.
important first step in the eventual development of a diverse popular culture.
THE CURTAIN RISES: ANTEBELLUM PERFORMING ARTS
The American stage (a term used here to describe theater, opera, and minstrel shows) also underwent a major transformation in the first half of the nineteenth century. The period was marked by the quest for a native dramatic idiom, one that had both nationalistic and class overtones, but a distinctive theatrical style did not develop until race became a central issue in American politics.
In the colonial era, theater was at the center of a religious controversy that pitted secular aristocrats against clerical authorities. Radical Protestant church leaders generally regarded the theater as subversive, which is why it tended to be more common in the South, where sacred influences were less strong. In fact, it was not until 1792 that the last official strictures on theatrical performances were finally lifted in Boston. From this point on, clerical resistance increasingly became a rear-guard action. At the same time, however, secular aristocrats became relatively less important in theater.18
The rapid growth of cities after the War of 1812 gave new life to the theater. Unmoored from the social and familial traditions of Europe and the U.S. countryside, a mobile urban population turned to new forms of entertainment as a release from the ravages of wage-earning labor. Playhouses were built to accommodate this new audience, and soon priced themselves to maximize profits. New York City’s Park Theatre, which opened in the late eighteenth century, charged between $1 and $2 for one of its 300 seats; its replacement, finished in 1821, was over eight times larger and charged between 37½¢ and 75¢. The new Park, in turn, was expensive compared to the 4,000-seat Bowery Theatre, which opened in 1826. Theatergoers got a lot for their money: the average evening featured a full-length play punctuated by orchestral music, dances, and novelty acts, followed by a farce or short comic opera.19
Opera was another popular form of mass entertainment in the early nineteenth century. Nothing illustrated mass enthusiasm better than the triumphant tour of Swedish opera star Jenny Lind between 1850 and 1852 (the first part of which was managed by the famous impresario P.T. Barnum, who will be discussed below). Tens of thousands of people gathered to greet Lind’s arrival in New York, and tickets for her shows were auctioned off for as much as $225. Jenny Lind clothing, including gloves, hats, shawls, and robes, became a fad.20
The most beloved operas tended to be Italian works performed in English. As would later be the case with Broadway plays and Hollywood movies, opera became the source of much popular music, as individual arias were performed by entertainers and published in sheet music form to be sung at home. The songs of composers like Rossini and Mozart (whose Barber of Seville and Don Giovanni were tremendous favorites) took their place beside those of Stephen Foster and other songwriters.21
Perhaps the most striking aspect of show business in the early nineteenth century was the diversity of the audience, which cut across racial, class, and gender lines. Within the theater itself, however, segregation prevailed. This was accomplished by dividing the house into box, pit, and gallery seats. Boxes were the most expensive and were usually reserved for the wealthy. The pit held a spectrum of theatergoers, from the swelling ranks of the middle classes to boisterous youths known as “Bowery B’hoys and G’hals”: pleasure-loving working people who partook of the rich street life and entertainments of the Bowery, especially its theater.22 The gallery was at the top of the theater and was generally understood to be the place for African Americans, and for prostitutes and their customers. The observations of a Maine farmer who visited a Boston theater in 1820 note the various lines that separated the theater audience, but also show how thin those lines could be and how much jostling took place:
It appeared that the gallery was the resort of the particolored race of Africans, descendants of Africans, and the vindicators of the abolition of the slave trade; that the tier of boxes below it in the center was occupied by single gentlewomen who had lodgings to let, and who were equally famous for their delicacy and taciturn disposition. The remainder of the boxes, I was given to understand, were visited by none but the dandies, and people of the first respectability and fashion; while the pit presented a mixed multitude of the lower orders of all sorts, sizes, ages and deportments.23
Given his ironic description of prostitutes as “single gentlewomen,” one may wonder whether this farmer was joking when he suggested abolitionists sat in the gallery with blacks. Nevertheless, his observations indicate the fluidity of the theatergoing audience. Outside the South, blacks and whites often shared the gallery, and well-to-do free blacks were allowed to sit in boxes in northern cities (and in New Orleans, which had developed an elaborate multiracial social structure long before it became part of the United States).
An evening at the theater was a rowdier affair then than it is today. The house lights were never dimmed (this was too complicated before electricity), and people went as much to see and be seen as to watch the show. Nonetheless, as paying customers they felt entitled to comment on the entertainment by cheering or hissing at the performers, and the crowd’s wishes often determined which pieces the orchestra would play. If their disapproval was particularly strong, some members of the audience would throw objects at those actors and musicians who had provoked their scorn.24
Eventually, this social porousness led the new bourgeoisie to leave these theaters and form a genteel culture centered around museums, concert halls, opera houses, and academies beyond the reach of ordinary citizens. But this process would not become complete for another century, and in the meantime the theater remained a remarkably democratic institution.25
This egalitarianism extended to the performers. With some exceptions, acting was still the largely marginal occupation it had been in Susanna Rowson’s day. It required exhausting amounts of travel and a good deal of versatility, because plays turned over rapidly (one week was considered a long run). Except for a few superstars, pay was poor. In fact, one of the most important sources of income for a theater company was the “benefit night,” when the profits from the performance were designated for actors, playwrights, managers, or others.26
The stage life was especially hard on women. Not only did the social stigma surrounding the stage remain powerful, but women who pursued any profession were regarded as somewhat suspect. A few women thrived: Women’s rights activist Fanny Wright lent her radical voice to drama by writing Altorf (1819), a celebration of Swiss independence. Actress Charlotte Cushman sustained a successful acting career in the 1830s and 1840s, and novelist/play-wright/actress Anna Cora Mowatt enjoyed considerable success with her hit play The Fashion (1844), a patriotic comedy that was successfully revived in the 1920s and again in the 1950s. Yet even these women struggled financially in order to achieve their status. More typical was the remark of an avowed friend of the theater who described one neophyte as “a young actress yet undebauched by her profession.”27
As with fiction, the overwhelming influences on drama in the United States came from Great Britain well into the nineteenth century. England supplied not only the plays, but a large number of players who came to the United States and traveled widely. As one historian put it, “The English began to dump their surplus stars—or, more accurately, the surplus time of their stars—on the Americans.”28 Growing resentment of British performers and a belligerent sense of nationalism led to a number of conflicts, including the Astor Place riot in 1849.
A CLOSER LOOK:
The Astor Place Riot
From angry New Jersey tenant farmers in 1766 to frustrated Los Angeles residents in the aftermath of the Rodney King verdict in 1992, rioting is an American tradition. Such outbursts are usually the result of accumulating social tensions that have gone unaddressed by those in authority, and New York’s Astor Place riot of 1849 was no exception. What made it unusual, however, was its immediate cause: a dispute about the correct way to perform the lead role in William Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
Unlike in the twentieth century, when Shakespearian drama became