Civil War Theater: The Propaganda Play

Professor John Foxen is an assistant professor of Speech at Coe College, where his primary duties involve the teaching of rhetoric. Professor Foxen is engaged in writing his Ph.D. dissertation at S.U.I. Civil War Theater: The Propaganda Play WILLIAM REARDON AND JOHN FOXEN out of that great issue of our Civil War period—slavery—emerged our strongest and most theatrically effective propaganda play, Uncle Tom's Cabin. Although there had been earlier attempts at a type of propaganda writing such as David Everett's Slaves in Barbary—wherein our own double standard on the slavery question was illustrated by a comparison of our position with the Barbary pirates—none proved effective until the advent of Uncle Tom's Cabin.1 From this initial success stemmed in our own day such powerful theatrical pieces as Shaw's Bury the Dead, Odets' Waiting for Lefty, and The Living Newspaper One-Third of a Nation. If musical comedy is indigenous to America—and this fact is generally conceded —it seems to these audiors that the second greatest contribution of America to modern drama was (and die past tense is used advisedly!) the propaganda play.2 For in the presence of our modern "codes" and hypercriticisms, the propaganda play is temporarily defunct The poetess' words might well apply in tin's day: Now is detachment the supreme holy word (Above all take no part nor risk your head); Forgotten are Erasmus' pilgrimages By these who fabricate and love their cagesHas truth then never buckled on a sword?3 The present situation is unfortunate not only because the propaganda 1 Shoes m Barbary was printed in a work entitled The Columbian Orator by Caleb Bingham. (Boston: Manning and Loring, 1797). 2 The significant contributions to 'epic' or propaganda theater by Hauptmann, Piscator , and Brecht, as well as the contributions to the theory of epic writing by Brecht, have been considered by these authors before this statement was made. 3 May Sarton, "The Sacred Order," in The Lion and the Rose: Poems (New York: Rinehart & Company, Inc. 1948), p. 85. 281 282REARDON & FOXEN play was and could be a vital and vigorous addition to our dramatic life as were Uncle Tom's Cabin and its successors, but even when it existed it was misunderstood and maligned. It is in an attempt to clarify the form and end of the propaganda play that this article has been written. Since the time of Aristode's Poetics, dramatic critics have shown a concern with plot and character development, exposition, complication, discovery , resolution, and other elements of dramatic structure that remained basically unchanged down through the centuries. Even the language of die critics varied little, although occasional subtìe splittings of the atoms of dramatic structure brought new terms into the critical vocabulary . Until the modern era, most dramatists had conveniendy resolved at least the incidents of their plots, and while diis practice continued , the ancient critical principles of Aristotìe remained very useful with the addition of some minor modifications. Tragedy, comedy, and melodrama could be generally recognized by the emotions evoked by the dramatist, and the resolutions which he gave to his plots. Thus the fear and pity of tragedy, the ridicule and laughter of comedy, the double ending of the melodrama all served handily to enable the critic to judge the purpose of the play—for the purpose would be contained and resolved within die play itself. The propaganda play is partially distinguished from these forms by its purpose, which is to arouse an audience to action tlirough incidents arousing fear and hate (or an emotion allied to hate ) without permitting the fear and hate to be resolved within the play itself. Thus with the end of the propaganda play there remains an element of die resolution, (indeed in some instances no resolution whatsoever is given) which is still alive and yet to be acted upon. If this point is granted, it follows diat the critical sphere of a play of this nature must include the field of rhetoric— an art dealing with the means of persuasion. It is precisely on this point that the authors of this article believe the propaganda play should be...