRAMA
In the growth of most national literatures the theater has developed side by side with the drama, the stage doing for the play what the printing press did for the essay, poem, and novel. But in America, the land of a transplanted civilization, the order was changed and the first plays were supplied from abroad just as the other forms of literature were. In the history of the American stage, therefore, the successive steps were the presentation of English plays by American amateurs in regular audience rooms with improvised stages; then the development of semiprofessional and wholly professional companies who played short seasons at irregular intervals; then the erection of special playhouses; and finally the formation of more permanent professional companies, both English and American, – all of which took place in the course of nearly two generations before the emergence of any native American drama. Recent investigations have so frequently pushed back the years of first performances, playhouses, and plays that now one can offer such dates only as subject to further revision.
According to the “Cambridge History of American Literature,” “there seem to have been theatrical performances in this country since 1703.” Paul Leicester Ford in his “Washington and the Theater” says, “that there was play-acting in New York, and in Charleston, South Carolina, before 1702, are unquestioned facts.” In 1718 Governor Spottswood of Virginia gave an entertainment on the king’s birthday, the feature of which was a play, probably acted by the students of William and Mary College, as there are references to later events of this sort. The Virginia governor’s patronage bore different fruit from the early indorsement of playing in staid Massachusetts, for Samuel Sewall recorded in his diary of March 2, 1714, a protest at the acting of a play in the council chamber. “Let not Christian Boston,” he admonished, “goe beyond Heathen Rome in the practice of Shamefull Vanities.” On the other hand, Williamsburg, Virginia, had its own theater before 1720, New York enjoyed professional acting and a playhouse by 1732, and in Charleston, South Carolina, the use of the courtroom was frequent in the two seasons before the opening of a theater in the winter of 1736. These slight beginnings, with further undertakings in Philadelphia, doubtless gave Lewis Hallam, the London actor, courage to venture over with his company in 1752. With his twelve players he brought a repertory of twenty plays and eight farces, the majority of which had never been presented in America; and since the year of their arrival the American theater has had a consecutive and broadening place in the life of the people.
The beginnings of drama in America, to distinguish them from the early life of the theater, are not quite clearly known. The first romantic drama, and the first play written by an American and produced by a professional company, was Thomas Godfrey’s “The Prince of Parthia,” completed by 1759 and acted in 1767 at the Southwark Theater, Philadelphia. The first drama on native American material – an unproduced problem play – was Robert Rogers’s “Ponteach,” published in London in 1766. The first American comedy to be produced by a professional company was Royall Tyler’s “The Contrast,” acted in 1787 at the John Street Theater, New York. The first professional American playwright was William Dunlap (1766–1839), author and producer, who wrote, adapted, and translated over sixty plays, operas, sketches, farces, and interludes, of which at least fifty were produced and nearly thirty have been published. The first actor and playwright of more than local prominence was John Howard Payne (1791–1852), more original than Dunlap and equally prolific, with one or two great successes and eighteen published plays to his credit. The history of the American drama, as yet unwritten, will be a big work when it is fully done, for the output has been very large. Three hundred and seventy-eight plays are known to have been published by 1830 and nearly twice that number to have been played by 1860. In the remainder of this chapter, the aim of which is to induce study of plays within the reach of the average college class, four dramas will be discussed because they are interesting in themselves and because they are early representatives of types which still prevail.
The first is “The Prince of Parthia,” a romantic tragedy by Thomas Godfrey (1736–1763). He was the son of a scientist, a youth of cultured companions, West the painter and Hopkinson the poet-composer, and his almost certain attendance at performances of the American company of actors led him, in addition to his juvenile poems, to make
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