From Traveling Show to Vaudeville: Theatrical Spectacle in America, 1830–1910

CONTENTS

CONTENTS PREFACE xi INTRODUCTION: From Celebration to Show Business 1 THE DIME MUSEUM 22 Early Museum Shows 24 Ethan Greenwood’s account of his New England Museum, June 1824 24 / Nathaniel Hawthorne visits two sideshows in Salem, July 1838 25 / Abram Dayton’s recollections of New York museums in the 1830s, 1882 27 Selling and Seeing Curiosities 29 Barnum’s appeal to the family: Sights and Wonders in New York (1849) 29 / Barnum’s advertising to visitors: Peleg Pettinghame to Timothy Touchmenot, 1861 34 / Letters to a fellow showman: Barnum to Moses Kimball in Boston, 1843 35 / Presenting Tom Thumb: Sketch of Life . . . of Charles S. Stratton (1847) 37 / Philip Hone and family visit Tom Thumb, 1843 and 1847 40 / Mark Twain’s impressions of the ‘‘Wild Men of Borneo,’’ 1853 41 / Mark Twain and the confidence-man’s ‘‘Boney Part,’’ 1852 43 / New York Tribune condemns ‘‘Disgusting Exhibitions,’’ 1853 46 / Fanny Fern meets the Bearded Lady: Fern Leaves, 1854 49 / Autobiography of Petite Bunkum’s comic view of ‘‘The Whiskered Woman,’’ 1855 50 / Two upperclass comments on Barnum’s ‘‘What Is It?’’ in 1860 and 1861 50 / Sir Lyon Bouse’s audience with a giantess, 1867 53 Commentary 57 The family show: Gleason’s on the American Museum, 1853 57 / The Nation on ‘‘The Great Humbug,’’ and Barnum’s response, 1867 58 Contents vi Dog Days of the Museum 61 Mark Twain sees a drab American Museum, 1867 61 / William Dean Howells goes slumming, 1902 62 / Journalist Rollin Lynde Hartt on the proletarian rabble, 1909 65 MINSTRELSY 66 Routines: Songs, Speeches, Dialogue, and Farce 71 Billy Whitlock’s song of love and marriage: ‘‘Miss Lucy Long,’’ 1842 71 / ‘‘Dandy Jim from Caroline’’ and bragging, 1843 72 / De Negro’s Original Piano-Rama on gold fever, 1850 73 / End men chatter: Tambo and Bones on ‘‘Blackberrying,’’ 1875 75 / Olio: Oh Hush! Or, the Virginny Cupids, 1853 76 Commentary: Rise and Fall of ‘‘Slave’’ Creativity 85 New York Knickerbocker praises the only true ‘‘American poets,’’ 1845 85 / Putnam’s Monthly regrets the bland ‘‘modern’’ songs, 1855 87 / The New York Tribune surveys ‘‘The Black Opera,’’ 1855 89 Reminiscences 90 Ralph Keeler recalls his experiences as a teenage performer in the 1850s (1869) 90 / Mark Twain remembers the glories of the ‘‘real nigger show’’ in the 1840s (1906) 92 / Bayard Taylor observes minstrel songs among Sacramento miners, 1850 94 Musical Comedy: Harrigan’s Mulligan Guard 95 Irish, Germans, and ‘‘Coloreds’’ at The Mulligan Guard Ball, 1879 95 / Edward Harrigan explains his interpretation of city realism, 1889 102 / William Dean Howells applauds Mulligan authenticity, 1886 104 / Confessions of an African American Minstrel 105 Bert Williams on comedy and life, 1918 105 THE CIRCUS 108 The Circus Debated 110 The American Sunday-School Union warns the foolish young, 1840s 110 / Fanny Fern recommends a less-than-perfect circus to children, 1857 112 / Contents vii Performer Alfred Trumble justifies skills in the ring: A Spangled World (1883) 115 The Early Circus 116 Nathaniel Hawthorne observes a circus performance and a traveling caravan, 1835, 1838 116 / Henry David Thoreau visits a menagerie, 1851 120 / The circus comes to the village: The Knickerbocker, 1839 121 / Walt Whitman reviews Dan Rice’s circus show in Brooklyn, 1856 124 / The New England itinerary of S. O. Wheeler’s Great International Circus, 1863 126 Big Business 129 Manager W. C. Coup reminisces in the 1890s: Sawdust and Spangles (1902) 129 / Barnum explains his operations to Mark Twain, 1875 134 / Barnum introduces children to the circus ‘‘curiosities,’’ 1888 135 / Behind the scenes at Ringling Bothers, 1900 137 / The itinerary of a typical large circus, ca. 1900 140 The Audience 147 Hamlin Garland’s memory of the circus parade in ‘‘Sun Prairie’’ in the late 1850s (1899) 147 / William Dean Howells recalls the appeal to boys in an Ohio small town, 1860s (1890) 149 / Carl Sandburg remembers the sideshow in Galesburg, Illinois, in the 1890s (1956) 151 / A roustabout’s story: W. E. ‘‘Doc’’ Van Elstine, 1938 153 MELODRAMA 155 A Plea for an American Drama 159 James Kirke Paulding scorns a derivative postcolonial drama, 1827 159 Classic Melodrama 162 Charlotte Cushman’s fictional tale of a professional actress, 1837 162 / Walt Whitman on the style of the sensation story-papers, 1858 168 / William B. English’s novel, Rosina Meadows, the Village Maid (1843) 169 / Charles H. Saunders’ stage adaptation of Rosina Meadows, 1855 173 / ‘‘Artemus Ward’’ and...