THE jOURNAL OF

AMERICAN DRAMA AND THEATRE

Volume 11, Number 3
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Fall1999
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THE jOURNAl OF AMERICAN DRAMA AND THEATRE
Volume 11, Number 3
WELDON B. DURHAM,
Domestic Formations
Contents
in Antebellum Theatre in New York City
jERREY Ullom,
Critiquing the "Huzza":
The Historiography of the Astor Place Riot
YVONNE SHAFER,
Maude Adams as Joan of Arc
at the Harvard Stadium
FAY CAMPBELL KAYNOR,
The Dramatic Magazine
(May 1880- August 1882), New York City
jOANNA ROTTE,
Stella Adler: Teacher Emeritus
CONTRIBUTORS
Fall 1999
1
16
30
46
63
80
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During the same period, a large gift was finalized,
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Theatre Arts) is henceforth to be known as the Martin E.
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Journal of American Drama and Theatre 11 (Fall 1999)
Domestic For.mations in Antebellum Theatre
in New York City
WELDON B. DURHAM
According to Bruce McConachie, between 1820 and 1970 theatre
audiences and theatre practitioners in the United States constructed and
maintained several "melodramatic formations." Each formation was a set
of sociopolitical motives and aesthetic motives, shared alike by audiences
and artists, shaping a text externally and internally.
1
Elsewhere,
McConachie, following social interactionist Kenneth Burke, uses the term
" representation" to designate the linkage of the theatrica! system (the
performed play) with a social or cultural system. "Representations"
facilitate the audience member's effort to contextualize social experience
and to legitimate and inform social action.
2
Pierre Bourdieu, also a social
interactionist, maintains that the analysis of a work of theatrical art must
take into account not only the institutional forces operating to produce
meaning in and through it, but also the intratextual and intertextual
energies which produce and sustain the theatrical event as a "discourse
of disguised or directed celebration."
3
Treated as an objectification of
desire, the theatrical event is at least as remarkable for its function as a
fetish for arousing or for easing civic tensions and promoting social amity
as for its meaning.
4
1
Bruce McConachie, Melodramatic Formations (Iowa City: University of Iowa
Press, 1992), xi-xii.
2
"'The Theatre of the Mob': Apocalyptic Melodrama and Preindustrial Riots in
Antebellum New York/' in Theatre for Working-Class Audiences in the United States,
7 830-1980, Bruce McConachie and Daniel Friedman, eds. (Westport, CT: Greenwood
Press, 1985), 18.
3
Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 36.
4
Kenneth Burke, "Form and Persecution in the Orestia," in Language as
Symbolic Action (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 137.
2
DURHAM
The purpose of this essay is to suggest the existence of a "domestic"
formation, perhaps contiguous with the melodramatic formations
McConachie describes. I assume that the audience and the stage are
linked through a normative or prescriptive set of rules, a grammar, such
that the cultural work of a play in performance may be understood in
terms suggested by Susan Bennett. The components of a cultural system
(such as gentility, religion, and domesticity) form an outer frame. A
theatrical system (playing space, mise en scene, dramatic text, performer)
forms an inner frame. The interplay of these frames produces a discourse
of celebration which incorporates the spectator. Finally, the conscious-
ness of the spectator is the site of the convergence of these frames and the
site of the resultant adjustment or reinforcement of desire.
5
After first outlining a domestic ethos, I examine three romantic
notable for their engagement with key concepts of domestic
ideology: The Stranger (1799), a translation/adaptation by Benjamin
Thompson and Ri chard Brinsley Sheridan of August von Kotzebue's
Menschenhaas und Reue (Misanthropy and Repentance); james Sheridan
Knowles's The Hunchback (1832); and Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton's The
Lady of Lyons, or Love and Pride (1838) . These three plays were carried
in the repertories of leading American and English stars.
6
Indeed they
were the most often produced plays at New York's Broadway Theatre, the
city's most prestigious (because most star-frequented) theatre of its time
5
Richard Bushman articulates the concept of "cultural systems," the components
of which operate in conflict and accord. He notes that gentility, rel igion, and
domesticity account for most of the components of the problematic of " middle-class
respectability." (Richard Bushman, The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses,
Cities [New York: Knopf, 1992], 446-47.) Susan Bennett conceives of the audience's
role being carried out at the point of intersection between an outer frame of cultural
elements creating and informing the theatrical event and an inner frame containing
the dramatic production in a particular playing space. (Susan Bennett, Theatre
Audiences: A Theory of Production and Reception [London: Routledge, 1990], 149.)
6
Mrs. George P. Farren included all three in her appearances at the Broadway
Theatre, as did Laura Addison, Charlotte Cushman, Jean M. Davenport, Julia Dean,
and Eliza Logan. Mrs. j.W. Wallack, Jr. starred in The Hunchback and The Lady of
Lyons as did Julia Bennett. Miss Kimberly, Gustavus Vaugn Brooke, James Murdoch,
and james Anderson appeared in The Stranger and The Lady of Lyons. McKean
Buchanan, Edwin Forrest, E. L. and Fanny Vinning Davenport, Harry Lorraine, and
Welmarth Waller starred in The Lady of Lyons, the most popular play at the Broadway
Theatre in the decade of its existence.
Domestic Formations 3
(1847-59).
7
I regard key characters in the plays as agents perpetrating acts
that symbolize or represent audience desire or lack of desire. Ultimately,
the acts of these agents are the manifestation of the energy of theatrical
simulation which the plays convert into celebration in the theatre and
into cultural motion in the consciousness of the spectator.
The Social Ethic of Domesticity
Antebellum America experienced rapid economic growth from
increasing foreign trade and agricultural productivity while immigration
and urbanization sharply altered the social environment. Growing
inequalities in the distribution of wealth exacerbated social stratification,
and the ideology of domesticity positioned bourgeois women in the
home where they functioned through the institution of marriage and the
discourses of "true love" to redeem the spirits of men desecrated in the
world of work and to shape the moral development of children. The
social ethic of domesticity held that women should be detached from
economics and politics just as they should deny their psychological and
social self. In defining marriage as a spiritual union and motherhood as
a sacred vocation, the cult of domesticity also imprisoned the woman's
body by enshrining it.
Thought about assuming a vocation of such significance made the
marriage choice extraordinarily meaningful for many women and
traumatic for some. The social ethic of domesticity joined with the
ideologies of individualism and romantic love to freight the marriage
choice with weighty social, economic, and political implications while
at the same time establishing the necessity of basing the marriage choice
on "true" love. True love was considered permanent, constant, and
elementary-essentially spiritual , ennobling, and morally elevating. It
was distinguished from romantic love, which was transient and superfi-
cial. The ideal marriage was a spiritual union of hearts, not an economic
contract. True love enabled marriage and sustained it. True love also
7
The Broadway Theatre was designed by). M. Trimble, bui lder of Burton' s
Olympic Theatre. Trimble modeled it after London' s Haymarket Theatre, and it was
the largest theatre ever built in New York, up to that time, seating 4500. It was
located on the east side of Broadway, opposite the New York Hospital, between Pearl
Street and Anthony (present Worth) Street. Despite its prime location, its pretentious
exterior, its plush furnishings, and its heavy reliance on native stars and scenic
spectacles, it never achieved the aim its founder, Alvah Mann, nor its long-time
proprietor, E. A. Marshall, to be America's premier theatre. Competition from theatres
managed by William Burton and by). W. Wallack, Jr. loosened its hold on New York.
Nevertheless, it is most important to note that it aimed to be the nat ion's theatri cal
center.
4
DURHAM
softened the bonds of marriage and warmed the narrow confines of the
domestic vocation. True love was the paradoxical nexus of the cult of
true womanhood, for true love enabled the true woman predominantly,
and the true man to some extent, to choose the self-abnegation upon
which the peace and effectiveness of the home was based. Married
women discharged their redemptive function through domestic work and
three modes of love: true love, upon which the ideal marriage was built;
conjugal love, more compassionate than carnal, which sustained it; and
mother love, which infused the offspring with the sensibility and the
moral character the world and the home required.
8
As true love was the
substance of virtue, images of virtue under duress were the substance of
domestic and sentimental drama.
Wherever one finds talk of domestic virtue and th.e operations of true
love, talk of the expression of sentiment (sentimentality) and talk of the
capacity for acute consciousness of emotional nuance (sensibility) will
also be found. Domesticity itself was a discursive model of identification
promoting social relationships, such as those characterized by true love,
conducive to sustaining hegemonic identities and subjectivities.
Sentimentality, a set of rules for producing the signs of that deep feeling
which authenticated one's claim to bourgeois sociopolitical prerogatives/
along with sensibility (emotional receptivity), were cultural practices
within the social ethic of domesticity.
Even as the signs of domestic bliss manifest in expressions of true
love legitimated bourgeois hegemony, a crisis of social confidence
ensued. A capacity to distinguish the true love or lover from the false or
feigned was a fundamental necessity if the domestic enterprise were to
function properly. However, rapid economic and social changes
rendered problematic both the emerging republican codes and the
received European, aristocratic codes for communicating individual status
and identity. Karen Halttunen analyzed conduct-of-life literature
published between 1830 and 1860 and found that discussions of the task
8
Nancy F. Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood: "Woman's Sphere" in New
England, 1780-1835 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1977), 1-18, 63-
100. Cott drew on advice books, sermons, novels, essays, stories, and poems, but
most heavily Qn women's diaries, memoirs, and letters. See also Steven Seidman,
Romantic Longings: Love in America, 1830-1980 (New York: Routledge, 1991), 43-
46. Shulamith Firestone observed that "love, perhaps even more than child-bearing,
is the pivot of women's oppression today" in The Dialectic of Sex (New York:
Bantam, 1970), 126.
9
"Introduction, " The Culture of Sentiment: Race, Gender, and Sentimentality
in Nineteenth-Century America, Shirley Samuels, ed. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1992), 5.
Domestic Formations 5
of distinguishing the sincere from the hypocritical person y ielded two
personifications: the confidence man and the painted woman. These
figures symbolized two social problems facing men and women in
antebellum America: establishing and recognizing social identity in a
republic based on a belief in the boundless potential of each individual
and securing success in the anonymous "world of strangers that was the
antebell urn city." Halttunen then claims that popular advice manuals,
fashion advice literature, and the social ritual of mourning established the
sentimental ideal of sincerity as the solution to the problem of
hypocrisy.
10
Halttunen observes:
The American democrat-that is to say, the middle-class
American-had no status in the strict sense of the term; he
occupied no fixed position within a well-defined social structure,
and his vague sense of restlessness and dread sprang from his
liminality, his betwixt-and-between social condition. Because he
lived suspended between the facts of his present social condition
and the promise of his future, because he held a vertical vision
of life in an allegedly fluid and boundless social system, he was
plagued with anxiety concerning his social identity.
11
Halttunen argues that bourgeois culture equipped respectable citizens
with an ability to recognize the duplicity of the confidence man and the
painted woman through the application of sensibility, a competence
given in superior measure to women. Sensibility, the capacity of a
delicate heart to respond to the slightest emotional stimulus, could also
detect and deflect the emotional falsehoods which amounted to
hypocrisy. The code of domesticity assigned women the special
responsibility of knowing and exposing hypocrisy and exerting a vital
moral influence, especially through the institution of marriage and within
the sphere of the home.
The Domestic Drama
Gilbert Cross, writing about domestic drama in London theatres,
extrapolates a vision of the "world of domestic drama" which replicates
descriptions of the "cult of domesticity." Domestic drama idealized the
1
Karen Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-
Class Culture in America, 1830-1870 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982, xvi-
XVII.
11
Halttunen, 192.
6
DURHAM
home as a civilized retreat from the barbaric society outside. It enshrined
the family and made the role of the wife paramount in sustaining the
home as a moral and spiritual fortress. Domestic drama illustrated that
love was the highest reward. Dramatists whose work charmed their
patrons with the allure of domesticity emphasized the importance of the
selection of the right mate and protection of the home against the
incursions of disruptive forces. Love, purified of sexual passion,
powerfully restraining lust and refining moral will, insured the success of
marriage, even across class lines.
12
According to Cross:
The great majority of earlier domestic dramas ended happily,
which in nineteenth-century terms meant the right mate, love, a
happy home, and freedom from want. ... In the final analysis,
what counted was the skill with which the playwright aroused
the deep-rooted fears in his audience's mind and then set them
at rest. Strong anxiety followed by a fittingly happy conclusion
lay at the heart of domestic drama.
13
Domestic drama and melodrama fed upon paranoia, self-pity, and
sentimentality.
14
Both featured, David Grimsted has noted, the "victory
of forces of morality, social restraint, and domesticity over what was dark,
passionate, and anti-social."
15
Symbolic Action in Three Romantic Comedies
Recognition of true love, true excellence, virtue, or morality, usually
involving the exposure of a false lover who pretends to possess virtue, has
been a common feature of English romantic comedy since the form
12
Gilbert Cross, Next Week East lynne: Domestic Drama in Performance,
7820-1874 (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1977), 219.
13
Cross, 222-223.
14
Sentimentality "was a deliberate overvaluing of the humble and the domest ic
in opposition to the undervalui ng of them that a capital ist economy encouraged."
(Cross, 91) Frank Ellis surveyed sentimental English drama of the eighteenth century
looking for traits of the genre and found that sentimentalization involved the inversion
of traditional hierarchical relations, as between parent and child, master and servant,
man and animal. (Frank Ellis, Sentimental Comedy: Theory and Practice [Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1991], 12.)
15
David Grimsted, Melodrama Unveiled: American Theatre and Culture, 1800-
7850 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 220.
Domestic Formations
7
developed in the sixteenth century from models provided by Italian
pastoral comedy. Indeed, some movement of a protagonist toward a
moral or ethical insight or some transformation of the protagonist's state
of "being" has been characteristic of drama of whatever genre since
Aristotle established anagnorasis (perception, insight) as a criterion of the
fully formed tragedy.
In addition to being a structural device in The Hunchback, The Lady
of Lyons, and The Stranger, recognition is a motive in plot development
and an explicit topic of dialogue in scene after scene in each of these
plays. The prevalence of recognition thus suggests that it might be a
common ground for a discussion of the "symbolic action" of each play,
that is, of the objectified and ritualized civic tension, the amelioration or
celebration of which is the play's cultural work.
Reconciliation of an estranged married couple, Adelaide ("Mrs.
Haller") and Charles ("The Stranger") Waldenbourg, is the event toward
which the plot of The Stranger moves. Their recognition of one another
forms the play's anti-climax in Act V, scene 1, and their reconciliation,
triggered by the presence of their children, forms the play's denouement.
The action and dialogue of The Stranger exposes the causes of their
estrangement and the attendant barriers to a more immediate reconcilia-
tion, as well as the moral and psychological rightness of the reunion of
these superficially flawed but inwardly virtuous characters.
Benjamin Thompson's English title for the play refers to both the
central characters, who are strangers to everyone in the play, and to the
estrangement marring their relationship. Mrs. Haller has resided for three
years at the Wintersen country estate, a refuge from the dazzling
allurements of the city given by the Countess Wintersen, although,as the
play begins, the Countess knows nothing of Mrs. Haller's background.
When the Countess's brother recognizes Mrs. Haller's patrician sensibili-
ties beneath the disguise of her appearance as a commoner, he decides
he wants to marry her. The Countess then presses Mrs. Haller for
information about her past. She confesses she has abandoned her
husband and two children for a man who turned out to be a villain. She
was deceived, however, in the context of diminished confidence in her
husband's affection. He, too, had been victimized by deceitful friends,
including the villain, who used forged letters and a gullible servant to
convince Adelaide her husband loved another.
16
Failed confidence has
ruptured the bonds of true love and ruined the marriage.
16
Augustus von Kotzebue, The Stranger (Menschenhaas und Reue), Benjamin
Thompson, trans. (London: Vernor and Hood, 1805), 50-52. All subsequent
references will be cited parenthetically in the text with the initials AK.
8
DURHAM
Recently, a wanderer, the deeply melancholic, misanthropic, and
misogynistic Stranger (Charles Waldbourg) and his serving man, Francis,
have occupied a lodge on the outskirts of the Wintersen estate. Francis
is a sunny foil to the Stranger's cold skepticism and a raisoneur, posi-
tioned to illuminate the Stranger's melancholy (his is a "misanthropy in
his head, not in his heart" ). Lack of trust in anyone's sincerity under-
mines the Stranger, so Francis must intervene to counteract the Stranger's
misgivings. For instance, an old peasant, Tobias, needs money to gain
the release of his only son, recently subscribed as a soldier. The Stranger
believes Tobias is an imposter, but Francis convinces him the man is
honest, so the Stranger gives Tobias the money. Francis also undercodes
the Stranger's mysteriously anti-social behavior, linking it to his having
been victimized in a confidence scheme. After the Stranger saves the
Wintersen's son from being drowned, he rudely declines an invitation to
dine with the Wintersens and to accept their thanks. Francis explains that
"he hates the whole human race, but women particularly" because "he
may perhaps have been deceived (AK, 45)."
Such behavior as seen in the actions of the Stranger and Mrs. Haller
iII ustrates the power of romantic love, the betrayal of which sows
misanthropy and cold skepticism in the betrayed and remorse in the
betrayer. But just as the Stranger's cynicism overlays a generous and
responsive heart, so Mrs. Haller's remorse shades her radiant inner
perfection.
Mrs. Haller is a virtuous woman whose true identity is almost
invisible behind a shroud of regret. She is a great beauty whose
mysterious tears operate as a sign of her sympathetic nature and therefore
of her virtue. The Stranger discounts a report of her sensibility with the
observation that "all women wish to be conspicuous-In town by their
wit; in the country by their heart (AK, 14)." Countess Wintersen's
description of her pastimes-contemplation and sympathetic support for
others-establishes her, in Baron Steinfort's eyes, as a woman of virtue.
The Baron, who is deeply attracted to her, sees in her elaborate shows of
humility a further sign of her virtue. She pays elegant compliments to the
Count and Countess, but when the Baron acknowledges her generosity,
she "casts her eyes upon the ground and contends against the confusion
of an exalted soul when surprised in a good action (AK, 31 )." Mrs.
Haller herself, in protesting that the Baron cannot find her attractive,
articulates the code linking beauty with virtue: "The enchanting beauties
of a female countenance arise from peace of mind-The look which
captivates an honourable man must be reflected from a noble soul (AK,
49)."
Read in the context of the discourses of domesticity, the thrust of
characterization in the play is toward establishing Mrs. Haller as a
Domestic Formations 9
paragon of femininity and the Stranger as a model of mascul inity. She is
to be known as contemplative, sympathetic, vulnerable, generous,
beautiful, modest, and spiritually placid-qualities shrouded in remorse.
Beneath his melancholy, he is charitable, courageous, and charismatic.
They have been ravaged by deceit. His melancholy and her remorse
arise from their having been victimized in a confidence scheme. Their
domestic peace has been disturbed by the villainy of a false friend, but it
wi II be restored by the ingenuity of a true friend.
Recognition is again thematized in the play's anti-climax in Act IV,
scene 1. Annette and the Savoyard sing a lilting duet to draw the Stranger
out of his lodge. Francis, knowing his master, proposes a "sadder strain,"
and the singers offer an air Mrs. Hailer taught them. The Stranger
recognizes the tune, but the lyric is new. Mrs. Haller's new verses speak
of "a silent sorrow" never to be revealed to her beloved, because it might
be taken as a plea for forgiveness, a cry for mercy she will never raise
(AK, 56) .
17
The familiar tune and the poignant verse leave the Stranger
" surprised and moved" and drive him back into the lodge. When Baron
Steinfort recognizes the Stranger as his old friend, Charles Waldbourg,
Waldbourg tells a tale of a fortune and a wife lost to a perfidious friend,
thereby doubling the load of grief and ruin, a burden the play's final
scene of recognition must discharge. Steinfort persuades Waldbourg to
use his "talent of persuasion" in bearing Steinfort's proposal of marriage
to Mrs. Hailer, and the scene is set for the climactic encounter of the
estranged lovers.
The ultimate recognition occurs in two stages. When Charles (The
Stranger) and Adela.ide (Mrs. Hailer) see one another, Adelaide swoons
and Charles rushes off-stage. Charles returns to confront Adelaide, yet
they cannot conform their actions to the deep affection they feel and
reconcile. The Baron, now seeing that Mrs. Hailer is his old friend's
young wife, graciously resolves to re-unite the two. He will use their
children to break through the Waldbourg's remorseful and melancholic
defenses.
Charles believes Adelaide has merely feigned ignorance of his
presence on the Wintersen estate and has schemed to lure him into
position for another betrayal. Moreover, he fears the " mocking,
whispering, and pointing" of the "painted dolls" when he returns to
society with his runaway wife on his arm, and he prays that his "insulted
pride" and his "injured honour" will protect him from Adelaide's
designs. (AK, 75) Adelaide offers a written confession of her guilt and a
17
Thompson credits R. B. Sheridan for the words to "I have a silent sorrow here"
and the Duchess of Devonshire for the music. (AK, 54)
10
DURHAM
release from their marriage, but he refuses her. He offers the remnant of
his fortune in the form of a casket qf jewels, but she refuses him. Their
obstinance weakens in a set of three farewells, but at the end of the third,
they are still estranged. But, as they turn to leave, they encounter their
children, fleshly manifestations of their romantic union, whom Steinfort
has positioned. The children call out to them, William to Charles and
Amelia to Adelaide. The parents embrace the children and then one
another as the curtain falls. Their bond was weakened when work and
worry undermined Charles's love; subsequently Charles's coldness and
the lies of a conniving villain undermined Adelaide's faith. So, the
domestic union is vulnerable, and its strength lies as much in their re-
born virtue as in the context of the union: in faithful friends, such as
Francis, Baron Steinfort, and the Duke and Duchess of Wintersen, and in
the children, whose mere presence neutralizes the fear separating Charles
from Adelaide. The play demonstrates the effects of the failure of familial
confidence based on true love, just as it offers a formula for the defense
and repair of domestic harmony: relying upon the support of friends and
yielding to parental responsibilities.
The Hunchback is designed to test and perfect the values of its
heroine, Julia, as a means of preparing her for a true marriage to the right
man, Thomas Clifford. However, the marriage cannot take place until the
title of the Earl of Rochdale is settled on the proper heir. In the course of
the play's action, the title is held by two men; Wilford (the villain) has it
temporarily, but he acquired it on the basis of a false report. Finally,
Master Walter, Julia's hunchbacked guardian, is revealed to be not only
the son of the Earl of Rochdale but also Julia's father. Julia's marriage to
Clifford will, in time, secure the title to Clifford.
Clifford, too, bears then loses a false identity. As the play begins, he
is the recent heir to a title and a fortune. However, the bequest to
Clifford is based on false information, as was that to Wilford. Clifford
woos Julia as Sir Thomas, but he loses her when he loses his misbegotten
title and fortune. Master Walter devises a series of tests of Julia's virtue,
some of which she fails. But when she passes the final test by displaying
filial obedience in accepting betrothal to Wilford, whom she hates,
Master Walter unmasks, claims his title, and gives his daughter to her
beloved Thomas Clifford.
Julia's guardian-father is afflicted with an abnormal forward curvature
of the spine in the lumbar region, a condition known as "lordosis," or
"lordoma." The significance of the impairment is emphasized in a tavern
brawl in Act I, when Wilford's companion, Gaylove, berates Master
Walter as a "knave" and puns on the name of his affliction: "Thou seest
but one lord here, And I see two!" Master Walter responds: "Reflect'st
Domestic Formations 11
thou on my shape? Thou a.rt a villain!"
18
Walter's trustworthiness, his
liberality in supporting "schemes of public good," and his covert
generosity (not half the good he does is told) mark him as truly noble.
Similarly, Thomas Clifford has been raised in poverty, and his character,
an amalgam of knowledge, industry, frugality, and honesty, has been
milled on the hard stone of penury. Wilford, the nominal aristocrat, is
afflicted with execrable habits. Thus the crucial issues of personal
identity and status and the abi I ity to read the signs of true virtue and
social station are foregrounded in the play's title.
Master Walter sees in Clifford a perfect mate for his ward/daughter,
Julia, a woman of wit, sense, and taste: "no city belle, But e' n a Sylvan
Goddess UK, 8)." Master Walter has taught her that city ways and the
ways of men's hearts impose a rule of appearances. In the city and in
affairs of the heart, "to pass current you must seem the thing, The passive
thing, that others think; and not Your simple, honest, independent self
OK, 10)." Julia authenticates her sensibility when she sees in Clifford's
manner a man who might be Master Walter's clerk. However, Helen,
Julia's friend and confidante, sees in Clifford's gait, clothing, and jewelry,
as well as in how Master Walter bows and yields, the sure signs that
Clifford is "one of our town kings." Clifford woos Julia and vows to
abandon the town for the country, but, through Walter's machinations,
it is Julia who abandons the country to face a test of her constancy in the
city.
Despite her apparent sylvan sensibilities, Julia fails the test of city life,
a failure nowhere more evident than in her new attitudes about love and
marriage. After a time in the city spent in the riotous pursuit of pleasure
at all-night balls and parties, julia's love for Clifford vanishes, and she
admits to Helen that she wi II marry him only because she has promised
to do so. Moreover, when Helen urges Julia to talk about her feelings for
Clifford and her vision of their marriage, Julia speaks only of the material
gain she will experience: the title, the coaches, yachts, clothes, and
jewelry. She has become a shallow chameleon, her identity a fabric of
moody fascinations, possessions, and prodigality.
But Julia slowly recovers her sylvan character after a series of
emotionally trying losses. Clifford spurns her, then she learns that
Clifford has lost his title and wealth. Enraged by sarcastic attacks on
Clifford, she defends him. Then she learns she will be married to
Wilford, the newly elected Earl of Rochdale. Subsequently, Julia recovers
her belief in the power and significance of love just as she recovers her
18
James Sheridan Knowles, The Hunchback, ninth ed. (London: Edward Moxon,
1836), 3. All subsequent references will be cited parenthetically in the text with the
initials J K.
12
DURHAM
ability to read in Clifford's melanchol ic, lovelorn appearance the true
signs of his feelings for her. Though Julia affirms her love for Clifford (as
he affirms his feelings for her), she lapses into a suicidal despair as her
marriage to Wilford approaches, and she begs Walter to "Devise some
speedy means To cheat the altar of its victim UK, 69). " Instead, Walter
compels her to obey her "father's" wish that she marry as she has agreed,
and she relents. B-ut, as she is denying herself so she can honor the
prenuptial pact, Walter reveals he is the true Earl of Rochdale. Moreover,
he reveals he is Julia's father, having masked himself from her for fear she
would reject him because of his deformity. Walter then gives Julia to
Clifford, and the "true" wedding begins as the play ends.
Clifford and Julia emerge from an essentially benevolent process
through which they are perfected for matrimony. Julia' s country
constancy has been deepened and strengthened by bereavement,
dispossession, and despair. She spurns wealth by giving her love to a
penniless Clifford, for which action she is ultimately rewarded with great
wealth. The experience of mortification delivers her to a state of almost
complete self-abnegation, from which she is redeemed by an approving
parent to whom she has pledged obedience. She recovers her sensibility,
and she is rewarded with an honest, loving mate. Similarly, Clifford's
perseverance in the solid values he acquired as an impoverished but
industrious youth position him for ennoblement in the form of a title,
wealth, social status, and an adoring spouse. Julia and Clifford are good
people whose suffering makes them better equipped for a union
displaying the characteristics prescribed by domestic ideology.
The action of Bulwer-lytton's The Lady of Lyons; or, Love and Pride,
set in Lyons, France in 1796, is incited by the vengeful plot of a pair of
aristocratic suitors, Beauseant and Glavis, rejected in their bid for the
hand of the disdainful Pauline Deschappelles. Pauline is desti ned in her
bourgeois mother's imagination to marry nothing less than a " prince."
Beauseant and Glavis engage a handsome and accomplished commoner,
Claude Melnotte, to present himself to Pauline and her venal mother as
the Prince of Como. After Claude has seduced Pauline, they plan to
expose the fraud and humble the proud Pauline.
The plot of The Lady of Lyons and the plot of The Hunchback
function similarly. Both subject young lovers to emotional shocks which
transfigure them and perfect them for an ideal marriage. Claude Melnotte
begins his tumultuous passage from fatuous versifier to true lover at the
time of "the Revolution that turns us all topsy-turvy-the revolution of
Domestic Formations 13
Love."
19
Claude dresses beautifully, bears himself proudly, and has
acquired the useless skills of an aristocrat: fencing, dancing, music, and
art.
20
When it appears (wrongly) that Pauline has spurned his love
poems, a vengeful rage transforms him into a falsifying conspirator, bent
on betraying Pauline. But then indignant anger, stimulated by knowledge
that Pauline, though drawn to him by his title, truly loves him as a man,
converts him into a protector and saves Pauline from Beauseant's sexual
assault. Pride in his heritage and the shame of his deceitful behavior
arouse in him a cleansing remorse, for which Pauline's selflessness is an
additional trigger:
Pauline!-angel of love and mercy!-your memory shall lead me
back to virtue!-The husband of a being so beautiful in her noble
and sublime tenderness may be poor-may be low-born;-(there
is no guilt in the decrees of Providence!)-but he should be one
who can look thee in the face without a blush,-to whom thy
love does not bring remorse-who can fold thee in his heart, and
say,-" Here there is no deceit!"-1 am not that man! (EL, 80)
He seeks redemption in adventure and finds it as Colonel Marier, the
hero of the battle of Lodi.
21
He returns to Lyons to discover that Pauline
is about to annul their marriage so she can marry Beauseant, whose
wealth the Deschappelle family must have to save themselves from
bankruptcy. Claude' s grief signals the final stage of his transformation,
19
Sir Edward Bulwer, Earl of Lytton, The Lady of Lyons; or, Love and Pride,
seconded. (london: Saunders and Otley, 1838), 13. All subsequent references will
be cited parenthetically in the text with the initials EL.
20
Bulwer-Lytton describes Claude as "a type of that restless, brilliant, and
evanescent generation that sprung up from the ashes of the terrible Revolution,-men,
born to be agents of the genius of Napoleon, to accomplish the most marvelous
exploits, and to leave but little of permanent triumphs and sole advantage to the
succeeding race." He also acknowledged in his "Preface" that the "old and classical
sentiment, that virtue is nobility ... contains the pith of all the political creed
announced by Claude Melnotte; and that sentiment is the founder, and often the
motto, of Aristocracy itself." (EL, vii i-ix.)
21
Fought May 10, 1796 as Napoleon's forces pursued a retreating Austrian army
southeast of Milan. Napoleon launched a bloody but successful cavalry charge
against an artillery enforced bridgehead at Lodi . Bulwer-Lytton associates his
heretofore deeply flawed hero with the reckless gallantry of the cavalry charge to
establish Claude's "nobility." Perhaps even more importantly, however, Claude's
military adventures supply him with the wealth he uses to redeem Pauline's father
from bankruptcy and to save Pauline from an unwanted marriage to Beauseant.
14 DURHAM
the crushing of his pride: "His very face is changed. A breaking heart
Does its work soon (E L, 9 5)!" But, learning from Pau I i ne of her steadfast
love for him, he uses the booty from his Italian conquests to extricate
Pauline's now bankrupt father and rescue her, once again, from
Beauseant. He then claims his wife, whose forgiveness he humbly
accepts, and he recovers his stainless family honor.
Claude's passage from feckless juvenile to humbled but honorable
adult is paralleled by Pauline's evolution. As Claude's head has been
turned by "Love," so Pauline's is turned by the influence of her pompous
and socially ambitious mother. However, she is able to distinguish the
true man, with whom she falls in love, from the false "prince," and her
love undercuts her foibles and makes her a "good little girl (EL, 47)."
Knowledge of Claude's duplicity drives Pauline to the. brink of rejecting
him entirely, but her love for him tempers the metal of her character
("what was pride in prosperity, in affliction becomes virtue [EL, 72]"),
and she forgives him. At last, however, her pride is vanquished, and she
must beg Beauseant to mercifully help her father without demanding her
hand in return. So, emptied of pride and filled with a purified love, she
can be Claude's right mate. Pride, a distinctly aristocratic posture, leaves
no room in a character for the blooming of the kind of selfless love that
the code of domesticity established as the basis for the bourgeois
marriage. Claude is enmeshed in a juvenile fascination with "Love."
However, the superficial flaring of romantic allure soon fades without the
spiritual bond resulting from shared suffering. " Love" must also be
purged so true love can flourish. Both Claude and Pauline must be
cleansed of their pretensions to nobility before they can be partners in a
proper domestic alliance.
Domestic dramas such as the ones examined here would seem to be
out of touch with the realities of the last decade or so of the antebellum
period, a time noted in history for the impact of immigration, urbaniza-
tion, temperance, and abolition. The list of theatrical events convent ion-
ally seen as markers of the epoch would surely include F. S. Chanfrau's
great success in the role of Mose, the Fire Boy, in Benjamin A. Baker's A
Glance at New York (1848), the Astor Place Riot in 1849, the dramatiza-
tion of Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1852, W. W. Pratt's dramatization of
Timothy S. Arthur's Ten Nights in a Barroom and What I Saw There, and
Dian Boucicault's The Poor of New York (1857), dramatizing the
devastating effect of laissez faire banking and investment practices.
However, Steven Seidman's discussion of the connection between key
elements of the cult of domesticity and significant cultural and social
issues of the antebellum period suggests further the existence of a
domestic formation:
Domestic Formations
The new conjugal ideology fostered a consciousness of class
difference and moral superiority. A life governed by self-control
and spiritual goals was seen as higher than a life controlled by
impulse and desire. To the extent that these "other" social
groups [African-Americans and the new ethnics from Europe,
especially the Irish] were associated with sexual licentiousness,
disease, carnality, and excess, the ideology of spiritual love and
companionate marriage stood as proof of the moral superiority
of the middle class. By identifying their claims to moral superi-
ority with their ideals of love and marriage, the middle class
legitimated their claims to privilege and power. In other words,
the middle class legitimated their class aspirations to polit ical,
social, and cultural hegemony on the grounds of their intellec-
tual and moral fitness to rule. Renunciation of desire and its
sublimation into an ethic of work and spiritual love served as
proof of their superiorityY
15
The homologous relations between the ideological content of the plays
examined above and the cultural forms revealed by Cott, Halttunen, and
Seidman suggest the existence of an intricate intertextuality linking
domestic and romantic stage comedy popular in the antebellum years
with other expressive forms: advice literature, diaries, memoirs, and
letters. And it is this connection between a social ideal and dramatic
decorum manifest in character types that constructs a model for the social
role of the spectator. Popular domestic and romantic comedies, such as
the ones examined here, in which popular stars appeared on the stage of
one of the epoch's most prestigious theatres, would seem to indicate a
radiant celebration of domesticity, a moment at which a social/aesthetic
formation links the consciousness of a spectator through the transforma-
tional energies of a performance to the Victorian ideology of conjugal
love, a fundamental element of the bourgeois cultural system.
22
Seidman, 59.
journal of American Drama and Theatre 11 (Fall 1999)
Critiquing the "Huzza:"
The Historiography of the Astor Place Riots
jEFFREY ULLOM
Riots often occur when groups of people involved in social move-
ments resort to violence as a " last ditch" method of delivering their
message that the social order must change. Though the death and
destruction caused by riots have been well documented, people persist
in inciting violence to achieve social aims. Recent riots in the United
States have been a reaction to racial injustice, yet the history of riots in
this country reveals various motivations for violent mob action.
Concerning the causes of riots in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
America, historian Paul A. Gilje states, "Religious, ethnic, racial, and
class differences came into prominence and created divisions that
periodically erupted into bloody collective action. A riot ... tended to
have diverse goals, employ violence, and attack persons as well as
property."
1
Although contemporary theatres are perceived to be the
houses of high culture and refinement, early American theatres were
plagued often by riots and mob action. One of the most violent riots in
American history occurred at the Astor Place Opera House in 1849.
Most historians see this riot as resulting from socioeconomic tensions.
This view oversimplifies the origin of the riot; an examination of the
historical studies of the Astor Place Riot reveals that there were, in fact,
multiple causes and motivations for it.
Like most theatrical riots, the Astor Place Riot was, in actuality, a
three-day event.
2
The petty feud between two prominent actors, the
1
Paul A. Gilje, The Road to Mobocracy: Popular Disorder in New York City
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987), vii. All subsequent references
will be cited parenthetically in the text with the initi al s PG.
2
Theatre riots, like France's "Battle of Hugo' s Hernani" or the riot over Jarry's
Ubu Roi, occurred over multiple days. In the United States, riots involving Edmund
Kean in 1821 and 1825 both extended through several days. In most theatrical riots,
an initial event occurs one night in the theatre which causes excitement and rioting
the following day (Richard Moody, The Astor Place Riot [Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1958], 24-5). All subsequent references will be cited parenthetically
Astor Place Riot 17
brash American Edwin Forrest and the English tragedian Wi II iam Charles
Macready, climaxed on the night of May 10, 1849 when between twenty-
two and thirty-nine people were slain by an infantry regiment in the
streets of New York City.
3
As part of his farewell tour in America,
Macready had been performing Macbeth at the Astor Place Opera House;
at the Broadway Theatre, Forrest was presenting his version of the same
play. This direct competition incited many of Forrest' s loyal followers to
attend Macready's May 7th performance and shower the stage with eggs,
fruit, and other items while shouting " Huzza for native talent!" and
" Down with the codfish aristocracy!"
4
Macready retreated from the
theatre and planned for his immediate departure back to England;
however, a letter signed by numerous socialites and influential artistic
and political figures (including Herman Melville and Washington Irving)
persuaded Macready to resist mob-rule and perform again (RM, 110,
116). The Macready troupe waited several days in hopes that the
tensions would abate whi le newspapers continuously commented upon
the event (RM, 115). Although city officials and the press encouraged
Macready to cancel his May 1Oth performance (because Forrest was
performing the same show on the same night), Macready stubbornly
proceeded with his presentation of Macbeth (RM, 133). By the time the
curtain rose on Macready's production, the entire Astor Place Square was
packed solid with rioters (RM, 137). As the evening progressed and
infantries moved into position to protect the theatre, the mob became
unruly and attacked the policemen.
5
When Macready completed the
performance and left the stage, the crowd (inside and outside) erupted
and attempted to storm the theatre; soon, the order to respond was given,
in the text with the initials RM.
3
Garff B. Wilson, Three Hundred Years of American Drama and Theatre
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1982), 53, 55. There have been differing
accounts concerning how many rioters died that evening. Moody and the Cambridge
Guide cite a total of thirty-one (twenty-two at the scene and nine on a later date from
wounds incurred at the riot); original sources and Peter Buckl ey's st udy cite only
twenty-two dead (eighteen at the site with four later) (Cambridge Guide to Theatre,
Martin Ban ham, ed. [Cambridge: Cambridge Universi ty Press, 1992], 50-1 ).
4
David Grimsted, Melodrama Unveiled: American Theatre and Culture, 1800-
7850 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1968), 71. All subsequent references
will be cited parenthetical ly in the text with the ini tial s DG.
5
Wilson, 55.
18 ULLOM
and the militia fired directly into the crowd.
6
Many rioters assumed that
the militia was firing blanks and decided to charge again, resulting in
more deaths (RM 153-54). Fearing the complete destruction of the
theatre, Macready donned a disguise, passed through the rioting crowd
unnoticed, and hid in a nearby hotel for three hours until the riot calmed
(RM, 7).
7
Although the Astor Place Riot remains one of the most violent riots
in American history, few historical studies have focused upon the event.
Numerous historians use the occurrence as an example within their
books (usually to interpret social tensions in a specific light), but only two
books have been written solely on the riot: Richard Moody's The Astor
Place Riot and Peter Buckley's dissertation "To the Opera House: Culture
and Society in New York City, 1820-1860."
6
Moody provides a
complete account of the events surrounding the riot without concerning
himself with the social/cultural issues involved. His book focuses upon
several topics: the development and dissolution of Forrest and
Macready's relationship, the history of riots in America, and the events
occurring immediately before, during, and after the riot. Although he
refuses to provide any hypotheses or theories concerning social or
cultural motivations for the riot, his detailed research provides a wealth
of material that supports or contrasts with other versions of events. By
tracing the history of the participants in the riot and by ignoring
interdisciplinary factors, Moody's narrative evolves into an historical
study which emphasizes the internal motivations for the riot and, in turn,
rejects many oversimplified arguments that claim that the Astor Place Riot
was the result of class tensions.
Paul A. Gilje takes the opposite approach to the subject of riots and
does not focus upon the Astor Place Riot. In his book The Road to
Mobocracy, Gilje analyzes riots in the Jacksonian era for the sole purpose
of exposing their socioeconomic roots. As Gilje states, "These
animosities were aggravated by clearly defined special interests arising
6
Cambridge, 50.
7
Moody provides a wonderfully detailed account of the riot in his book, using
Macready's diary as a source for Macready's actions during the evening. The 1992
play Two Shakespearean Actors by Richard Nelson depicts the relationship between
Forrest and Macready and includes a nice scene where Macready is forced to sit and
wait while people outside scream for his death and the building's destruction. Nelson
takes a great deal of liberty by having Forrest trapped in the same hotel, allowing for
moments of tension and reconciliation.
8
Peter Buckley, "To the Opera House: Culture and Society in New York City,
1820-1860" (Ph.D. diss., State University of New York .State at Stony Brook, 1984).
Astor Place Riot
19
from socioeconomic conditions (PG, vii)." Gilje's study provides useful
contextual information concerning other theatrical riots in America
during this period which can be used to correct the impression created
by a number of studies that consider the Astor Place Riot a singular
phenomenon. Gilje shows that the violent riot of 1849 was nothing more
than one event in a progression. In his afterword, Gilje mentions the
Astor Place occurrence but only in a list with other riots, signifying that
the emphasis of his study should be placed upon the underlying social
tensions (which continue to exist) as opposed to the actual event (whi ch
simply was one in a series of riots) (PG, 286).
In the beginning of his book Highbrow/Lowbrow, Lawrence Levine
stresses the need for objectivity in any historical endeavor. In his study
of Shakespeare's popularity in nineteenth-century America, Levine details
his process for achieving objectivity: a historian must "perceive
[Shakespeare] though the prism of nineteenth-century culture. " Levine
utilizes this prism to study "high"/"low" culture and the transformation
of Shakespeare into elitist culture. As a historian, Levine is sensitive to
critiquing the nineteenth-century social hierarchy because such an
approach would be a criticism of culture rather than an objective
analysis. He attempts to "enter into the spirit of the nineteenth century"
and to understand society's love of Shakespeare as well as the events
surrounding the Astor Place Riot. Levine discusses the social (class)
tensions contributing to the outbreak of the riot, but he contextualizes the
"class issue" in terms of an ongoing cultural debate.
9
David Grimsted's Melodrama Unveiled focuses upon the
construction and function of nineteenth-century drama and audience as
a microcosm of society and its values. According to Grimsted, "Drama
was the major form of public entertainment available to all classes and
the art form most wholly and immediately dependent on popular appeal
(DG, ix). " Grimsted analyzes the psychological condition of the
participants in the riot (both the actors and the audience) and attempts to
summarize how their attitudes determined the causes and results of the
riot and accurately reflected the tensions within
American society. Also, Jack Fincher' s article, "Raising the Curtain on a
Bloody Riot and Stark Mayhem," attempts to expose the social attitudes
9
Lawrence Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy
in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), 5-8, 33, 36. All subsequent
references will be cited parentheti cally in the text with the initials LL.
20
ULLOM
concerning immigration in the 1840s and detai I how those hostilities
influenced and incited the Astor Place riot.
10
Most of the scholars who have studied the Astor Place riot refer to the
event as a reaction to (or against) a cultural or social hierarchy. Culture,
according to Levine, "is a process, not a fixed condition; it is the product
of unremitting interaction between the past and the present (LL, 33)."
Levine attempts to understand the culture and the mind-set, that is the
cultural tastes and attitudes, of those involved with the Astor Place riot.
Shakespeare was part of a shared society and culture, yet, somehow,
Shakespeare eventually became the property of the higher classes (or
"polite" culture). (LL, 15, 31) Levine proposes that this labeling and
seizing of Shakespeare as "high" culture resulted from the elite's reaction
to and rejection of the behavior of the lower-class members of the
audience. According to Levine, the lower classes were accustomed to a
hierarchical seating arrangement (si nee the theatre represented a
microcosm of society, they expected to procure the poorer seats) . The
lower classes were also accustomed to behaving in whatever manner
they chose (usually yelling and throwing objects) as a means of
commenting on the performance. However, when the elite members of
society constructed their own theatres (e.g. the Astor Place Opera House),
the lower classes lost their power to comment upon or dictate cultural
tastes. (LL, 61) From Levine's perspective, the riot was rooted in the
prohibition of the lower classes from participating in the development of
cultural standards for New York society; "in a larger and truer sense, it
was a clash over questions of cultural values, over the role of people in
culture (LL, 66)." In concluding his argument, Levine states, "The Astor
Place Riot, which in essence was a struggle for power and cultural
authority within theatrical space, was simultaneously an indication of and
a catalyst for the cultural changes that came to characterize the United
States at the end of the century (LL, 68)."
Gilje also argues that challenges within the cultural hierarchy
provided the motivation for the Astor Place Riot. Although he states that
the establishment of upper-class theatres was influenced by
socioeconomic factors, the middle and upper classes, according to Gilje,
desired to separate themselves from the lower classes due to a difference
in cultural taste. The aristocratic members of society, tired of the rowdy
behavior and demands for "low" culture in theatre presentations,
preferred to enjoy their own "type of culture" and to satisfy their own
cultural tastes. (PG, 252) Gilje's argument exposes a difference in
10
Jack Fincher, " Raising the Curtain on a Bloody Riot and Stark Mayhem,"
Smithsonian 16 (October 1985): 170.
Astor Place Riot
21
cultural attitudes (or the difference between how each group viewed
culture); Gilje's study suggests that higher classes stressed the importance
of "art" while the lower classes simply enjoyed the "experience." In his
book Horrible Prettiness, historian Robert G. Allen links the cultural
hierarchy directly to the social hierarchy, stating that "the upper class
control over theatrical performance and audience behavior was
increasingly challenged by lower-class theatre-goers who did not share
the elite's tastes, manners, or notions of commercial leisure."
11
Almost every historian who studies the Astor Place Riot suggests that
prevalent socioeconomic tensions caused the riots. Levine begins
Highbrow/ Lowbrow by looking at the people who were arrested during
and after the riot; almost all those detained by the police (according to
Levine and Moody) were lower class workers, suggesting that the mob of
rioters was specifically a lower-class gathering. At the time of the riot,
daily publications viewed the episode "as a protest against 'aristocratizing
the pit' in such new and exclusive theatres as the Astor Place Opera
House and warned that in the future the republic's rich would have to 'be
mindful where its luxuries offend (LL, 65-66)."' Levine also interprets the
rally held in City Hall Park on the following day (May 11th) as an effort
to stress the unification of the lower classes and to rebel against the
controlling aristocracy. (RM, 178; LL, 65) By looking at articles published
in magazines and newspapers that covered the riot, Levine concludes that
one of the lasting effects of the Astor Place Riot was the confirmation for
all citizens that distinctive higher and lower classes existed in society. (LL,
66)
Grimsted agrees with Levine concerning the separation of classes
after the riot, but Grimsted argues that the class separation was evident
and understood (if not accepted) before the riot occurred. According to
Grimsted, the riot (and the events occurring after the riot) did not change
dramatically how the classes affected each other outside of the theatre.
In other words, the clash between classes did not alter the social
hierarchy in the everyday world; therefore, in order to study the true
cause or effect of the riot, Grimsted stresses the need to study the theatre
and its participants. (DG, 74-75)
At the beginning of his consideration of theatre riots, Gilje states that
" the contrast between middle-class ideas of decorum and the popular
disorder of the lower-classes became especially evident in the city's
theatres (PG, .246)." Gilje claims that theatre disturbances and riots
exposed the middle class's critique of and disdain for rowdyism, its
11
Robert G. Allen, Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American Culture (Chapel
Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, 1991); 51.
22
ULLOM
perceptions concerning the increase of rioting in theatres, and its irritation
with the lower classes. In hopes of discouraging rowdy behavior, the
middle and upper classes sat passively during theatrical performances
which, in turn, irked the lower-class audience members even more. Gilje
is cautious, however, not to label riots as exclusively lower-class
engagements. Although he reports that most people who were arrested
in riots during the 1820s and 1830s were lower-class citizens, he
nonetheless claims that many rioters were members of the upper class.
(PG, 242, 246-47) He provides the example of a well-to-do citizen,
William Hopkins, who participated in a riot against a local theatre in
1822 because he believed that the theatre was not performing its function
for society. He believed that citizens should have the right to throw pies,
shout at the actors, and indulge in other actions if the theatre did not
fulfill its main purpose: providing entertainment. (PG, 252) The
suggestion that riots in nineteenth-century America did not involve only
the lower class calls into question the socioeconomic explanation for the
Astor Place Riot.
Although class issues were a rallying cry for action against elitist
theatres and standards, many historians suggest that socioeconomic
tensions were products of propaganda used to generate heat over threats
or insults to nationalistic ideals. (PG, 247-48) Grimsted depicts the May
11th rally at City Hill Park in terms of nationalism; the rally was
promoted and hosted by the Actions of the American Committee, which
declared that people had to decide whether to support England or the
United States. Posters advertising the event expressed patriotic themes:
"WORKING MEN, shall AMERICANS or ENGLISH RULE in this city?"
12
According to Grimsted, this "England vs. America" propaganda incited
numerous riots: "The most serious riots were touched off by insults, real
or alleged, that English stars made against the United States." An
example of Americans rioting for nationalistic pride occurred in 1821
when Kean insulted Boston audiences by refusing to perform; when this
"insult" was published in the Boston Gazette, the audience rioted at
Kean's theatre, protesting the audacity and rudeness of English actors.
(DG, 65, 66)
Levine expands upon the "nationalism" argument by exposing
American society's attitudes towards British culture. Levine claims that
Americans perceived their own culture to be inferior to the British
culture. He finds it significant that the play that sparked the riot was
Macbeth at the time of the riot; therefore, American audiences were
12
james Rees,. The Life of Edwin Forrest (Philadelphia: 1874), 337. Quoted in
Grimsted, 72.
Astor Place Riot 23
delighted to attend performances of Shakespeare (even though the
performance was not what we would normally consider to be
"Shakespeare").
13
In 1843, the new curtain at the St. Charles Theatre in
New York "depicted Shakespeare in a halo of light being borne aloft on
the wings of the American eagle. Shakespeare was not only
domesticated; he was humanized (LL, 23)." The meaning of this symbol
is twofold: first, it is an admission of American culture's inferiority to
English culture, and two, it shows that American society was willing to
adapt English culture in its own fashion until it became "Americanized."
The depiction of Shakespeare on an American eagle is symbolic of the
fight against cultural domination by the English. Concerning the Astor
Place Riots, the mob reacted to the establishment of new theatres which
validated the superiority of English culture and lessened the opportunity
for native works to thrive.
14
Gilje proposes that British actors were resented because they were
engaged in an international acting competition. They were "doubly
resented" because they competed against native actors and, in turn, tried
to maintain artistic control over American culture. This idea of
competition can be applied easily to the Astor Place Riot where
Macready and Forrest performed the same show on the same night;
Macready's insistence on performing in the face of intense civic and press
pressure to cancel was perceived as a threat to the ideal American actor.
Gilje also states that the riots were "probably directed at the social
pretensions of the middle and upper classes, who openly mimicked the
trappings of English culture and society"; in other words, the rioters
attacked citizens who rejected American culture and preferred Engl ish
culture (an anti-nationalistic position). (PG, 247-48) Gilje validates his
argument by providing another example of a riot involving British actors
who were attacked simply because of their nationality. British actor
joshua R. Anderson "arrived in New York accompanied by stories that he
had spoken abusively on board ship and that he continued his abuse after
landing in America."
15
During his first performance at the Park Theatre,
the crowd heckled and booed Anderson while throwing eggs and fruit.
By the fourth night of his engagement, a mob outside of the theatre broke
13
Levine, 1-2. This attitude sti II permeates American culture.
14
This attitude can be seen in one of the verbal assaults launched against
Macready during his performance: " Huzza for native talent!"
15
Levine, 62. Neither Gilje nor Levine explains how the publ ic learned of his
insulting behavior; I assume, therefore, that the press played an integral role in
relaying the information.
24
ULLOM
windows and attempted to break down the door. In order to "appeal to
the rioter's patriotism and Anglophobia, the theatre manager displayed
the American and tricolor flags from the upper windows of the theatre";
this act calmed the mob. (PG, 248) As a result of the commotion and in
an attem.pt to attract patronage, the Park Theatre's rival, the Bowery
Theatre, changed its name to the "American Theatre, Bowery (LL, 62-
63)." Adding further validity to the argument that nationalism was a
cause of the Astor Place Riot, Jack Fincher states that both Macready and
Forrest were "incredibly nationalistic" about their theatres and that they
constantly insulted each other's productions and culture.
16
Directly related to the suggestion that nationalism sparked the riot at
the Astor Place Opera House, historians propose the argument that ideas
concerning democratic principles also motivated the riot. Levine refers
to the importance of the "individual will" to the American ideal ;
concerning theatres, this belief refers to the assumption that audiences
were responsible for their own actions (and were encouraged to take
action when necessary). New York audiences and citizens were
propelled into action by anti-democratic events leading up to the Astor
Place Riot. First, Shakespeare was perceived as common property in
American culture; when Macready "seized" Shakespeare and refined it
to meet specific cultural standards, he contradicted the democratic
principle of sharing public property. (LL, 40-42) Second, the
establishment of separate theatres challenged the democratic ideals of
society by excluding the lower classes; obviously, any member of the
lower class could have attended the Astor Place Opera House (as many
did on May 1Oth), but the lower classes believed that the standards and
restrictions of behavior were oppressive and that, therefore, the theatre
was exclusive. (ll, 60)
Grimsted too argues that the defense of democratic ideals instigated
the riot. He quotes a woman at the Park Theatre: "Unfortunately, we [the
upper class] of ourselves are not sufficiently numerous to support an
Opera, so we have been forced to admit the People." Like the woman
at the Park Theatre, the elite members of society would have preferred to
exclude rowdy citizens and create a select (if undemocratic) audience.
(DG, 56) Grimsted also shows that democracy was inherent in American
theatres. According to Grimsted, "The democracy of the early
nineteenth-century theatre was highly primitive and easily denigrated into
mob rule." Audiences enjoyed exercising or implementing their control
over the theatre and the performance; " the theory [of audience control]
16
Fincher, 174.
Astor Place Riot
25
had great appeal to a democratic people, zealous of inalienable rights of
all kinds (DG, 67-68)."
In his book, Levine provides numerous and thorough accounts of
unruly audiences in an attempt to describe the role of the audience:
To envision nineteenth-century theatre audiences correctly, one
might do well to visit a contemporary sporting event in which
the spectators not only are similarly heterogeneous but are also-
in the manner of both the nineteenth century and the
Elizabethan era- more than an audience; they are parti ci pants
who can enter into the action on the field, who feel a sense of
immediacy and at times even control, who art iculate their
opinions and feelings vocally and unmistakably. (LL, 26)
The audience's methods of approval and disapproval (hissing, cheering,
etc.) blurred the line between the actors and the audience. When
different theatres were established to attract different types of audiences,
the influence of the audience in the "elitist" theatre was diminished.
Furthermore, these different theatres encouraged different acting styles;
at the Astor Place Opera House, Macready's old-English style was
appreciated and the expressiveness of lower-class patrons was
discouraged (rowdy audience members often were escorted out of the
building). Levine presents the origins of the riot in this context: once the
lower classes lost influence, the theatres could no longer measure social
dissonance. (LL, 29, 57-60) Once the elitists removed themselves from
the sphere of social influence, the lower classes resorted to violence as
a means of expression.
Grimsted considers the audience members " managers" of the
theatres because they exerted power over the production. (DG, 47) The
patrons' involvement in the performances was so great that the audience,
according to Grimsted, "assumed roles as conspicuous as those on stage
(DG, 68) ." Since the nineteenth-century audience controlled and
contributed to the performance, it was abl e to insure that the production
met its standards and satisfied its desires; this sense of audience control
helped make the nineteenth-century theatre a legitimate social institution
(dependent upon social opinion). (DG, 62) Grimsted, therefore, also
argues that the Astor Place Riot resulted from two circumstances:
exclusion of the lower cl ass from the arti sti c and social environment, and
the el imination of its means of expression. Grimsted supports hi s
argument by considering the Astor Place Riot in the context of its
aftermath:
26
ULLOM
Plays did not change appreciably, nor did spectators give up the
reins of applause, hissing, and patronage. But something of the
edge and imperativeness of audience sovereignty was lost.
Never again were America's audiences to play such a prominent
role in dramatic presentations. The process had begun which
would eventuate in the passive spectator in front of the silver
screen. The audience's power had been vital [and] absolute.
(DG, 74)
Like Levine and Grimsted, Gilje sees audience expressiveness as its
way of influencing the theatre event. For instance, he discusses an 1817
theatre ri ot incited by an actor who refused to sing a song requested by
the audience as an example of the audience exerting its control over the
performance. (PG, 247) In addition, Gilje discusses the counter-
movement by the middle and upper classes against lower class demands
for control. When the elite reacted with horror to the riots that resu I ted
from audience-control issues, the theatres that catered to the middle and
upper classes began to implement decorum standards by printing " house
rules" on the tickets; this notice gave the theatre management the right
to eject any unruly patron who did not abide by the elitist standards of
conduct. (PG, 251-52) The Astor Place Riots can be interpreted as a
response to the of behavioral standards in public
theatres.
In Horrible Prettiness, Robert Allen stresses the importance of
audience control by suggesting that theatre patrons (of all classes) realized
that whoever controlled the show also controlled the society. In this
sense, the patrons "in the boxes and those who use the theatre as an
instrument of social and moral control" viewed the riots as "nagging
reminders of the connection between theatre and disorder: playful
ontological instability on-stage was reproduced all too threateningly on
a social level this side of the footlights."
17
Allen points out that the
conflict over control touched everyone involved in theatre: "This period
represents a struggle between audiences and theatre management (with
actors frequently caught in the middle) over ... what rights and entitlements
were attendant upon the purchase of a theatre ticket."
18
In view of this
ongoing struggle and its implications, the outbreak of the Astor Place Riot
is not surprising.
17
Allen, 58.
18
Ibid., 55.
Astor Place Riot 27
Levine provides an insightful discussion of the function of theatre in
society: American theatres . were a microcosm of society since they
entertained all classes and represented the balance of those classes in
society. (LL, 25) Levine employs Erving Coffman' s term " focus
gathering" (" a set of people who relate to one another through the
medium of a common activity") to analyze the Astor Place Riot. If
theatres functioned as both a microcosm of society and as a place for
"focus gathering," then by excluding the lower classes and limiting their
expressiveness, theatre represented a serious threat to the stabi lity of
society (or simply a threat to the lower classes). The theatres of the
nineteenth century represented arenas in which social events could
unfold or be manifest; once the higher classes abandoned the public
arena, the lower classes lost their medium of expression, and the theatre
lost its function as an institution in/for society. Levine concludes his
discussion of the function of theatre by stating that after the Astor Place
Riot, " theatre no longer functioned as an expressive form that embodied
all classes within a shared public space, nor did Shakespeare much
longer remain the common property of all Americans (LL, 68). "
Grimsted, like Levine, emphasizes the social aspect of theatre; he
describes the nineteenth-century theatre as a "social dub" where patrons
came to be seen, to talk with each other, and to participate in the
performance. (DG, 58) He argues that the theatre was extremely
sensitive to public opinion, and that once the elite members of society
abandoned the "social club" to form their own, the lower classes were
left without a dance partner (so to speak).
The final theatrical issue to examine is, perhaps, the most simple,
namely the role of the actors, Macready, and Forrest. The initi al cause of
the Astor Place Riot stemmed from an occurrence at the Theatre Royal in
Edinburgh in 1846; at Macready's performance of Richelieu, Forrest
hissed at him. Forrest's .outbreak was not unwarranted since Macready,
according to Forrest and his supporters, had planted members in Forrest's
audiences who would boo and hiss throughout Forrest's performance.
(RM, 52, 49) In part, then, the Astor Place Riot was sparked by a pre-
existing feud. However, citizens who participated in the ri ot claimed that
the feud was only a partial motive for their actions. (LL, 66)
Moody depicts Macready as brooding, snooty, and constantly jealous
of Forrest; at the same time, he presents Forrest as an innocent underdog
being attacked and controlled by "the system." There are two problems
with Moody's depiction of the two actors: first, Macready's accounts of
the events leading up to the riot need to be taken with a grain of salt since
most of Macready's diary (on which Moody relies) was written many
years after the riot. Second, although Moody paints Mac ready as a
despot whom all Americans resented because of the feud with Forrest,
28
ULLOM
the fact is that Macready outsold Forrest outside of New York. (RM, 45)
Concerning the individual acting styles, Levine suggest.s that Forrest's
brash and rugged persona "contained qualities of the American spirit"
while Macready's approach reflected the refined style of the gentry. (LL,
63) The possibility that differences in acting styles or the actors' pre-
existing feud incited the Astor Place Riot becomes less compelling when
the event is placed in an historical context.
Historians suggest numerous contradictions that may have
contributed to the tense situation at the Astor Place Opera House.
Historian Jack Fincher claims that the riot was provoked by working-class
men who were in job competition with recent immigrants. Fincher
states, "The Old world had been dumped on the New to take the bread
out of honest men's mouths and serve as an unwanted tax burden." In
this view, Macready was the immigrant who threatened the stability of
employment. Fincher states that the native workers were "ripe for any
budding political movement that capitalized on their fear of things
foreign."
19
The riot was also supported by recent immigrants (mainly
Irish) for whom Forrest represented American ideals and the possibility
of inclusion in American society and culture.
20
Political issues also may have heightened the intensity of the Astor
Place Riot. Moody details Forrest's association with the political process,
including his invitation and refusal to become a member of the House of
Representatives. Forrest was a famous pub I ic speaker and pub I ic figure,
often appearing at July 4th celebrations for the Democratic party. (RM,
42-43) G i lje suggests that Macready represented (or acted as an
ambassador for) British political policies. Gilje mentions the possibility
that many participants in the riot were using Macready as a symbol for
the British government and were reacting against English abolitionists.
Finally, Moody hints at the possibility that the rioters were rebelling
against an oppressive government that supported the aristocracy. Using
evidence from the rally in the park, Moody discusses the working class's
perception of the police as "obstructers of justice" and as representing
the power of the aristocratic government. Gilje suggests that rioters
perceived the police as censors of their rights of expression. (PG, 250-51)
Many historians have noted also the influence of the press. Actors
and other public figures utilized the power of the press as a means to
express their gratitude or to defend themselves. When Edmund Kean
refused to perform, he quickly learned of the public backlash against him
19
Fincher, 171.
2
Cambridge, 50; Fincher, 169. According to Moody, the first person killed was
Thomas Kiernan, an Irish immigrant (Moody, 142).
Astor Place Riot 29
through the press; his first response was to acknowledge his error and to
apologize to the public by sending a notice to the Boston paper.
Throughout the development and climax of the Macready/Forrest feud,
the two actors traded barbs back and forth in the press during their
competing shows in Philadelphia. (RM, 24, 75) Both actors attempted to
justify themselves and gain acceptance through the press, and numerous
newspapers (especially the New York Herald) provided continuous
coverage of the quarrel. (RM, 111, 88) Concerning the Astor Place Riots,
the press interpreted the actions and reactions of the participants (the
newspapers took sides). (RM, 66, 73) After the riot calmed, the
Philadelphia press, an objective observer, blamed the New York press for
inciting the riot and causing the destruction. (RM, 183)
Was Astor Place Riot caused by class conflict, nationalism, domestic
politics, the institutional politics of the theatre, a feud between two
actors, a press eager to boost its circulation? Most likely the riot resulted
from a combination of these and other factors yet to be explored. The
riot was as complex as the society it arose from and the theatre it
attacked. Though the Astor Place Riot marked a turning point in
American theatre history, the only complete study of it is a book, Richard
Moody's, published in 1958. Certainly the time is long overdue for a
thorough reconsideration of this important historical event.
journal of American Drama and Theatre 11 (Fall 1999)
Maude Adams as joan of Arc
at the Harvard Stadium
YVONNE SHAFER
"This is the biggest thing ever undertaken by any woman, except the
one she is representing."
1
This is a comment made by a spectator at the
extraordinary production of joan of Arc in the Harvard Stadium in 1909.
It was presented on June 22 and had the biggest audience for_ any single
performance in the history of the American theatre up to that time. -
Critics and audiences perceived the performance as the height of Maude
Adams's career as an actress, and the production drew world-wide
attention. Yet this historical event is practically forgotten today and
virtually ignored in most descriptions of Maude Adams's career. This
paper will discuss the reasons for the production, the challenges, its
reception and significance, and its relationship to the image of Maude
Adams.
At the time Maude Adams conceived this production she was thirty-
seven years old and was performing in Twelfth Night at Harvard. Ten
years earlier she had been voted the most popular actress in the United
States. By 1906 she was the richest and most admired actress in the
country despite the fact that she never gave interviews and was seldom
recognized in public.
2
She had performed in Peter Pan, had outdrawn
Sarah Bernhardt when they played rival productions of Rostand's L'Aiglon
in New York. While visiting Harvard, she was given a tour of the campus
and saw the tiny Germanic Museum. She was very interested in the idea
of furthering German-American cultural ties and felt that there should be
a larger museum. She decided to perform in Schiller's jungfrau von
1
Anna Alice Chapin, " joan of Arc at Harvard," The Metropolitan Magazine,
(1909) : 516-526. All subsequent references will be cited parenthetically in the text.
Most of the references in this essay are to articles or fragments of articles in the
Harvard Theatre Collection (HTC) . I am grateful for Annette Fern's gracious help.
2
Cyril Clemens, "Some Recollections of Maude Adams," Hobbies; The
Magazine for Collectors (November 1953): 127-130.
Maude Adams
31
Orleans (which had never been performed in English in the United
States) and give the profits to the Germanic Museum.
3
Adams not only wanted to assist the Germanic Museum, she wanted
to fulfill a long-held dream. She was quite a scholar, had a huge library,
and read several languages. She had traveled widely in France and spoke
French fluently . . For twelve years she had done research on the historical
character of joan of Arc, the important places in her life, the art of the
time, and the history.
4
In 1909 the Maid had been canonized so this
seem.ed the ideal time for Adams to portray her on stage.
5
On her return to New York she went to see Charles Frohman and
told him her plans for a performance in the Harvard Stadium. She said
she wanted a really good battle scene with at least one hundred horses
and six hundred men-at-arms in suits of armor. The amazed Frohman
responded that the whole thing sounded crazy. Adams's response was to
return the next day after starting plans for the coronation s e e n ~ which
she told him would require one thousand people in the procession. "I tell
you you are mad," Frohman answered with a laugh. Not discouraged,
she returned the next day to say she did not need one thousand, but
thirteen hundred. Seeing that she really was in earnest, "Frohman looked
at her, while the magnitude of the proposition began to grip him. 'Do
you think you can handle it?"' When she responded positively, he put
his "whole staff and vast organization at her disposal ... fifteen stage
managers and carte blanche as to scenery and costumes, and told her to
go ahead (516-517)."
The challenge of the production can be understood by looking at
some of the numbers involved. There were approximately 1700 persons
in the performance, 150 knights in full armor, a total of 800 men in suits
of armor, 200 citizens of Rheims, 150 women and children, 120
musicians, 90 singers, a boys' choir, and 60 speaking parts.
6
The
newspapers seized upon this event, and it was written about throughout
the world. The writers emphasized the size of the production and the
fact that Maude Adams was totally in charge of it. A number mentioned
the fact that Frohman himself was in no position to assist her personally
3
Edward Congdon Kavanagh, "Maude Adams at the Stadium," unidentified
journal HTC, Uuly 1909): 451-455.
.
4
"Maude Adams as 'Joan of Arc'," unidentified clipping HTC.
5
Charles Darnton, "Stageland," unidentified clipping HTC.
6
[n.a.], "Gigantic Production," Boston Globe, 16 May 1909, [n.p.]
32
SHAFER
as he was in England. Many questioned how a woman could take on
such a challenge-particularly such a fragile, delicate woman.
It is not surprising that people were amazed that Maude Adams could
organize and direct such a daunting enterprise. When John Drew (with
whom she had acted many roles) described her, he said she was really
too frail to be a leading lady, but that, nevertheless, she was never ill and
never missed a rehearsal or a performance.
7
It was widely reported that
when she was in a play, she spent all of the rest of the time in bed. A
caption for a photograph of her reading in bed stated, "To conserve her
energies for her work, Miss Adams eats in bed, studies in bed, writes and
reads in bed. Her exercise she gets during her performances. "
8
She was
also supposed to be a very shy person who avoided contact with others
and was temperamentally melancholy. Because of her close connection
with the Cenacle Order of nuns (to whom she gave her four hundred acre
Lake Ronkonkoma, Long Island estate for their convent), it was often
rumored that she was going to withdraw from the world and become a
nun.
Because her private life was private, it was not generally known that
she was, in fact, a very active, independent person. Between plays, she
rode horses, swam in her little lake, and entertained guests at gourmet
dinners . . On one vacation she traveled through Egypt with two other
women and a native guide, riding horses and sleeping in tents. People
who worked with her knew her as a woman with a clear idea of what she
wanted in a production and how to get it. The critic David Gray did a
great deal of research in order to write a lengthy analysis of her in 1911.
He interviewed people who worked with her, and he described her as
"An Absolute Despot in Her Profession" and "A Remarkable Stage
Manager." He noted that hers was a despotism of love and persuasion,
and that she was surrounded by "slaves and adorers, " some of whom .
were stage managers. These reported that she often disagreed with them
and had ideas which seemed wildly extravagant and unbusinesslike, but,
as one confessed, "the worst of it is, the woman is always right. " Gray
stated, "'Peter Pan' was thought to be a certain fai lure by her manage-
ment and was produced only at her most urgent insistence. 'joan of Arc'
was regarded as an impossibility, yet it proved in her hands perhaps the
greatest and most effective dramatic spectacle of which we have a record,
if we except the Passion Play. " He noted that she took absolute personal
command. " There were seventeen hundred people in the spectacl e . . .
7
John Drew, My Years on the Stage (New York: Dutton, 1921 ), 170.
8
David Gray, " Maude Adams a Publ ic Influence, " Hampton's Magazine Uune
1911): 733.
Maude Adams 33
yet the thing never appalled her or got out of hand, and she arranged and
decided all even to the minutest detail."
9
The same opinion was
expressed by many writers who covered the performance. Chapin
reported that Adams's friends laughed at her because she wanted to do
everything herself. '"Do you think,'gravely inquired one of her company,
'that you will have time to shoe all those horses?"' (522)
All of Adams's inner strength and executive abilities were tested in
this enormous enterprise. Many writers asked how she did it all. A
picture of her organization and her approach can be pieced together from
the many things written about the project. As soon as Frohman gave her
the opportunity to go ahead, she made a trip to Harvard with the noted
artist John W. Alexander. He had worked closely with her for many years
to create costumes and settings for Peter Pan and other plays. He and his
wife (who made the famous costume Adams wore as Peter and her
costumes for this production) were among Adams's closest friends.
Adams and Alexander examined the stadium, giying particular attention
to the acoustics. In the months before . the production, Adams was
performing in New York in j . M. Barrie's What Every Woman Knows. At
the same time she was working with Alexander to create a model for the
set which was four feet wide, with all of the hills, trees, model soldiers,
and horses. Because the lighting was so important and Adams was so
deeply involved in planning it, the model was equipped with electric
I ights. She and Alexander worked together to create an authentically
correct picture of the world of joan of Arc. Both she and Alexander had
done research on the costumes and settings. Her first costume was based
on a painting in the Metropolitan Museum by Bastien-Lepage and the
armor was a copy of that of the statu.e of Joan at the Cathedral of
Rheims.
10
The stadium itself was a plain space of ten acres which was
to be transformed into the countryside of France. Before the opening The
Harvard Crimson indicated the work which was needed:
It was necessary to construct various slopes and inclines to give
to the stage the proper effect of a long perspective. The vast sky
cyclorama, stretched around the stage, heightens the illusion.
The entire stone base of the stadium has been covered with
evergreen to give the aspect of distant woods. Several trees have
been erected in the foreground and on the .left side of the stage,
a winding rocky pass has been constructed over which Miss
9
Ibid., 735.
10
Unidentified clipping from The Blue Book Magazine, HTC.
34
SHAFER
Adams will charge, disappearing behind the trees in the dis-
tance.11
Adams delegated work to her many assistants, including a German
actor, Gustav von Seyffertitz, who acted two roles and assisted with the
staging. Nevertheless, Adams was involved in all aspects as the
production moved forward. She asked to have a battle created but didn't
like it, so she created one based on written descriptions and famous
paintings of battles. She worked constantly with Alexander, changing the
set frequently. On one occasion she came to a Monday performance and
said she had spent a lovely Sunday: "I inspected eighty supers in nine
different costumes each." (Again, we see the scale of this production.
Here were 720 costumes for the supers alone, each historically correct.)
On another supposed day of rest for the actress, she went to Boston to see
how the scenery was being developed in the stadium. (519)
Adams and Alexander had worked out a very clear time table and
stuck to it. While the construction took place in Cambridge, she
rehearsed the speaking roles in New York. The fourteen hundred
supernumeraries were divided into eight divisions and twenty-four
subdivisions. Each squad had a captain and these captains traveled to
New York to rehearse with Adams. Meanwhile the 150 "crack riders"
of the National Guard of Massachusetts (many of whom were graduates
of Harvard) rehearsed for months in the stadium. (520) In "Gigantic
Production," it was noted that, "various chiefs of departments empow-
ered by Charles Frohman have been hard at work perfecting details under
the direction of Miss Adams since December."
12
On May 16 Adams and Alexander traveled to Harvard to inspect the
electrical plant being constructed. On June 5 Adams closed What Every
Woman Knows despite the fact that it was still sold out. She immediately
went to Boston to take complete charge. On June 14 the professional
actors, suits of armor, and hundreds of costumes arrived in Boston. There
were trappings for one hundred mounted spearmen, costumes for nobles,
monks, and citizens. People who saw the collection of swords and armor
said it was "the most elaborate assemblage of stage paraphernalia ever
gathered under one roof in this country."
13
Adams then began rehearsing
the actors in the Boston Colonial Theatre. As soon as possible she moved
rehearsals to the stadium. These were very intense rehearsals lasting for
11
[n.a.), '"Joan of Arc' Tonight," The Harvard Crimson (22 june 1909): 1.
12
" Gigantic Production."
13
"The Production of St. joan in the Stadium, " unidentified clipping HTC.
Maude Adams 35
many hours. Many of the performers were volunteers who could only
rehearse at night, so she had fifteen hour days scheduled. In addition, she
had conferences with Alexander, the stage managers, and the men in
charge of constructing the lighting station and creating the lighting effects.
Also, she had to train her horse, a great white charger from her stable
in Lake Ronkonkoma. This charger, although beloved by Adams, was a
great trial during rehearsals and was nicknamed "the great white plague"
(or Tuberculosis) by the rest of the company. It was apt to leap off the hil l
and otherwise put Adams into danger. The first time the lighting was
tried, Adams rode up the back of the hill and as she appeared at the top
there was a blaze of light. "A searchlight bigger than those used on the
biggest of our battleships had been installed. It was too powerful; horse
and woman alike were so blinded at rehearsal that there was real danger
that both would go over the rocky rampart, and it was abandoned for a
softer light."
14
Of course, Frohman and others were opposed from the
beginning- to her exposing herself to the danger of the half-hour long
battle scene. It was generally known that there was a double provided
for her in the hope that she would not perform in that scene on the night
of presentation. But Adams was determined: "She would ride at the head
of her troops, and she did. She did not want to play joan, she wanted to
be joan, and to feel as Joan felt when she swept along the slope, with the
enemy in front and the flower of the French chivalry behind her (520)."
With all of the rehearsals and consultations Adams got little sleep.
That was not unusual, however, as she was an insomniac who often
made appointments with electricians or other workers in the middle of
the night. Electric lighting for the stage was a great passion for Adams.
She had begun acting when gas lighting was still the norm and had
perceived the wonderful possibilities of electricity. Even as a young star
she was often observed on ladders working with the lighting, or painting
colors on lamps. In her travels to Europe she had visited many theatres
to examine the lighting, taking a special interest in the lighting equipment
at the Burg Theater in Vienna. In order to understand the actual processes
involved in lighting, she had taken a course in mathematics at Trinity
University in Ireland one summer. Later in her career she would work as
a consultant for General Electric in developing stage I ighting. Her plans
for the lighting for joan of Arc required the construction of a special
powerhouse on the Harvard grounds and used fifty thousand feet of
wiring.
15
This was part of the activity which took place in the weeks
14
[n.a.], "joan of Arc in Stadium," Boston Globe, 23 June 1909, [n.p.]
15
"Turning Stadium into a Theater," unidentified clipping HTC.
36
SHAFER
before the rehearsal began in the stadium. In "Gigantic Production," the
Boston Globe reported, "It will require several weeks to install the
necessary wiring, switchboards, etc. Spoken cues will obviously be
inadequate, so entrances and exits will be governed by colored lights."
16
Reviewers noted the lighting innovations Adams was introducing into the
production. One writer commented, "The system of illumination is quite
unique in theatrical performance. Six arc lights have been placed around
the top of the Stadium and these will be turned off just previous to the
beginning of the play. In their stead will be two large searchlights." A
dozen calcium lights were hidden in evergreens and spot lights placed at
each end of the scenery.
17
Another article was devoted entirely to the
"Novel Mechanical Devices and Electrical Appliances Prepared for the
Outdoor Performance of 'Joan of Arc."' The writer observed that there
were "six arc lights of 2000 candle power placed at intervals on the top
of the stadium." The performers were lighted by the two searchlights,
"These gigantic searchlights have 30 inch openings and are six inches
wider across the lenses than those used on battleships."
18
In addition to her interest in lighting equipment, Adams was
interested in the possibilities of film. She had the film rights for Peter Pan
and hoped to make a color film of it. In this production she made her
first effort to work with film in combination with specific lighting effects.
When Joan went to the Druid oak tree with the sh:-:ne where her voices
spoke to her, Adams wanted to utilize films showing the visions Joan had
experienced. According to Chapin, "There was a moving-picture effect
by which she intended to show a vision of the Virgin, which cost in the
neighborhood of $300. It dissatisfied Miss Adams, however, and the
expensive film was discarded (518)." While commenting on Adams's
careful planning for the lighting and the settings, one writer concluded,
"The thoroughness with which Maude Adams is preparing for production
is shown in the plan for the battle scene which will last from 25 minutes
to half an hour and is based on authoritative war paintings."
19
Adams spent hours working with this and other scenes on the model
of the setting in her dressing room in the Empire Theater. She was known
to have a passion for realism, even insisting on real flowers any time she
used flowers in a play. In this production all of the elements were copied
16
"Gigantic Production."
17
'"Joan of Arc' Tonight."
18
"Turning Stadium into a Theater."
19
1bid.
Maude Adams
37
from actual locations. rhe stadium was divided into two sections, one
for the setting and the other for the actors and technicians to use during
the performance. A blue cyclorama was constructed which blocked off
one end of the stadium. A lengthy article in the Boston Globe described
in detail this "Triumph in Stagecraft" saying that theatrical people would
discuss it for years to come: "A mammoth stretch of blue cloth shut off
from the audience the greatest 'green room' in American history." The
writer went on to describe with relish the intense, but orderly, activity of
the hundreds of actors, the layout of the dressing room, the movement of
horses, sheep, goats, etc. which the cyclorama hid from the audience.
20
It was as high as the stadium and was held up by a row of "spruce trunks
which would have made main masts."
21
In front of this was the single set which was unchanged during the
play. Adams's original idea was to build the set pieces on pivots so they
could be reversed. Although the scenery had been built at great expense,
she changed her mind and decided to use a single setting throughout the
play. (518) The decision to use a unit set which required the audience
to use its imagination for the changes in scenes would not surprise
today's audience, but it was a daring departure for Adams and Alexander
to use in 1909 when realism was the norm of the theatre. The writer for
Current Literature described the setting at length and indicated the
unusual demands it made on the imagination of the audience:
With the stage set at once for all five acts, with here and there
such changes as the bringing on of the throne of France and the
building of a primitive rustic well, the imagination might seem
to be unduly taxed; but as a matter of fact there was no obtrusive
incongruity, and the eye and the mind were able to concentrate
themselves upon the surroundings of each successive scene. In
no instance could we fail to see Domremy, Chinon, the plain
near Rheims, the Cathedral, and the .battlefield as they were
successively brought before us.
22
20
" Triumph iri Stagecraft; Behind the Scenes at 'joan of A r c , ~ ~ unidentified
clipping from a Boston newspaper, HTC. This great cyclorama undoubtedly helped
with the acoustics which were generally praised, although there was some indication
that in the "softer scenes" people had trouble hearing in some parts of the house.
21
"Joan of Arc in Stadium."
22
[n.a.], "Joan of Arc' s Beatification at Harvard," Current Literature (1909): 197,
HTC.
38
SHAFER
In addition to the cost of the original pivoting scenery, the authentic
copies and the attention to detail (nothing after the date of 1445) cost an
enormous sum of money for a setting which would be used only once.
One example may suffice: "The 'Druid Oak of Domremy' was a marvel
of stage forestry. It was seventy-five feet tall and eighteen feet in diameter
[at the top], and every leaf had been wired on separately. It had cost
$1300." The carpentry bi II for whole production was over $10,000.
Friends prophesied to Adams that she would ruin herself financially, but
she just laughed and said, "I don't care a bit if I do! ,.' (520-i2)
Once the set was constructed, Adams worked closely with the
electrician who would ultimately control all the action. Again, Adams
was using every technological advance available. The electrician, Mr.
William Gilmore, had complete telephone connections to all parts of the
theatre. He controlled the "house lights" which consisted of "a row of
arc lamps swung out over the slope of seats from the columns of the
esplanade which were used between the acts." One of the many writers
who described with awe the complicated activities necessitated by the
scope of the production wrote:
The lighting of the stadium was the important feature of the
whole preparation, and the electrician who sat at the little desk
fronting on the sward played on a vast and complicated appara-
tus as an organist on a great instrument. His score was incon-
ceivably complex-a notation of men and horses, cues and exits,
acts and scenes, shifts and cuts. His desk looked like a telegra-
pher's office, a railroad switch tower and a telephone exchange
rolled into oneY
Since the actors could hear no cues, "an electrical keyboard was devised,
showing groups of lights in different colors. Mr. Gilmore controlled them
from a switch, and each combination meant a signal."
24
All of this made
demands on the largely inexperienced performers, one of whom groaned
that "my blooming cue to get ready is three reds, three whites and a
green, and my entrance is four blues, one red, and two whites!" (522).
Obviously, the sound was another important and complicated factor
that challenged Adams and her technicians. She chose to have
Beethoven's "Eroica Symphony" used to open each act and to accom-
pany the battle scene. There was a 120 person orchestra under the
23
[n.a.], ' "Joan of Arc' Stirs Thousands," The New York Morning Telegraph, 23
June 1909, p. 1.
24
"Turning Stadium into a Theater."
Maude Adams
39
stadium out of sight of the audience. There were two organs, a group of
brasses for fanfares, and mandolins and lutes for the court scenes. As
with the I ighting, the difficulty was making sure the music came on cue.
There is no detailed description of Adams's work on this area, but Chapin
wrote, "The timing of the music was something of a problem, but Miss
Adams solved it with the aid of a phonograph and a Pianola. She spent
hours playing the one instrument and speaking into the other, so that
music and action were smoothly woven together without a tangle (522)."
The sound was particularly effective in combination with the lighting in
a scene involving a storm. "Novel Mechanical Devices" representing the
newest technology were used:
An electric starting box connected with an instrument containing
whistles of various sizes, technically known as 'devilines,'
which, with the air pressure brought to bear upon them, will
produce the sound of wind in a realistic manner. In combina-
tion with it is a revolving drum-like cylinder with some heavy
shot, rolled back and forward by electricity over corrugated
sheet iron which creates a startling impression of a tremendous
downpour of rain.
25
Three other devices included a 'thundercar' weighing 200 pounds that
was electrically controlled to run back and forth over planking to make
"ominous rumblings." Then "the gathering fury of the storm'' was
indicated by a horsehide drum six feet square, strung with different size
balls. "The machine being revolved by a motor, each revolution causes
the balls to beat heavily on the horsehide covering." At the height of the
storm, a climactic sound was produced by a
system of viaducts constructed like flights of steps in conjunction
with cannon balls ranging in weight from 1-15 pounds. These
balls, at the proper time, are gradually let loose through the
different viaducts, and as they leap from step to step, each fresh
one a pound heavier than the one preceding it, and all going a
great speed, they produce a final sharp reverberating crash that
is terrific.
26
25
"joan of Arc in Stadium."
26
Ibid.
40
SHAFER
The noise and the sudden darkness broken by flashes of light were not
only theatrical, they were so realistic as to be initially alarming to the
outdoor audience. "This was realistic to an unexpected extent, and the
crashing and flashing was made but the more terrible by the fleeting
crowds in the darkness [on the stage], really clearing the scene, but
seemingly rushing in abject terror to shelter from the storm."
27
The spectacular production thrilled the audience from the beginning
to the end. Adams's first entrance was a silent walk of one-eighth of a
mile. Wearing her simple peasant gown and using the gait of a country
girl she walked with the picturesque herd of sheep until she reached the
giant oak. There she spoke and her famous voice carried to the audience
without the aid of a microphone. Acton Davies wrote, "Never in all her
career did Miss Adams speak so clearly and distinctly. It was wonderful
to hear how she managed to throw that pretty, plaintive little voice of
hers all over that 1 0-acre lot."
28
Later she rode up the back of the hill,
and as she reached the top the bright spotlight showed, "the great white
charger flashing suddenly into view, the maid sitting on her saddle in full
armor of sheerest silver, outlined in brilliance against the sky."
29
The
scene which followed was one of many high points in the performance:
She appeared, and the thousand soldiers in plain below went
down on their knees, "God and the Maid! God and the Maid!"
It was a battle-cry to ring among the very cords of the heart.
Slowly she rode down the line reviewing her troops, and then
rode in behind her the mounted nobles of France. There came
a solid, gorgeous mass of banked color and light. The lance-
heads were points of flame, the armor liquid light. Above them
streamed the banners of their provinces ... they swept in a great
wave, so brilliant, so overwhelming that one caught one's breath
to see them. The shining little figure that led them rode out of
sight, and the French troops, mounted and on foot pi unged after
her fluttering standard, a long, close-massed snake of men, ready
for battle. (524)
Each of the scenes delighted the audience, including the ten minute
procession before the coronation and the tremendous battle scene
devised by Adams. In this Adams demonstrated her considerable ability
27
Ibid.
28
"News of the Theatres/'unidentified clipping, HTC.
29
"joan of Arc in Stadium."
Maude Adams
41
as a rider: "From the ridge of the hill, waving her banner aloft, she
charged into the enemy, breaking the back of his defense and leading her
countrymen into the assault on Orleans."
30
A front page article in the
New York Times described all the details including the curtain call.
Maude Adams appeared on her horse, and
The audience fairly thundered its pleasure. The actress called
out the mounted Harvard boys who had helped to make the
battle scene a success and these young men took great delight in
galloping wildly across the field like so many rough riders, and
this completed what was probably the most wonderful out-of-
doors spectacle that has been presented in AmericaY
The audience was ready to cheer even before the play began as the
whole event was enormously exciting. An article titled "Hotels Are
Crowded" indicated that the Boston hotels were crowded as seldom
before with people not only from the immediate area, but from all over
the country and abroadY Mrs. Grover Cleveland and her children,
Bishop Greer of New York with his family, Sir Charles Wyndam from
London, people from Chicago, Iowa, Vienna, Tokyo, auto parties. of
"prosperous manufacturers and merchants," representatives of London
newspapers, and a member of the British Legation in Washington were
all part of the crowd.
33
Naturally, all of the important Harvard figures,
including President Lowell, former President Eliot, and George Pierce
Baker, were present.
34
There were "huge crowds to see the play and
huge crowds to see the crowds. A solid column marching 10 or so
abreast crossed the bridge over the Charles River ."
35
It was not surprising that many visitors brought their entire families.
Adams was not only popular, she was absolutely idolized. She was very
30
"joan of Arc Stirs Thousands," p. 1.
31
[n.a.], "Miss Adams Thrills Throng in Stadium," New York Times, 23 June
1909, p . . 1.
32
[n.a.], "Hotels Are Crowded," Boston Globe, 23 June 1909, p. 6.
33
"Great Crowds See Production of 'Joan of Arc' at the Stadium," unidentified
Boston newspaper, HTC.
34
[n.a.], "A Boston Harvard Crowd," Boston Globe, 23 June 1909, p. 6.
35
"The Scene at the Stadium," unidentified clipping, HTC.
42 SHAFER
gracious to her fans, and even took time from her harrowing schedule to
take tea with the Harvard Dramatic Club.
36
She was popular with all
classes of people, both men and women, in all parts of the country-there
is no celebrity like her today. All age groups, from children who loved
her as Peter Pan to old people who had seen her as a girl, were totally
fascinated by her. Juliet, one of her least successful roles, was applauded
"with a fervor that closely resembled insanity."
37
It was known that
many people attended all of her performances, but never ever went to
any others.
38
It was always said that no advertising was needed for her
plays because the mere announcement of her name was enough. On this
occasion there was no advertising, but all the tickets were sold out a
week ahead and extra seats were added. Counterfeit tickets were printed
and widely sold.
39
The tickets were priced at $2 and $3, but scalpers
sold them for $10 and $15. (One might note, parenthetically, that
although Adams spent a great deal of her own money, cut short a highly
remunerative run of What Every Woman Knows in Manhattan, and spent
untold hours in preparation and rehearsal, she took no salary: all the
income was donated to the Germanic Museum). The production was so
highly anticipated that some people came to the dress rehearsal on
Monday and then came again to the performance on Tuesday. They sat
on hard benches for a play which began at 8:00 PM and lasted until
between 11 :30 PM and 12:00 AM.
The play was praised by critics and equated with productions at
Oberammergau and Bayreuth. It is interesting to read the critical
response and see why Maude Adams was so popular in this role. A
number of critics observed that beginning in 1834 many actresses had
performed in plays telling the story of Joan of Arc, but none had been
really successful. The actresses included Fanny Davenport, Sarah
36
454.
37
[n.a.], "Maude Adams (Original Peter Pan) is Dead at 80," New York Herald
Tribune, july 1953, [n.p.]
38
William de Wagstaffe, "Coining Admiration Worth Half a Million a Year," The
Theatre Magazine, [n.d.], [n.p.]
39
"Dress Rehearsal of joan of Arc," unidentified clipping, HTC. It is difficult to
state the exact size of the audience. There were 1, 550 seats plus an unspecified
number of seats which were added, plus those persons with counterfeit tickets, and
probably friends of the 150 ushers who were allowed to sneak in and sit on the steps.
Many people estimated the true audience size as about 20,000.
Maude Adams 43
Bernhardt, Ada Rehan, Maude Banks, and Julia Marlowe.
40
Maude
Adams was the Maid people had been waiting for and in this year of the
beatification, the critics and audiences were rhapsodic. One critic wrote
that Maude Adams won "secular honors comparable in a sense with the
ecclesiastical dignity recently conferred upon the original of the stage role
assumed for this occasion by the New York actress."
4 1
Another article
analyzed the audience reaction to Adams and the qualities she projected,
leading the author to call the article, "Maude Adams as a Public
Influence":
Burning with a passion for heroic standards of duty and love, for
an ideal beauty and joy, for a fulfillment of the golden dreams of
romance, this devoted woman has used the stage as a means to
celebrate and glorify noble sentiment and the high, purifying
emotions. The response is so wide and deep that our faith in our
age cannot but be restored and strengthened by it.
42
Many critics noted that the role was particularly appropriate to Adams
and therefore pleasing to the audience that saw her in it: "The mysticism,
the frailty, the spiritual heroism of the character, are traits which would
naturally take hold of Maude Adams -herself mystically and spiritually
inclined."
43
Chapin noted the response of the audience to Adams as Joan
and the blending in its mind of the two figures:
She was not playing Joan-she was living her. The two identities
were merged, and we saw, reincarnated before us the wistful,
girl-child who ruled princes and was Commander-General of all
the French. . . . The parallel held all through, thanks to the
intense spirit with which Miss Adams imbued the production; it
was a resurrection of Joan's personality, a reproduction of her
environment, a reconstruction of her life. It was like dreaming of
something, and having it come true. (518)
40
[n.a.), "Chat of the Theatre Foyer," Boston Herald, 1894, and "The Scene at
the Stadium"
41
" Joan of Arc's Beat ification at Harvard," 196.
42
Gray, 737.
43
"Maude Adams in Schiller's joan of Arc," unidentified clipping, HTC.
44
SHAFER
Today people assume that the role of Peter Pan in 1905 marked the
peak of Adams's career; her contemporaries felt that far more than any
other roles she had played with such success, the role of joan was the
triumph of Adams's career. A typical article had the sub-heading,
"Maude Adams Reaches Height of Dramatic Career." The critic stated,
"Miss Adams has scored many successes in her life, and especially in
Boston, but last night at the Harvard Stadium she presented the character
of the country maiden of France in a manner that wi II cause her name to
be engraved in the dramatic roll of fame."
44
To many the fact of the presentation by a New York actress at
Harvard carried particular significance:
The leading American University has set the seal of its official
sanction on Broadway's favorite star, and an audience of 15,000
drawn from the innermost shrines of culture has testified its
approval. To no other native actress has it been given to
become the central figure of so imposing a stage pageant or to
achieve a triumph in such exceptional circumstances.
45
The character of the frail, sensitive, spiritual figure who was
nevertheless capable of strength and courage from Schiller's }ungfrau von
Orleans was mirrored in the public perception of Maude Adams. In
addition to all of the demands of design, directing, and simply controlling
and organizing all of these performers, Adams contended with the
difficulty of learning the lines, wearing the costume-a suit of armor-and
training and riding her horse. A typical critic wrote of the "great
responsibility on a fragile woman's shoulders. "
46
One speech in
particular was quoted by several critics because it seemed apposite to
both joan of Arc and Maude Adams:
Rude brass for garment thy soft limbs shall wear,
In clasp of iron shall thy heart be pressed,
Ne'er in thine eyes shall seem a man's face fair
Nor light the flame of mortal love unblessed!
Never the bride-wreath shall adorn thy hair,
Nor lovely baby blossom at thy breast,
44
'"Joan of Arc' A Triumph of Art; Before 15,000 People in the Stadium Maude
Adams Reaches Height of Dramatic Career," unidentified clipping, HTC.
45
[n.a.), "joan of Arc at Harvard, " Literary Digest, (1909): 23.
46
"The Scene at the Stadium."
Maude Adams
But thou shalt be War's sacrificial bride,
Above all earthly women glorified!
4 7
45
One final element was important in the presentation of this play. In
1909 many articles and books were written about the New Woman.
Although she lived in the fifteenth century, the character of Joan was
often evoked in discussions of this type of woman. The translator of the
play, George Sylvester Viereck, told an interviewer that Joan of Arc is a
superwoman:
She is a woman transcending her biological function. She serves
a purpose greater than the perpetuation of species .... Joan of
Arc was an unconscious precursor of the emancipated woman.
Woman's struggle for self-expression is as old as the world. The
chain reaches from antiquity to the middle ages, from Sappho to
Joan of Arc. . .. The solitary figure of the French peasant girl
stands to me for the eternal woman, in her rebellion against the
narrow limits imposed upon her by man.
48
This then was the accomplishment of Maude Adams in 1909: to be
perceived as a modern woman whose qualities paralleled those of the
newly canonized Saint Joan. She was a woman capable of devising,
designing, lighting, organizing, and acting in what was applauded as the
greatest dramatic spectacle ever seen in America,
49
whose greatness was
appropriate for a new democracy in a new century. After this production
came further triumphs in the commercial theatre, her scientific experi-
ments with General Electric in the twenties, her return to the stage in two
Shakespeare plays in the early thirties, radio broadcasts of her great roles,
and just to round things off, organizing and directing the theatre program
at Stephens College starting at the age of sixty-five. Worshiped in her
time, she remains a theatrical legend as well as a figure who opened
many paths for the women of this century.
47
"Joan of Arc's Beatification at Harvard," 197.
48
Ibid. , 198.
49
[n.a.], "Maude Adams' Joan of Arc in the Harvard Stadium Greatest Dramatic
Spectacle America Ever Witnessed," Boston journal, 23 June 1909, p. 1.
journal of American Drama and Theatre 11 (Fall 1999)
The Dramatic Magazine
(May 1880 - August 1882)
FAY CAMPBELL KAYNOR
The Brief but Robust Life of the Dramatic Magazine
In the spring of 1880, Lisle Lester, journalist, dramatist, printer, and
activist was finally ready to set aside her custom of jumping from one
career to another. The forthcoming Dramatic Magazine would be a
single endeavor embracing the spectrum of her passions and purposes.
After years of dreaming, she now had formed a small press and opened
an office on Manhattan's Broadway in the literary neighborhood of
Washington Square. She was armed with a subscription list, initial
capital, and a roster of willing and reputable writers.
1
Nine fonts pranced across the decorative cover and swirling letters
announced that the enterprise was " conducted by Lisle Lester." The May
1880 maiden editorial disclaiming any connection with other journals
gave a hint of the independence that was to characterize Lester's editorial
policy. Promising "a refined periodical in dramatic literature," she
proudly reported that the enterprise had been encouraged by the late
actress Charlotte Cushman. Ninety pages of such scholarly subjects as
Greek theatre, scene painting, early American plays, the use of lace in
costuming, and an interpretation of Shakespeare's Juliet seemed to justify
Cushman's endorsement.
2
1
A bound volume 1 of the Dramatic Magazine is held at the Rare Book Division
of the library at the University of Oregon. A nearly complete set of the original two
volumes is available at the New York Public Library's Library of the Performing Arts,
New York City. The magazine is listed in Carl Stratman, American Theatrical
Periodicals, 1798-1967-a Bibliographic Guide (Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
1970), 78 and appendices. Also see N. W. Ayer and Sons, American Newspaper
Annual (Philadelphia: N.W. Ayers and Sons, 1883), 62. The Dramatic Magazine is
referred to hereafter in notes as OM.
2
OM 1, 1 (May 1880): Lisle Lester, " Dramatic Literature, " 67; "Editor' s High
Tea-Our Enterprise, " 65; A. Benrimo, "The First American Play," 57-59; Anna
Ballard, " Lace on the Stage," 12-16; [n.a.], "The History of Scene Painting, " 53-56;
The Dramatic Magazine 47
Reaction in the press was gratifying. "Readable and fresh!" declared
the New York Graphic. "Sprightly articles" were noted by the prestigious
New Orleans Picayune. London's Theatre declared, "We have a rival
and an honorable one recently started in America." Stage people, too,
welcomed the journal with letters of congratulations.
3
Time I iness was assured in articles about the current court case
questioning the training of children for the stage and on Kate Field's
innovative clothing exchange. Gallery openings were announced and a
section entitled The Month's Work described the plays "on the boards"
at the city's major theatres. Wallach's offered Child of the State. The
Galley Slave was at the Park Theatre. At Haverley's, Widow Bedott was
playing. M'Liss was at the Standard. Fairfax was at Union Square. The
new Madison Square theatre, Lester's favorite, was presenting Hazel
Kirke for the two hundredth time. And at Chickering Hall, Kate Field was
doing a monologue spoof on the English. On the basis of Lester's visit to
England six years earlier, she could reassure readers that Field had had
her eyes and ears open while in England.
4
A less confident editor would have found her contemporaries in
theatre criticism a daunting body of writers. Among them were the
Tribune's William Winter, the New York Evening Post's J. Ranken Towse,
and the Atlantic Monthly's Henry James. Even Walt Whitman and
William Dean Howells frequently reviewed plays. But Lester had the
benefit of training under tragedian James Murdoch and of experience as
a touring dramatist in the west.
5
As a result, no reviews were more
insightful than hers and no commentary exceeded hers in bluntness. Not
Crayon [pen name], "Miss Neilson's 'Juliet,"' 59-63.
3
OM 1, 4 (August 1880): Lester, "Editor's High Tea-No Axes to Grind," 290-
291 (includes statement of the magazine's purpose); "Press Comments, " 308; " An
English Courtesy," 294; "Good Words from Friends," 306. OM 1, 2 Uune 1880):
Lester, "A Little Good Accomplished," 152.
4
OM 1, 1 (May 1880): Lester, "Law versus Children," 16-22; There were 102
child actors on Manhattan stages in the 1880s according to [n.a.] "A Merry Christmas
Party, n The World, 18 December 1885, sec. 2, col. 3; "New and Progressive-Ladies'
Cooperative Dress Association, " 75-76; "The Month's Work, " 69-73; "New Plays,"
69.
5
For accounts of Lester's touring see Ella Wheeler Wilcox, "Mrs. Lisle Lester,"
Milwaukee Sentinel, 31 May 1885, sec. 3, p. 3; Walter VanTilburg Clark, ed. , The
journals of Alfred Doten, val. 1 (University of Nevada Press: Reno, 1973), 960-1 . See
also [n.a.], "Program of Readings," Owyhee Avalanche, 14 September 1867, sec. 3,
p. 3, and [n.a.], "Miss Lisle Lester," Oregonian, reprinted in Idaho Tri-Weekly
Statesman, 29 December 1864, sec. 2, p. 3.
48
KAYNOR
worth reviewing at all was a Canadian performance of Far from the
Madding Crowd that was "not far enough." Although French society
plays were popular, Lester accused the genre of being "froth and foam .
. . requiring nothing more than the ability to punctuate drawing room
dialogue with a fashionable sigh."
6
To the enrichment of her readers, Lester had much to say about
acting itself-good and bad. She believed that acting "calls into exercise
the highest intelligence" and, by definition, aims for "the idealization of
human actions." This was the high standard against which Lester
measured plays and actors as she critiqued them. Her review of
Richelieu was a tour de force as it proceeded to compare performances
by competing giants of the stage, Edwin Booth and Lawrence Barrett. In
the matter of role-casting, Lester's acting expertise gave her the confi-
dence to claim that Eugenie Legrand's appearance in Solange was "a
mistake." In proving the point, she analyzed Legrand's success in the
very different role of Camille, noting that "there have been very few
satisfactory Camilles upon the American stage." Legrand, whom Lester
rated among the top five, had played "with every string of her sensibility
vibrating to the conditions of the role." Calling on her knowledge of
stage history, Lester could praise the casting of Rose Coughlan as Lady
Teazle in Sheridan's School for Scandal while reminding readers that
"there were Lady Teazles fifteen years ago that have never been
surpassed."
7
There was little that Lester could say, however, to soften her scorn for
Britain's Mrs. Langtry then touring America. In Lester's judgment, "While
we may drop violets at her feet as a society belle, we cannot see any
cause for laying the laurel upon her brow for [theatrical] honors she has
not won and is not likely ever to win." The popularity of a personality
like Langtry did not dim Lester's view of real merit or lack of it.
8
Similarly, while audiences seemed mesmerized by the touring Oscar
Wilde, Lester was not at all impressed by what she considered a pseudo-
intellectual. After hearing Wilde talk, she ridiculed his style in a candid
6
Lisle Lester, "New Plays," OM 2, 5 (May 1882): 253; Lisle Lester, "Society
Plays," OM 1, 3 Uuly 1880): 219.
7
Lisle Lester, "Disrepute(?) of the Stage," OM 1, 2 Uune 1880): 109; "Editor's
High Tea-The Two Richelieus," OM 2, 3 (October 1881): 140-141; " About the
Theatres-Miss Lilian Olcott," OM 2, 5 (May 1882): 257; " About the
Theatre-Eugenie Legrand," OM 2, 5 (May 1882): 255; "Leading Ladies of New
York-Rose Coughlan," OM 1, 2 Uune 1880): 118.
8
Lester, "Mrs. Langtry," OM 2, 7 (August 1882): 334-337.
The Dramatic Magazine 49
piece of mimicry in which she described his "utterness" as "too utterly
utter for the common sense ... of this age." Regarding Wilde's claim
that there was "something Hellenic in [American] life/' she thought it
"too roughly rough on us that he should discover how much ' Hellenic'
there is in us before he had been here three days." And the fact that
Wilde also found "something Elizabethan in us" made Lester "too
joyfully joyous ... taking into account the 'Elizabethan' of Mrs. Cady
Stanton .. . and the two Elizabeths in New Jersey." She concluded with
the statement that "such 'Elizabethan' as we have, will certainly satisfy
the American avariciousness which we also know is with us too almost
always already." Pretention had always irked Lester. The fact that Wilde
wore a swallow-tailed coat and white waistcoat with low cut, double-
buttoned, turned-down collar and white silk knotted tie, black knee
breeches and black silk stockings didn't help. Neither was Lester
impressed with Wilde's stage set-a tall red screen, two heavily carved
chairs of fifteenth century design and a lofty pulpit.
9
Lester's treatment of playwrights was equally independent. She
esteemed play writing as "one of the grandest fields of intellectual work
given to man or woman," and had herself written and copyrighted one
play to learn the disci pi ine of the craft.
10
Among the contemporary
greats-David Belasco, Dion Boucicault, Bronson Howard, and C. A.
Gunter-Lester's favorite was Bartley Campbell. And there was Anna
Dickinson who, though she should have known better than to try to play
the part of Hamlet in a New York production, was nevertheless author of
The Crown of Thorns which Lester placed among the best plays in the
English language.
11
But Lester was quick to label the play, Daniel
Rochat, "the most unsatisfactory, aggravating play possible to imagine."
9
For Oscar Wilde review, see Lester, "About the Theatres-Too Much
Altogether," OM 2, 4 (April 1882): 203. For Wilde's costume description, see [n.a. ],
"New York Gossip," Washington Chronicle, 15 January 1882, [n.p.].
10
Lester's play, Beryl, copyrighted in Baltimore, 6 July 1874, as no. 8905, is
l isted as being copyrighted in the U. S. 1870-1916 in Dramatic Compositions
(Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1910). It is also listed i n
" Bibl iographic Notes-Plays by Marylanders 1870-1916," Edgar Heyl, comp. ,
Maryland History Magazine (Spring 1969): 62, 74.
11
Lester, "Editor's High Tea- Anna Dickinson as Hamlet," OM 2, 4 (April 1882),
197; "Among Dramatic Authors ofToday-Anna Di ckinson," OM 1, 4 (August 1880),
249-250.
50
KAYNOR
And she found Coney Island a tasteless misrepresentation of American
types with a finale that was so unconvincing as to be "ruinous."
12
Lester's fresh point of view was ignoring protocol as it spurned some
icons and found worthiness in unexpected places. Giving the New York
theatre community no deference, she praised the "astuteness" of Boston
audiences and rooted for vari ous small theatres located al l over the
United States. And unlike the majority of critics who seemed intent on
"paralyz[ing] the efforts of the new beginners no matter how worthy,"
she went out of her way to praise young talent and deserving novice
troupes.
13
Literature, as a sister art, took its place in the Dramatic Magazine's
"Books and Authors" section. Making use of her experience in publish-
ing, Lester breezily designated Scribners "the banner magazine of the
country" and Lippincott's new publication equal to the best in New York.
Turning to books, she advised women to read "a very sensible" one
Uosephine Jackson's What's the Matter?) arguing against corsets and long
skirts, an indication that Lester was serious when she shortened her skirts
in San Francisco (1864) and Silver City (1867) .
14
And in this literary
section, sensitive obituaries marked the deaths of such figures as
abolitionist Lydia Maria Child and New England-born editor Josiah
Gilbert Holland. Two serialized novels further enhanced the literary
content. Original poetry was published at the rate of four poems per
issue. The majority of the poems had melancholy themes and were
unremarkable.
15
Lester must have taken pride, however, in printing actor
Robert McWade's seven-column "Is Electricity the Soul?'' . Composed in
free verse, its intellectual discourse must have surprised some of the
12
For Lester's harsh criticism of individual plays, see "The Month's Work," OM
1, 7 (Febn1ary 1881), 511; OM 2, 1 (August 1881): 42
13
Lester, "About the Theatres-In Boston," OM 2, 5 (May 1882): 256; "A New
Star-Lilian Spencer," OM 1, 6 (December 1880): 422-423; "Editor's High Tea-Wm.
de Hart," OM 2, 4 (April1882): 195.
14
Lester, "Editor's Table-Short Dresses," Pacific Monthly XI: 7 Uuly 1864), 750;
Lester, "Lester vs. Long Skirts," Idaho Statesman (29 january 1867), 4 (col.1 ).
15
Lester, "Among Books and Authors-Death of Lydia Maria Child," OM 1, 6
(December 1880): 451-2; "Editor's High Tea-josiah Gilbert Holland," OM 2, 3
(October 1881): 142-143; "Among Books and Authors," OM 2, 6 (December 1880):
451.
The Dramatic Magazine 51
clergymen who had doubted that an actor could have religious
thoughts.
16
Toward the back of the journal, ':Editor's High Tea" served as
Lester's editorial perch, but her opinions were often disguised as
unsigned articles. Signed or not, they frequently displayed glints of keen
professionalism. Theatre managers had their responsibility pointed out
when Lester declared, "The taste of the public depends largely upon the
viands prepared for it, and in the preparation, the manager has an
opportunity to force a healthy inroad upon the degenerate, morbid
appetite [of the public]. " And in assessing the future of theatre in this
country, her words might have been those of an experienced arts
administrator as she put her finger on the ultimately deciding factor:
"Commercially viewed, the drama is an important feature in the trade
interests of our large cities."
17
A more leisurely pace was introduced in Lester's occasional
descriptive essays on Manhattan and its surroundings. To get acquainted
with New York, she traveled up the Hudson River, sailed New York
harbor, and examined the Delaware Valley, "the most picturesque
locality within a few hours [carriage] drive of the city."
18
Lest these
"puffs" smacked of provincialism, Dramatic Magazine readers were
taken around the world in reports written by various authorities on such
topics as San Francisco's Chinatown, fifth century Greek theatre, the
Mormon troupe in Salt Lake City, and the favored repertoire of South
Americans.
19
The magazine's most glamorous offering was its store of featured
biographies written by various authors. Those authored by Lester praised
her favorites starting with Clara Morris, Sara Jewett, and Edwin Booth.
Altogether the profiles, accompanied by excellent photographs, told the
stories, glorious and tragic, that went with the personalities behind the
16
Robert McWade, " Is Electricity the Soul?" OM 1, 4 (August 1 880): 250-253.
17
Lester, " The Month's Work," OM 1, 1 (May 1880): 69-73; " Theatre Trade-Its
Importance and Magnitude," OM 1, 6 (December 1880): 430-431; " The Month's
Work-New Theatre," OM 1, 3 Uuly 1880): 229.
18
Lester, "At Our Gates," OM 1, 4 (August 1880): 279-281; " Breeze and Shade
Near Home," OM 2, 6 Uune 1882): 307-312.
19
Marjorie Bird, "An Evening With Celestials," OM 1, 1 (May 1880): 28-31; Sara
Alexander, " Recollections of the Mormon Theatre, " OM 1, 5 (October 1 880): 312-
316; Florence Marsh, "The Second Lucretia Borgia," OM 1, 5 (October 1880): 334-
42; Lester, "Old Theatres in Foreign Cities-Theatre Royal, Kingston, Jamaica," OM
1, 3 Uuly 1880): 196-199.
52 KAYNOR
footlights. In quality and in number, they exceeded any contemporary
record of stage people's lives.
20
From the start, it was clear that Lester had a double mission. In
earning the Dramatic Magazine a solid professional reputation, she was
building a respected pulpit from which she could preach reforms of her
choosing . . She directed her major ammunition at two vicious enemies of
the stage-and, by extension, of society: the press and the church. The
scandal-mongering of the press was a pattern that, besides being
destructive in itself, unfortunately had the power of influence. Naming
one critic "a leper among us," Lester remarked that "a story never loses
anything in its travels," and called the commonly slanted coverage of
actors' private lives "a stain upon the honor of the press and a disgrace
to the patronage that fosters it."
21
She reminded readers that what mattered were the contributions that
the "artistes" had made to nineteenth-century theatre. Adelaide Neilson
was a case in which reporters had "dragged to light every breath of
scandal" and whom Lester described as "a star of brilliant power and
beauty." Adah Isaacs Mencken was another maligned actress whom
Lester attempted to return to respectability by reprinting "The Dual Life
of Adah Isaacs Mencken." At the end of the biographical text, Lester
printed, in its entirety, one of Mencken's longest poems. Continuing in
her life-long role as rescuer of persecuted women, Lester next defended
Sarah Bernhardt whose illegitimate son had been the cause of denounce-
ment by the press. Lester happened to rank Bernhardt the greatest
emotional actor of the age. "If Sarah Bernhardt has no maukish regard
20
Biographical subjects include: Adele Belgarde, *Sarah Bernhardt, Agnes
Booth, John Brougham, violinist Old Bull, playwright Bartley Campbell, Eleanor
Carey, Alexander Caufman, Mrs. Georgia Cayvan, *Kate Claxton, Clara Cole, Rose
Coughlan, Mile. Croisette, *Charlotte Cushman, Anna Dickinson, *Selina Dolaro,
Kate Field, *Rachel Field, manager George Goodwin, singer Gertrude Griswold,
manager John H. Haverley, Annette lnce, *Sara Jewett, *Mrs. Langtry, *edi tor Mrs.
Frank Leslie, John McCullough, William Macready, Adah Isaacs Mencken, poet
Joaquin Miller, *Clara Morris, Marie Pauline Ninninger, Milton Nobles, Adalaide
Patti, *Louise Pomeroy, Emily Rigl, Adelaide Ristori, singer Julie Rosewald, Annie
Russell, Thomas Salvini, *Rachel Sanger, Victorien Sardou, *Mrs. Scott Siddons,
*Edward Asken Sothern, * Lilian Spencer, *Alma Stuart Stanley, Rosa Ward, *El la
Wesner. (* Authored by Lester.)
21
Lester, "A Leper Among Us," OM 1, 7 (February 1881): 506, 507, 509, 510;
"Stage Scandal/' OM 1, 3 Uuly 1880): 222-224; "Editor's High Tea-Value of
Theatre," OM 2, 5 (May 1882): 2 53.
The Dramatic Magazine 53
for social conventionalities, what of it?" she askedY Concluding her
remarks on Bernhardt, she widened the definition of decency and
postulated that, considering what New York's "capacious stomach" had
already digested, "it [was] unreasonable to believe it [would] be utterly
poisoned by Sarah Bernhardt."
23
Although Lester blamed journalism for its role in spreading negative
attitudes toward theatre, the proportion of Dramatic Magazine articles
specifically directed at the church showed Lester's prime target to be the
prejudice of clergymen. Throwing her gauntlet down in the magazine's
first issue, she wrote the story of the minister ( "a crawling, slimy,
sanctimonious reptile," according to Mark Twain) who had once denied
funeral rites to an actor. In another essay aimed at churches, Lester
systematically defended theatre by exonerating the form (dramatic
literature), the implementation (acting), and the implementers (actors).
24
Other writers skillfully took up the fight. Mary Adams's article used
Macbeth as a lesson in morality. Speaking of Macbeth's journey from
innocent bravery to ambition, temptation, victimization, remorse, fear,
guilt, and death, she asked "Is there no example to the world in all this?"
In another persuasive essay, actress Louise Pomeroy suggested that
ministers could improve their pulpit delivery by visiting the theatre and
taking a few lessons in effective oratory. She believed that, in the process,
the reverends would unavoidably gain a better understanding of plays
and players.
25
22
Lester, "Adelaide Neilson/' OM 1, 4 (August 1880): 290; "Editor's High
Tea-Miss Neilson's Auction Sale," OM 1, 2 Uune 1880): 152-153; "The Dual Life
of Adah Isaacs Mencken-from Mr. Newell's Paper in Packard's Monthly," OM 1, 3
Uuly 1880): 172-177 and OM 1, 4 (August 1880): 270-278; "Sarah Bernhardt's
American Visit and Success," OM 1, 6 (December 1880): 372-374. For more of
Lester's remarks on Sarah Bernhardt, see "Sarah Bernhardt's Domestic Affairs," OM
1, 7 (February 1881): 509, 514; "Editor's High Tea-Sarah Bernhardt," OM 1, 3 Uuly
1880): 227; "Editor's High Tea-Ministers Against Theatres," OM 1, 7 (February
1881): 505; "Editor's High Tea-Miss Bernhardt's Art Reception," DM 1, 6
(December 1880): 439.
23
Lester, "Editor's High Tea-A Moral Spasm," OM 1, 6 (December 1880): 436.
24
Lester, "The Little Church Around the Corner," OM 1, 1 (May 1880): 1-10;
"Disrepute(?) of the Stage," DM 1, 2 Uune 1880): 107-109. For a history of the Little
Church Around the Corner, see George MacAdam, The Little Church Around the
Corner (New York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1925).
25
Mary Adams, "Church and Theatre," OM 1, 3 Uuly 1880): 199-206; Louise
Pomeroy, "The Chosen Few," OM 1, 3 Uuly 1880): 194-195.
54
KAYNOR
As ministers continued preaching that the theatre was "a training
school for vice," Sara Somerby's article, "Footlight Thoughts" contended
that, although American theatre was not then at its best, there were
"clowns in the pulpit and ministers upon the stage." She believed that
the hue and cry about the stage needing reform was a burlesque
compared to the reform absolutely needed in the public taste and
journalistic criticism. It was an observation similar to Lester's: "The
Magdalens that [church spokesmen] are so zealous in hoping to reform
are not behind the scenes in our theatres but in the parquette and dress
circle, among the gay turn-outs in Central Park and ... kneeling before
the altars." Summarizing her point of view, Lester stated simply that
"ordinary intelligence and common sense morality [should know] better
than to condemn that which instructs and amuses."
26
Lester, along with all theatre advocates, was forced to agree,
however, that quality on the stage was inconsistent. Admittedly the
classics were occasionally performed. And a few gifted contemporary
playwrights were fulfilling Lester's stern requirements-"no strained,
unnatural characters or improbable phases of human nature ... just
enough of dramatic fire . . . [and] a sprinkle of refined comedy." As in
Bartley Campbell's Galley Slave, there must also be "fine diction
eloquently varied with bursts of sentiment that in no instance is a venture
too much or a word too many." But the country was experiencing a
reign of melodrama initiated by The Black Crook which, like burlesque,
depended upon shocking the audience with either phenomenal stage
effects or unconventional behavior. In Lester's view, the cheapening of
the pub I ic's entertainment appetite could partially be attributed to a
burgeoning population and a related lowering of educational standards.
Unfortunately the church, quick to detect these trends, viewed the theatre
as a cause rather than as a reflection of themY
Just when Lester hoped to have made some headway in the church-
theatre debate, ecclesiastical objections forced Booth's Theatre to cancel
an imminent showing of the Passion Play. More than 125 actors and
musicians had been rehearsing and scenery and props prepared when
26
Sara Somerby, "Footlight Thoughts," OM 1, 4 (August 1880): 264; "Clerical
Effrontery," OM 1, 3 Uuly 1880): 225; Lester, "Editor's High Tea-Mistaken Mission,"
OM 1, 4 (August 1880), 291. For other anticlerical articles, see Florence Birney, "The
Elevation of the Stage," OM 2, 6 Uune 1882): 305-307; Lester, "Editor's High
Tea- Rev. Thomas Wi lliams' Attack on the Theatre," OM 1, 2 Uune 1880): 152; Mary
Adams, "Church and Theatre-Reply to [the Reverend] Mr. Williams," OM 1, 3 Uuly
1880): 199-205.
27
Lester, "Editor's High Tea-New Plays," OM 1, 1 (May 1880): 68.
The Dramatic Magazine 55
protests were raised about a religious play being performed in a theatre
building. Pressure for the closing prevailed in spite of the theatre
manager's opinion that the performance was to be "a sermon of the most
eloquent kind and productive of the greatest good." Lester agreed with
the editor of a sister journal who equated the city's inj unction against the
performance with "stepping back into the dark ages. "
28
Considering Lester's background in theatre and journalism, she was
well positioned to speak out on these matters. Her humanitarian
commitment was clear-headed and energetic, and she apparent ly had no
fear of the possibility of losing angry subscribers as she attempted to make
her way through the quagmire of negativism toward the stage.
29
In using
the Dramatic Magazine as the vehicle for her message, she had chosen
well. Its life span embraced a period later described by historians as " the
day of magazines, when the highest class of readers were magazine
readers."
30
Lester, although not immediately or perceptibly vi ctorious,
had reason to hope that her editorial lobbying was having some effect.
The Demise of the Dramatic Magazine
In the autumn of 1882, and without apparent warning, the Dramatic
Magazine ceased publication. The mid-summer issue had given every
sign that the magazine had caught its "second wind. " There had been
an uninterrupted span of issues for the past four months. According to
the editor, the journal had 1500 subscribers and was regularly selling
2,000 additional copies. Furthermore, the office was sending three
hundred copies to Australia-perhaps in the luggage of actress Lois
Pomeroy, who was embarking on a "Down-Under" tour. Ayer's
Newspaper Annual put the total number of subscribers at 4,000.
31
28
Lester, "Editor's High Tea-the Passion Play," OM 1, 6 (December 1880): 433-
435. For a history of the Passion Play' s reception, see [n.a. ] " Theatrical
Reminiscences," Washington Chronicle, 16 March 1884, sec 3, p. 2. For additional
commentary on the Passion Play, see Mary Adams, " The Rei igious Drama, " OM 1,
6 (December 1880): 376; and Lester, " About the Theatres- James O' Nei l," OM 2, 5
(May 1882): 257.
29
Lester, "Editor's High Tea-Characteristic Grumbling," OM 1, 7 (February
1881): 506.
3
Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, vol. 3 (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard Uni versity Press, 1938), 198-220.
31
N. W. Ayer and Sons, American Newspaper Annual (Philadelphia: N. W. Ayer
and Son, 188.3), 62.
56
KAYNOR
There were further signs of prosperity. Lester had engaged Gilley's
American Exchange to be her London agent. She had relocated her office
from 32 East Fourteenth Street to 46 West Twenty-Third Street, closer into
. the heart of the literary section of town. And she had announced the
appointment of Blanchard Ray Cole (a.k.a. Bergenitta) as business
manager "to act for the interest of this periodical in all ways (both on its
mechanical and editorial relation)."
32
Looking back, there had been understandable irregularity during the
initial year, a year that Lester called "the experimental series. " And the
skipping of three issues in the following summer was not unusual , given
the theatre's traditional "summer doldrums." Another lapse was
explained by a death at which the editor was "in attendance." But these
excuses, even including the upset of two office moves, hardly explained
the five-month gap between the February and August 1881 issues. Lester
had camouflaged the resulting short-fall (seven issues instead of twelve)
by announcing that she was adjusting the numbering of issues to the
theatrical year. The first seven issues were offered in handsome bindings
as volume one.
33
In the next year, of Lester's predicted thirteen issues, only six
appeared. With Lester unwilling to shift to a bi-monthly schedule, this
was a significant deficit. The most poignant indication of trouble was the
absence of issues between October and April-the peak months for New
York plays (and incidentally for instances of Lester's life-long curse,
depression.) Lester again counted time in terms of issues rather than
months. She called the August 1882 issue the first in "the second year
proper" although the magazine had been in existence for two years and
four months.
Readers who were skeptical of this kind of mathematics may have
been lulled by the last page of the issue, headed "To our Patrons."
Besides attempting to explain her counting system, Lester reminded
readers that the magazine "aims to reach the attention of the most
intelligent reading communities [and] seeks to be received as a refined
authority upon all dramatic events in this country [and] to be recognized
... as the best organ of a theatrical nature in print." It behooved people
32
Lester, " Editor's High Tea-'Bergenitta,"' OM 2, 5 (May 1882): 254; and
"Editor's High Tea-B. Ray Cole," OM 2, 6 (June 1882): 314.
33
lester, "Editor's High Tea-Second Series," OM 2, 1 (August 1881): 38; and
"Editor's High Tea-First Volume of the Dramatic Magazine" OM 1, 5 (October
1880): 366.
The Dramatic Magazine 57
who wanted to be numbered among the "intelligent reading communi-
ties" to accept the magazine's shaky schedule.
34
Some of the delays may have been explained by the fact that too
many of the articles were being written by Lester. Besides giving the
impression that the journal lacked sufficient contributors or money to pay
them, the frequency burdened Lester. She was providing breadth of
knowledge, intellect and practicality, humor and uprightness, business
management and editorial policy. Tending to the related correspon-
dence, research, interviews, writing, editing of others' manuscripts,
chasing down illustrations, and proofing text could have required nothing
less than an eighty hour week. Lester's range of ability may have been
her worst enemy.
In addition, some of Lester's editorial policies could have been
detrimental. She may have offended a few readers when two of her own
love poems were addressed to women. These same readers would have
been displeased at Lester's passionate defense of homosexual friendships
involving actresses Charlotte Cushman and Ella Wesner-friendships that
had been negatively exploited by the press.
35
Or possibly readership declined when Lester gave the impression of
simply being rancorous. Her "Marriage Among Actors," for one, was not
only abrasive but superfluous, following as it did, Sara Jewett's "Ethics of
Experiment," the story of a wife suffering under archaic marriage
customs. Both articles argued for social reform generally; but Lester,
aware that the Dramatic Magazine should not be used as a soapbox for
every good cause, concluded with a statement specifying the acting
community. "Ladies who feel obliged to remain in the occupation of the
stage should remain single until ready to renounce it forever," advised
twice-divorced Lester. Nevertheless, the arguments about unhappy
marriages were a come-down compared to the keen challenges that the
Dramatic Magazine had earlier fired, like ballistic missiles, at the
theological camp.
36
A final hardship-competition in the theatre journal field-was
actually a compliment to Lester. Other editors inevitably had looked with
envy upon the Dramatic Magazine's market. The result, in 1881, was the
birth of the bi-weekly Critic and the weekly Byrnes' Dramatic Times. The
34
Lester, "Explanation," OM 2, 6 Uune 1882): 314.
35
Lester, " Her Face," OM 1, 3 Uuly 1880): 213; " To Sara Jewett, " OM 2, 1
(February 1881): 453; and " Phenomenal Art-Ella Wesner," OM 1, 6 (December
1880): 405-414.
36
Lester, "Marriage Among Actors," OM 2, 7 (August 1882): 337-340.
58
KAYNOR
latter, devoted to drama, music, society, and art, with editorial offices at
860 Broadway, expanded on Byrne's already-established New York
Dramatic News. The new papers possibly struck the final blow to her
(vulnerable) magazine.
37
Explanations notwithstanding, the Dramatic Magazine's finances
were unstable. But whereas, in the past, Lester had pleaded with
delinquent subscribers-a threat to the solvency of every periodical of the
day-it was beneath her dignity now to admit financial trouble. The
closest she came was in "High Tea," when she publicly acknowledged
"practical appreciations from Clara Morris, Edwin Booth, Sara Jewett, and
Milton Nobles." She promised "a full expression of our obligation ...
with a complete review of the difficulties and encouragement met in the
establishment of this periodical."
38
What the donors had provided,
however, was insufficient to keep the Dramatic Magazine solvent. As
early as November, 1880, a complaint had been registered against Lester
in the Court of Common Pleas by Moss Engravers of 535 Pearl Street for
failure to pay for plates she had ordered in August. The 7 January 1881
judgment revealed a second unpaid bill for more engravings bringing the
total indebtedness to $79.36. A serious amount in those days, it still may
not have represented all of Lester's creditors.
39

Fortunately, Lester's legal difficulties had not included suits for libel,
a common tribulation among editors. Although once complaining about
Scribners trying to get a corner of her patronage when it offered some
shabbily composed theatre reviews, Lester had wisely refrained from
naming names. She did, however, have a near scrape with copyright law
when she carelessly quoted from Scribners without permission. Her
editorial on the matter made no denial but deflected attention by noting
that the Dramatic Magazine itself had once been plagiarized and that she
deplored the weakness of the copyright law, illustrating her concern by
37
Strat!llan, 78-82 and appendices. For comparisons of the Dramatic Magazine
to other contemporary theatre periodicals, see Montrose J. Moses and John Mason
Brown, The American Theatre as Seen by its Critics 7 752-7 934 (New York: Cooper
Square Publisher Inc., 1967).
38
Lester, "Editor's High Tea-Complimentary," OM 2, 4 (April 1882): 195.
39
Moss Engraving Co. vs. Lisle Lester, Court of Common Pleas, Index 1880-580,
Records of the County Courts. Complaint filed 20 November 1880; Lester's lawyer,
james H. Hamilton Wilcox (206 Broadway) demanded on 22 November that the
complaint be served on him to allow Lester more time. Additional debt incurred on
6 September 1880, with interest ($19.48) came to a total of $79.36 demanded on 7
january1881.
The Dramatic Magazine 59
quoting from her correspondence with the Library of Congress on the
subject
40
Although there was no warning that the end was so near,' the
Dramatic Magazine's discontinuance surely did not take place in a
vacuum. The loss of such a fine publication must have been regretted not
only by subscribers but by those who had taken an active interest. Lester
had attracted writers of the calibre of A. Benrimo, a prolific and esteemed
author, dramatist, critic, and New York City correspondent for the
London Era. Kate Field of literary and theatrical repute had involved
herself in the magazine's life from its start. Prominent in journalist circles
were biographer Chancie De Witt and roving Tribune reporter Florence
Marsh. Anna Ballard was a well-known travel correspondent, the sole
female member of the New York Press Club at one time. G. Somers
Bellamy who contributed "Half Hours with Shakespeare" had authored
The New Shakespearean Dictionary. And Colonel T. Allston Brown,
author of "The Drama in America," was about to publish his History of
the American Stage. The Dramatic Magazine's contributors had been
true professionals.
New writers, including prominent Manhattan physician and poet
William H. Studley, had afforded what Lester called a "versatile
miscellany." Among them were some from the acting community who
produced articles equal to those of eminent writers. Among Lester's
discoveries were actors Edwin Booth, Louise Pomeroy, Sara Alexander,
Georgia Cayvan, Milton Nobles, and Sarah Jewett as well as singer Clara
Morris and poet Robert McWade.
41
In all, nearly fifty serious writers had appeared in the pages of the
Dramatic Magazine. As a community, they had constituted a strong body
of mental energy, high principles, and professional expertise. Lester had
reason to be proud of them. And unless she had given them cause to
mutiny, their loyalty must have provided a measure of comfort as the ship
went down.
Even the larger theatre community had been involved in the life of
Lester's journal. Frank Queen of the sports and theatre paper, the
Clipper, and W. H. Harrison at the Dramatic Fund Association had
provided illustrations at various times. And Mrs. Frank Leslie, the
powerful head of Leslie's Illustrated Magazine syndicate, had offered
40
Lester, "Editor's High Tea-Literary Impositions on the Stage," OM 2, 1
(August 1881): 39; "Editor's High Tea," OM 1, 3 Uuly 1880): 226, 227; and "Among
Books and Authors," OM 1, 6 (December 1880): 452.
41
Lester, "Editor's High Tea-Contributors for a Dramatic Magazine," OM 1, 2
Uune 1880): 153.
60
KAYNOR
what Lester called "generous appreciation of our work in establishing this
periodical." Although Leslie's paper had carried no ads for the Dramatic
Magazine, Mrs. Leslie had, on occasion, provided photographs and had
granted Lester an extensive personal interview.
42
The thirteen issues of the Dramatic Magazine had depended upon
such sources of good will in concert with Lester's talent and ability. It
would have enjoyed a sound financial base if actress Charlotte Cushman
had lived longer. More than money, Lester had valued Cushman's moral
support. But, in the end, it appeared that the Dramatic Magazine had
needed both. It may also have needed an editor with excellent health.
Whatever the magazine had needed for survival was not, in the summer
of 1882, at Lester's command.
The Dramatic Magazine's Place in History
Lester had insisted on calling her magazine "a pioneer effort" and
"the only dramatic magazine of the kind in the world." Yet, at the time
that Lester and Charlotte Cushman were first considering the need for a
dramatic publication, more than sixty theatre periodicals had appeared
in the United States. Surely the two women were aware of some of them.
And they must have recognized that the media-from local newspapers
to the Atlantic Monthly and Harper' s-often contained theatre coverage.
Lester's .egotistical claim may simply have meant that her standards
were so high as to disdain nearly all previous efforts. Or she could well
have doubted how much theatre could be covered by Wilke's Spirit of
the Times and New York Sportsman, a Chronicle of Racing, Trotting,
Field, Sports, Aquatics, Athletics, and the Stage. Lester and Cushman
may also have discounted most theatrical journals on the basis of the
short life span of most. Of the sixty-two American periodicals com-
menced prior to Lester's 1872 consideration of the matter, only eighteen
had lasted for more than a year. Even the most durable had failed to
maintain any regularity.
The need for an American theatre journal had first been noted a
century earlier-in 1798-when the Philadelphia Thespian Oracle
appeared followed, in that city, by eleven yearling drama journals.
Boston, with only three on the book stands in 1872, had put out ten such
journals after 1811. Baltimore, the other eastern city with notable
theatre, had produced the 1811 Baltimore Repertory of Papers on Literary
and Other Topics. The New Orleans theatrical community had put out
42
Lester, "Editor's High Tea-Thanks," OM 1, 4 (August 1880): 295; "Editor's
High Tea-An Acknowledgment," OM 2, 4 (April 1882): 195; and "Frank Leslie,"
OM 1, 7 (August 1882): 341-351.
The Dramatic Magazine 61
Entr'Act in 1834 and La Lorgnette in 1850, and then let three decades
elapse before Warrington's Musical Review, Music, Art, Drama, and
Literature (1878-1884) appeared for a six-year span. The mid-west had
produced three known short-lived attempts with Chicago among the
missing. In San Francisco, despite lively theatre life, the 1865 Daily
Dramatic Chronicle had lasted four years before metamorphosing into a
general newspaper. Its contemporary, the Daily Critic (1867-1868), had
gone under within a year. And Figaro (1870-1904), which Lester had
certainly seen, was still in its first years when she was making her
decision to start the Dramatic Magazine.
43
Undaunted by competition, Lester had chosen New York City for the
locale of her journal. It was a city that had hosted twenty-four publica-
tions featuring theatre news. In May of 1880, when Lester was ready to
launch her journal, there were seven metropolitan theatre periodicals for
the Dramatic Magazine to compete with. The four-page folio, The Stage,
with fifteen years behind it, was about to expire. There were thirty years
of durability behind the New York Clipper (1853) referred to as "the
Oldest American Sporting and Theatrical journal," eventually (1924) to
be absorbed by Variety. Byrnes's New York Dramatic News (1875-
1884), then in its sixth year, was only an eight-page paper. The more
substantial New York Illustrated Times (1876-1884), with four years of
success, was at mid-life with but four more years to go. More formidable
than these was the one-year-old New York Mirror (1879), to be recog-
nized three decades later for the superiority of its coverage of New York
City theatre.
44
This scenario had made New York not only the best place for Lester
to start a theatre magazine, but the one with the highest risk. She might
have reconsidered if she could have foreseen the new publications that
were to appear during her magazine's lifetime. Byrnes's Dramatic Times
was the first, followed by the weekly Critic (1881-1906) which, together
with the Clipper and the Mirror, were to live into the twentieth centuryY
Across the nation, an infatuation with periodicals had increased the
number of magazines more than four-fold between 1865 and 1885.
Theatre periodicals were a small part of the market; but the Dramatic
Magazine had been distinctly different from even those. It had had a
narrower scope than most-eliminating news of the race track, field
sports, and music and art (with some exceptions in the arts.) And, within
43
For information on theatre publications, see Stratman.
44
Matt, 198-220.
45
Stratman, 32, 77, 81.
62
KAYNOR
its designated theatrical sphere, no other had surpassed it in thorough-
ness. No other theatre periodical covering the United States had also
attempted to cover Paris and London performances. No other had
offered biography, criticism, future billings, educational articles, history,
and current theatre-related issues as well.
Lester had been faithful to her intention to make the Dramatic
Magazine "recognized ... as the best organ of a theatre nature in
print."
46
How respected it became, may be judged by the New York
Sunday Mercury's deeming it "a publication that ranked high for its
purity of tone."
47
Simply by staying in print for more than a year, the
Dramatic Magazine had distinguished itself. Even among the more
durable of such journals, it had no peer as a source of theatrical
information and critical analysis. And because of Lester's aggressive
attack on the degrading of theatre and actors, it was a probable influence
in the subsequent elevation of the reputation of the stage. For these
several reasons, the Dramatic Magazine remains a star in the galaxy of
American theatre reviews.
46
OM 1, 1 (May 1880), 65.
47
n.a., "Death of Lisle Lester," Sunday Mercury (New York), 24 June 1888, sec.
5, p. 7.
journal of American Drama and Theatre 11 (Fall 1999)
Stella Adler: Teacher Emeritus
jOANNA ROTTE
Everything on stage is a lie until you make it truthful.
1
Stella Adler opened her theatre studio in New York City fifty years
ago this year. For some forty-three years, she taught her own evolving
interpretation of the Stanislavsky System, based in psychological realism.
That Adler thoroughly investigated the System and gave it to the
American theatre is reason in this golden anniversary year to acknowl-
edge her contribution.
What is less known about Adler and also worthy of appreciation is
that she was interested in styles other than psychological realism. Having
been a full-time student of Adler for two years, I we! I know that finding
the style of a piece was central to her advanced teachings on acting. In
Script Analysis she explored Brecht, Beckett, and Pinter. She knew what
to do with Restoration comedy though she advised that American actors
avoid the Restoration. There was a course in Shakespeare offered at her
studio. She called on the ancient Greeks for inculcating the actor with
size and a feel for eternity. In Advanced Character she taught heighten-
ing-she saw all of Tennessee Williams as heightened-and fantastical
realism, turning to Maeterlinck for non-human characters in altered
realities. Personally, she was drawn to a kind of American expression-
ism.
When my class graduated from the Stella Adler Conservatory, we
formed an acting company and convinced our teacher to come out of
directorial retirement. She chose to direct Thornton Wilder's Happy
journey, which we performed with silences, repetitive motion, and four
chairs on a bare stage. She solicited others to direct us in the craziness
of Alice in Wonderland, Murray Schisgal's The Chinese, and O'Casey's
Bedtime Story. We were physical in our roles, and Adler loved the
accents, the externalization, the costumes, and the audience laughter.
1
Adler's quotations throughout this article, unless otherwise noted, derive from
my own notes over three years in the 1970s as her student and as an actress under her
direction.
64
ROTTE
But that did not mean she rejected the System. Style was not some
technique to replace the System but was a melody orchestrated on top of
it. So for Adler, acting was to do an action truthfully-in a style-in given
circumstances. With all her natural theatricality and love of style, Adler's
pedagogy never veered from a sense of truth.
You must travel 10,000 miles to find the person who can give you a
technique that makes you secure.
Since 1949, when the Stella Adler Conservatory opened in New York
City, until the death of Stella Adler in 1992, new students came to her
each Fall to test their histrionic talent and commitment to the way of life
of an actor. She introduced them to the historical fact that they had
selected a profession with various approaches to training. She recalled,
for example, the initiation rites common in the early days of this century,
when she earned her own passage onto the stage:
In those days they called it the business of acting. They never called
it an art. Persons who wanted to act walked around and went to
matinees, and from that they went and knocked on the back-doors of
stock companies asking, "Is there any room for me?"
The young actors hung around and listened. They carried a spear, a
sword, and they played a monk, an old man, a young man, a little
comedy. They learned a scale, a range. They watched other actors
at work.
But these approaches are no longer available and this kind of "hit-or-
miss" method is inadequate to meet today's theatrical demands.
2
To adequately replace the old way of learning in the field, Adler offered
the prospect of studying a technique of acting in a studio before entering
the theatrical marketplace.
As Adler conceived the idea of a studio, it was a haven in which
students would commence to become persons equal to the times in
which they lived and actors equal to the demands of the theatre of the
time. The students would be given the opportunity to cultivate the habit
of looking at themselves, not as persons conforming to a conventional
life, but as souls actively pursuing a creative life. It was a refuge in which
2
Stella Adler, "The Art of Acting (The Actor's Needs)," The Theatre 2 (Apr il
1960): 16-17.
Stella Adler 65
the students would be allowed, even encouraged, to fail, so that they
need not be pressured, or their work crippled, by a requirement to
succeed. It was a shelter in which they would receive the guidance and
support of a teacher who would care less about the result of their work
than the effort put into it, and who would care about them. It was an
environment in which to become secure in a technique that would give
them the craft to solve any artistic problem that might confront them in
their profession. In short, training in a studio was the preparation most
likely to insure an actor's artistic survival.
The technique Adler taught was based on her own I ife experiences
and observations, her work as an actor and director, the influences of her
parents, and primarily the teachings of Constantin Stanislavsky. Adler
promulgated the Stanislavsky System not as a fixed set of rules or codified
way of performing. It was not something invented by a person and
therefore culturally limited. It was rather a person's understanding of the
logic of nature applied to an art form. As such, she considered the
System, like nature, open and available, meant to be applied by all actors
to all acting tasks.
She also knew that the System was not meant to be applied care-
lessly. The result of carelessness, which Adler had witnessed in our
theatres, was the emergence of "the mumbling, stumbling young actor
without vocal, physical, or emotional discipline." She said that
Stanislavsky had insisted upon a respect for the training of the actor along
traditional histrionic lines, including voice production, impeccable
speech, and physical agility. But in Adler's opinion, the instrumental
aspect of the actor-his whole vocal, physical, imaginative, and mental
tuning-had tended to be neglected by Method training (in favor of an
emphasis on emotional tuning) . One of her tutorial aims was to stress the
development of the actor's instruments in order to prevent a misuse of the
System.
Adler's ultimate tutorial aim was independence. If the actor truly
understood and absorbed the System, he or she would come into contact
with his or her own creative powers, rising above any explicitness of the
System. Thus, while her students were learning a technique of acting and
acquiring good working habits, Adler was behaving as a guide, helping
them develop the strength to re-formulate the System and go on their
way. The role she set for herself was "not to teach, but to lessen the
anguish."
But Adler was a teacher, a great one, and the only American teacher
of acting ever to have studied with Stanislavsky and also with Brecht, as
well as the only one to have acted under the direction of Reinhardt.
Also, she was the teacher of America's two most effective male screen
actors, Marion Brando and Robert DeNiro. She was also my teacher,
66
ROTTE
within a year of the night that Harold Clurman, in his capacity as theatre
critic of The Nation and my escort, introduced us in the lobby of the
Martin Beck Theatre. He said, "This is joanna Rotte. She's a doctoral
candidate in my American Theatre course at CUNY." Adler rose to the
occasion and replied, "Yes, but what does she know?" Sensing that
Stella Adler had something remarkable to teach, I became her student.
How she evolved into a teacher of merit is the landscape of this article.
My family has always believed in the majesty of acting.
Born in 1902, the youngest daughter of Jacob P. Adler (1855-1926)
and Sarah Lewis Adler (1858-1953), Stella Adler achieved eminence
within the Adler clan-that family of theatre professionals who delivered
more actors to the American stage than any other. Her father's patriar-
chal custom was such that, whenever any of his several children born in
or out of marriage could walk or talk, he or she entered theatrical life.
Stella's career commenced at the age of two, when she was carried on
stage by her father in an appeal for economic support of his theatre.
Since the audience response was to throw money all over the stage, it
may be suggested that Adler' s role in sustaining the American theatre
began in infancy.
3
The family of Adlers, In the eyes of Stella's second husband, director
and critic Harold Clurman (1901-1980), were as a litter of cats, an
inseparable race unto themselves: "They all loved the theatre passion-
ately, down to its minutest details, and were 'idealistic' about it withal.
They would talk all through the night, reminiscing, telling tales, and,
above all, laughing."
4
Their idealism was based on a propensity for good
acting in good plays. They knew the classics, particularly Shakespeare,
as well as contemporary European drama. They believed an actor must
make of him or herself an articulate, large-spirited human being, as well
as a creative craftsperson responsible to a sense of truth. The inspiration
for these ideals and the focal point of their lives was their father, who
asserted, according to his daughter Stella, that art is better than anything
else.
Jacob Adler, an idol in the Yiddish theatre on the Lower East Side of
Manhattan, devoted his professional efforts to revolutionizing Yiddish
3
joanna Ratte, "Personal interview with Lui Ia Rosenfeld" (New York, NY, june
10, 1975).
4
Harold Clurman, All People Are Famous (New York: Harcourt, Brace,
jovanovich, 1974), 110. All subsequent reference swill be cited parenthetically in the
text with the initials APAF.
Stella Adler 67
productions. As theatre-manager, stage-director, and leading actor, he
condemned the common taste for buffoonery and melodrama. He sought
to replace conventionality with scripts and acting that bore some
resemblance to human nature.
His personality was in conflict with his theatrical intentions. Though
wanting "to be natural, to be real, to express the actual life of the people
with serious intent,''
5
Jacob Adler's nature-passionate, mesmeric, and
theatrical-made his playing more heroic. and his staging more doctri-
naire than natural. His life was also paradoxical. By means of the same
enormous tenderness with which he had ar()used his fami ly to pursue
artistic ideals and shun celebrity, he seduced his audiences into heralding
him as the undisputed monarch of the Yiddish stage. More than 50,000
people followed the funeral procession of this man who looked like an
emperor. Still, to the day he died, Jacob Adler believed that if he had
been formally educated, he could have been a good actor and well I iked
(APAF, 110-11).
Sarah Adler, more so than her amply gifted husband, based her acting
on an in-depth portrayal of emotions, supported by confidence and
technique.
6
Her evocative yet simple variety of romantic real ism rather
than romantic heroism-"meticulous, subdued, though still intense, never
failing to convey a largeness of feeling (APAF, 112)"-caused audiences
to comment that she acted as people do in real life. They did not,
however, shower her with the adulation enjoyed by Jacob Adler.
Remembered by her family as having the endurance of a Russian peasant,
Sarah was a woman of energy, will, and sense. When Jacob temporarily
left her to take a servant as his mistress, she formed her own company,
chose and directed the plays, designed and sewed her own costumes,
polished and arranged the fruit sold during intermissions, and acted the
main female parts (APAF, 112).
Conceived by magnificent beings, Stella Adler, in pursuing her own
life and work, did not deny herself the nourishment of her roots. That she
had absorbed an intermingling of her parents' resources can be read in
Clurman's 1967 description:
Stella is an extraordinary human being. She spreads the air of
real theatrical glamour. I sometimes feel that the glamour part
has obscured to many people the degree of knowledge and work
that goes with it. The actress in her is so colorful, people don' t
5
Hutchins Hapgood, The Spirit of the Ghetto (Cambridge, MA: Bel knap Press of
Harvard University, 1967), 156.
6
Interview with Rosenfeld.
68
ROTTE
realize the real substance and idealism that lies behind it all.
She has grandeur in a society that lacks it.
7
Having inherited her father's noble mien (she was considered the beauty
of the family) and having been influenced by her mother's spirit (she was
said to be the most deeply feeling of all the Adler children), Stella's career
was determinedly stage-bound.
8
She did not of course instantly spring into full theatrical bloom, as if
from the mind of Dionysius. Reflecting on her beginnings as a Yiddish
actress, she said that she had worked with her parents' influences:
I was exposed enormously to acting and to the craft and art of acting
by my father; also, by my mother, who was the greatest actress I have
ever seen. Since their styles were so varied-as somebody said, "All
the styles came from them!"-and since they played in so many
kinds of plays, they influenced me most.
She had also worked with her own observations: "I started taking notes
very early in life on people who impressed me UR) ."
In remembering her young self, she pictured a girl socially ill at ease
and emotionally undisciplined. Adler's picture agreed ,with a description
given by her first husband, Horace Eliascheff, an Englishman of Russian
lineage, whom she married in her early twenties:
She was a retiring, hyper-sensitive girl. Wall-flowerish, shy,
closed inside her shell. And beautiful, very beautiful. . ..
Performing on the London stage with her parents ... she was in
the first stages of her development-a young girl full of energy
and curiosity-still unformed. Too sensitive to know how to
channel her sensitivity.
9
Aware of the need to discipline her talent and looking for what she
called a "more grabable technique UR)," in 1924 Adler joined the
American Laboratory Theatre, a Moscow Art Studio Theatre offshoot. As
7
Harold Clurman, quoted in John Gruen, " Stella at Yale, " New York/World
journal Tribune, 8 January 1967, sec. " The Lively Arts," p. 15.
8
Joanna Ratte, " Personal interview with Stella Adler" (New York, NY, May 23,
1974). All subsequent references will be cited parenthetically in the text with the
initials JR.
9
Horace Eliascheff, quoted in Gruen, 15.
Stella Adler
69
well as being her introduction to the early ideas of Stanislavsky, studying
at the Lab marked her as unique in the Adler group of actors, who had
learned their craft entirely from experience on stage. With the exception
of her father, the family made fun of Stella for going to acting school. She
had already been on the stage for years-with her parents, in vaudeville,
in London with Holbrook Blinn, and on Broadway-but, according to
Clurman, she joined the Laboratory (as both a member of the company
and a student) to make fresh inquiries.
Most memorable to Adler about the Laboratory was the answer given
by Richard Boleslavsky, its founding director, to the accusation that his
method was Russian. He said, "It may be Russian, but I have never met
a drunk anywhere that did not behave drunk whether he was in America
or Russia. He was drunk the same way UR)."
The Laboratory experience was in Adler's estimation the "big
opening up" through technique, by means of which she was eventually
able to work on a role in its totality. She said that, with her temperament,
she would not have survived in the world of theatre without the
reinforcement of technique from Stanislavsky: "From the Lab's point of
view, I had come with the complete instrument but did not know how to
control it." Nor would she have survived without the fortitude imbued
by Sarah Adler:
She was not a strong woman in the conventional sense, but she
was a brave woman. She did not so much say anything-she
never talked-but her behavior influenced me. Whatever
courage made me go on in a very hectic, desperate
career-some of it very good and some of it very bad-came
from this sort of optimism and courage I got from her. UR)
For the 1926-27 season, the Irving Place Theatre engaged Adler.
Under the direction of Max Wilner (stepson to actor-manager David
Kessler, colleague of Jacob Adler), the Irving Place company strove to
heighten the artistic value of Yiddish theatre. During 1929 and 1930,
Adler played on tour and in New York with Maurice Schwartz's Yiddish
Art Theatre, the vanguard of the Yiddish art movement. Schwartz's
professed purpose, a further advancement of Jacob Adler's preliminary
endeavors, was to produce plays of literary merit, using an ensemble
system of acting.
10
Several members of Schwartz's company, which from
10
Judd L. Teller, Strangers and Natives (New York: Delacorte, 1968), 22. Teller
writes of Schwartz: "He would assure his actors that he believed in the ensemble
system. He would engage experienced European directors and give them similar
assurances. However once rehearsals began, he pre-empted everything, and ended
70
ROTTE
time to time included Rudolf Schildkraut, Ludwig Satz, Jacob Ben-Ami,
Paul Muni, and Celia Adler (elder stepsister of Stella), had variously been
exposed to the innovative staging and ensemble approaches of such
vanguard directors as Jacques Copeau, Max Reinhardt, Harley Granville
Barker, and the directors of the Moscow Art Theatre. On the whole, the
Schwartz members, excepting Schwartz himself, were wont to break with
the grandiloquent tradition of declamatory acting and the star system.
11
In Adler's recollection, the Yiddish Art Theatre was a "theatre of love,"
and her two seasons with it were the most enjoyable of all her years on
the stage. The fondest visions of her aunt, in the remembrance of Adler's
niece Lulla Rosenfeld, were Stella playing Nerissa to Frances Adler's
Poria (in The Merchant of Venice) "as if they were two flowers laughing, "
and Stella appearing in Sholem Alechem's dramatization of Wandering
Stars, "as if she were a kind of Lillian Gish perfume."
12
The next year, 1931, the Group Theatre was founded under the
leadership of Harold Clurman, with Stella Adler and Franchot Tone
prominent among its members.
13
Up to then, Clurman's theatre
background had included classes with Copeau in Paris, membership in
the American Lab and the Theatre Guild, and immersion in the Yiddish
art theatre movement. In his biography, All People Are Famous, Clurman
traced the origin of his fascination with theatre:
When I was six my father took me to see Jacob Adler, the
greatest Yiddish-speaking actor of the day, in a translation from
German called Uriel Acosta, and a while later to see Adler play
Shylock .... That visit to Uriel Acosta had "taken," and I never
ceased imploring, insisting, crying out to be taken again and
again to the theatre. (APAF, 5, 7)
The Group's intention was to combine a study of theatre craft with
a content reflecting the life of their times. Their interest was in social and
up starring in most of the plays and directing himself. "
11
DavidS. Lifson, The Yiddish Theatre in America (New York: Thomas Yoseloff,
1965), 284-289.
12
Interview with Rosenfeld.
13
By 1933, Harold Clurman was well acquainted with Stella Adler. In Gruen,
Clurman is quoted: "I first beheld her on the New York stage. It was in Coat Song by
Werfel. I looked at Stella up there and knew that that was a woman I could fall in
love with. I soon began courting her." (15). The year was 1929.
Stella Adler 71
political change and artistic development. They were searching for an
acting style to convey the truth of the contemporary scene.
14
For the most part, the Group actors had already had some measure
of acquaintance with the rudiments of the Stanislavsky System. During
the early 1930s, they spent their summers together experimenting with
aspects of the System. They worked on emotion-memory exercises,
mainly under the supervision of Lee Strasberg, co-director with Clurman.
They studied voice and movement. They did their homework and
grew-to a point. It was not until 1934, when Stella Adler delivered the
results of her five weeks of private classes with Stanislavsky at his flat in
Paris, that Adler and Stanislavsky changed the course of American
theatre. Altogether, according to Clurman, who introduced them, it was
an encounter:
He [Stan islavsky] was regally handsome, with beautifu I white
hair, and must have had a decided appeal for Stella: her father
had also been majestically tall, with snow white hair. But
Stanislavsky, despite his imposing figure held erect in perfect
relaxation, was somehow reticent, whereas Jacob Adler had
never been at all shy with women ....
When he looked up and saw Stella with me, he rose to his great
height-he must have been six foot four-and addressed himself
first to her, saying that he had heard that her father had been a
wonderful actor. (APAF, 82)
The story was taken up by Adler:
I sat quietly in my chair, too awed to utter a word. But I observed
him. I looked at this gracious man-full of wit, full of
warmth-totally unaffected. He chatted with Madame Chekhova,
joked with her, talked of her husband's plays, and, at one point,
laughed and called her a ham.
After a while he turned to me and said, "Why don't you talk to me?"
and I answered, "Because you have ruined the theatre for me!" It
was true. In America, at the time, Stanislavsky's writings just didn't
seem to penetrate. The school of Russian acting was taken to be
grim, breast-beating, morbid form of expression. There was no joy
14
Harold Clurman, The Fervent Years (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1945), 31.
72
ROTTE
to be found in it anywhere. I could not believe that Stanislavsky
really meant the actors to wail so, and sigh, and cry, and carry on.
When I told him all this, Stanislavsky stood up and asked if I would
like to take a little walk with him in his garden. We did, and as we
walked and talked, he began to clarify all that had confused and
distressed me.
15
Adler had not seen the Moscow Art Theatre's performances in
America or anywhere. Her disparaging references were presumably
based upon her experience with Americanized versions of Stanislavsky's
teachings, Strasberg's in particular. As a Group Theatre instructor,
Strasberg had concentrated upon extracting the actor' s personal
psychology. As a Group Theatre director, his ideology had fixed upon
the actor's building a character out of "affective memory."
16
That he
emphasized using the actor's personal life to create a role had been a
point of antagonism between him and Adler. Her preference was to
create a character imaginatively. Thus she had felt, both at the Lab and
in the Group, that the American emphasis had been distorted.
Adler brought back to the Group what she said Stanislavsky wanted
the Americans to know. It was, in effect, a clarification of his System. To
demonstrate his theories to Adler, he had worked with her through
scenes from John Howard lawson's The Gentlewoman, a play with
which she had had difficulties in performance. She said that Stanislavsky
had told her, speaking as an actor to an actress, that
acting was not merely a question of technique-technique was
essential, yes-but more importantly it was a matter of truth, and
how this truth could be found within the circumstances of the play.
He would say, "The truth in art is always centered in the
circumstances [the situation of the play], but it must first be found in
life [from which nature derives].
17

15
Stella Adler, quoted in Gruen, 14.
16
"Affective memory" or "emotion memory" was defined by Stanislavsky as
" that type of memory which makes you relive the sensations you once felt." See
Constantin Stanislavski, An Actor's Handbook (New York: Theatre Arts, 1963), 55.
17
Stella Adler, quoted in Gruen, 14.
Stella Adler
73
Also, he had explicitly and concretely explained just what he had done
in the circumstances of Ibsen's An Enemy of the People when playing Dr.
Stockmann.
Stanislavsky's focus on doing action within a specific situation (the
situation of the play, not one's own situation) was, in Adler's appraisal,
precisely what had been lacking in the American Lab and Group Theatre
classes all along. This focus-doing an action within specific
circumstances-became the center of Adler's technique of acting. It was
her foundation, and she bolstered it with two of Stanislavsky's, as she
said, "off-the-cuff" but utterly essential statements:
1. Get very friendly with that stage before you act on it. Let the
set, the circumstances, and every object help you. Don't
squeeze it so from inside yourself.
2 The imagination contains everything you need. If you use
only your own conscious life, the work is limited. UR)
Stanislavsky's instruction to the Americans via Adler was thus not about
churning up emotion, nor about using one's own life to feel something
on stage. It was about the doing of an action, within the circumstances
of the play, brought to I ife through the actor's imagination.
Adler's account of her sessions with Stanislavsky caused the Group
to alter its rehearsal methods, resulting in the Group's achieving, in the
judgement of critic John Gassner, the best ensemble acting Broadway had
ever known.
18
With Adler as a prime mover, the Group influenced
American acting monumentally. During the Group's I ifetime and after its
final curtain in 1941, the Group members, on stage and screen, by
writing, teaching, directing, and lecturing, helped to make the
Stanislavsky System the dominant technique studied in New York and
elsewhere.
After the Group disbanded, Adler spent a few years performing and
producing in Hollywood, and then acting on the New York Stage and
abroad. In 1946, three years after her marriage to Harold Clurman, she
announced the end of her acting career, closing in Andreyev's He Who
Gets Slapped under the direction of Tyrone Guthrie. Her break with the
stage had been a long time brewing.
Following her 1934 meetings with Stanislavsky, though optimistic,
Adler had gradually begun to express dissatisfaction with the lack of joy
she felt within the Group. According to her niece, Lui Ia Rosenfeld, in the
18
j ohn Gassner, The Theatre in Our Time (New York: Crown, 1954), 300.
74 ROTTE
second half of the Group's decade of existence, its atmosphere,
"permeated with the spirit of [Eiia] Kazan," grew loveless, ruthless, smug,
arrogant, and cold. It was a space in which one could not be happy.
Because Adler apparently saw through the atmosphere that
psychologically harmed other Group actresses (Margaret Baker, Dorothy
Patten, and Frances Farmer were "driven crazy"), she was not irreparably
hurt. But her career was damaged. "She," Rosenfeld said, "the most
beautiful woman in New York, was made to play aging mothers (Bessie
Berger in Clifford Odets's Awake and Sing and Clara in his Paradise Lost).
People thought her old. She never forgave Harold Clurman for that."
19
Whether playing the Odets mothers had ruined her acting career or
not, three years before the dissolution of the Group, Adler had already
begun to expand beyond acting into directing. When she accepted her
"last"
20
stage role (in 1946 as Zinadia in the Andreyev play) it was, she
said, not to perform but because of an admiration for Tyrone Guthrie as
a director. She had considered his productions "theatrical in the
extreme," decided to work with him out of a deep curiosity, and was
gratified to do so.
He came from an old theatre where there were weak performances
and strong performances. Not everything had to be death quality.
If you were good, that was fine. If you were not good, he left you
alone. He said that it was not his job to improve you. UR)
With the Guthrie production, Adler's acting career came full circle.
Rather than the commercialism of Broadway, she found a climate akin to
the Yiddish art theatre in which her career had begun.
Though no longer on stage, but given her thespian blood, Adler did
not absent herself from the world of theatre. From 1949 on, she made
the teaching of acting her life-work. Also, during the 1950s, she
officiated at the symposia of visiting Soviet artists as the American
representative of the Moscow Art Theatre. And in 1955, she participated
in i c h a ~ l Chekhov's lecture series on character acting presented in
Hollywood.
In the early 1960s, during two separate tours of Moscow, Adler
attended plays and seminars to assess the changes in Soviet theatre since
Stanislavsky's death. She was especially interested in Vakhtangov's
adaptations of Stanislavsky's techniques, as explored in study sessions
19
Interview with Rosenfeld.
20
Stella Adler did have a stage comeback in 1961, playing Madame Rosepettel
in Kopit's Oh Dad, Poor Dad at the Lyric Theatre in London.
Stella Adler 75
and seen in Vakhtangov-conceived productions at the Vakhtangov
theatre.
Vakhtangov's contribution was stylization, so individual, you could
not put hand on it. He knew the style necessary for every leaf.
It was entirely a great experience seeing all the levels-Chinese,
Russian, jewish, Catholic, religious ceremony-on which his genius
worked.
However, the fact of the Stanislavsky theatre that he [Stanislavsky]
was trying to make dear, but that is little understood, is that he
[Stanislavsky] was not a naturalist or a realist, but worked in very
many styles. When Stanislavsky did Moliere, or any play, he was
much more varied than people understand. If you just take an album
of the different characters he played and look at them-his Gogo I, or
Woe from Wit-you realize he played in verse, and his
externalization was enormous. He was not only in An Enemy of the
People. He began everything that Vakhtangov did. I would say that
he had it all. UR)
Adler's pursuit of new directions in world theatre distinguished her
among teachers of acting. She was not just the only American acting
teacher to have studied with Stanislavsky-whom Clurman named the
one great contributor to the technique of acting of our time. She was also
the only American acting who had been indirectly in contact with
Vakhtangov, and directly in contact with Brecht and Reinhardt-whom
Clurman called three of the four great directors of our time, Meyerhold
being the fourth.
Adler met Bertolt Brecht in 1935, the year after studying with
Stanislavsky, and trained with him "for clarity." Brecht's study method
with Adler was similar to that employed by Stanislavsky. They worked
on scenes together, in this case from Brecht's Saint joan of the
Stockyards, and their association, according to Clurman, was agreeable:
Stella, always curious about new modes in theatre practice,
asked Brecht ... to expound his theories of acting to her ....
Brecht was eager to have this opportunity to work with an
American actress and all the more eager to work with Stella,
since he had given her half-sister Celia Adler a difficult time
when the Theatre Union had produced his version of Gorki's
Mother. (APAF, 134-35)
76
ROTTE
Adler later analyzed Brecht's plays (and eventually taught them in her
European Play Analysis course at her Studio) in order to understand them
from the actor's point of view.
Her experience with Max Reinhardt was as an actor in his short-run
1943 production of Irwin Shaw's Sons and Soldiers. Prior to rehearsals,
Reinhardt wrote, in a letter to his son, of his initial acquaintance with
Adler:
I find . . . Miss Adler ... most sympathetic ... an intelligent jew
.. . with an inner drive toward better things, toward art.
I have never seen her act. Though that never made much
difference to me when casting. What is important is that she
looks good, is of theatre blood, has a strong temperament,
pronounced humor, and a sharply critical brain; above all, she
is a personality, which, in the theatre, is always the most
important thing.
21
Adler likewise respected Reinhardt. In spite of his voluminous
production notes compiled before beginning rehearsals, Reinhardt
depended a lot upon the actors, according to Adler. "He expected a full
performance from you. It did not matter if you were Turkish or British,
he expected the performance UR)." Undaunted by Reinhardt's
reputation, Adler was prepared to deliver a performance, as noted by
Clurman:
At one of the rehearsals, Stella took Reinhardt aside and said,
"Professor . . . the characterization you have suggested to me is
first-rate. I shall be glad to fulfill it. But I have something else in
mind." Reinhardt said, "Show me!" When she had done the
scene her way, he said, "Much better. You should play the part
your way." (APAF, 144)
From 1949 on, Adler put her experience, ability, intuition, and
energy into teaching-and refining the teaching of-the craft and art of
acting. Teaching was not something alien. She had started a simple
acting school when an ingenue in the Yiddish theatre and had given
lessons to the Group after her meetings with Stanislavsky. She said,
however, that making teaching her profession was a development, a
21
Gotfried Reinhardt, The Genius (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979), 115.
Stella Adler 77
progression. Over the years, she arrived at a philosophic view of
teaching and a philosophy for the actor.
I'm not really interested in helping an actor become a good actor
unless he becomes the best self he can. There has to be a level of
grandeur-grandeur is the wrong word-of size in him: in the
instrument and in the soul of the actor. Size forces open ~ the
channels which life closes off. It opens them up and allows the actor
to achieve himself.
The actor must not remain small but must take his place as an artist
who can collaborate with any artist. That is the most important thing
for me and is what acting is all about. And that is what is missing for
me in the actor in performance today. UR)
The actor has the platform and through himself can express a whole
world of ideas, of experiences. If I am able to instill this [size] in my
students, I consider it a victory.
22
The period between her divorce from Clurman in 1960 and her
marriage to physi ci st and writer Mitchell Wilson in 1965 was telling in
Adler's own self-developmentY After separating from Clurman, she gave
herself to the vocation of teaching: to the technique, to her love of
dramatic literature, and to her students. The response to her involvement
was more than compensatory, as indicated by the appreciation of her
most renowned graduate, Marian Branda:
Stella has had the deepest influence on me. . . . She has
influenced my personal life and my professional life. I am
devoted to her. As a teacher, she has an infallible instinct for
character, and for knowing who people are. The spectrum of
her talent is reflected in all that she does. She has that rare gift:
. producing lightning states. My debt and gratitude to her are
enormous. As a teacher of acting, she has few peers. As a
human being, few equals.
24
22
Stella Adler, quoted in Gruen, 17.
23
In her interview, Lulla Rosenfeld revealed: "Harold Clurman said that Stell a
developed late intellectually. "
24
Marion Branda, quoted in Gruen, 17.
78 ROTTE
During her seven years of marriage to Wilson, Adler continued to
follow her own evolution. Her husband's experience of her was of an
exciting, volatile, imaginative scholar with integrity, who reads and
studies, and whose life is rooted in work. Following the untimely (and
grievously lamented) death of Wilson in 1973, until her own death in
December of 1992, Adler lived as a single woman. She remained a
teacher, with gratitude for her Adler origins.
We are truly a family of the theatre. We're all tied by the now
invisible iron of Sarah and Jacob Adler. We have all come to
understand that the theatre-acting, creating, interpreting-means
total involvement, the totality of heart, mind, and spirit. The craft of
involvement restores you, makes you never lose interest. The life
inside you reflects the life around you. And the world is your home.
You don't feel a stranger.
25
Eighty-eight of Adler's ninety years were connected to the world of
theatre. During this time she gained a perspective on acting. She
acknowledged that there is only one Stanislavsky and that no actor can
copy his work. At the same time, she asserted that the actor, to be a
genuine actor, must master (before he can legitimately transcend) the
techniques that Stanislavsky developed:
These techniques were the outcome of [modern] playwriting, which
required a new kind of actor . . . [and] are not an end in themselves.
. . . [They] make great demands on the actor. The ignorant actor, the
half-baked actor, the exploiter have no place in the theatre of today.
26
Adler worried that the United States has not given birth to a theatrical
tradition of its own, producing great ensemble acting. She thought that
the Group Theatre had come closest to generating a tradition of American
acting, but that it failed further development with the cessation of the
Group. She believed that since the Group, there has been a resignation
in the actor's nature. The American actor of today has been
demeaned-because of theatre as commerce and because of the
mechanical and uncaring attitude of the film and television industries.
Actors of today aim at only the show. They exclude the large meaning
25
Stella Adler, quoted in Gruen, 17.
26
Stella Adler, "The Art of Acting {The Actor's Needs), 17.
Stella Adler 79
of the script. Ultimately, they exclude the meaning of themselves as
human beings.
In contrast to the demeaned position of the contemporary actor,
Adler conceived of the actor in an elevated position.
The artist and the man must meet somewhere. If the aim of the
production-what the play is saying-is made clear to the whole
body of actors, they can rise above their normal level. That growth
comes out of doing the performance. The inspiration for it can come
from the director, or from the actors working together with each
other. It can also come from the guidance of a teacher.
There used to be a lot of growth in the theatre. You see the actors of
old-you saw them as young people, and you see them twenty-five
years later-their heads have changed. Everything about them has
changed, and you can see those changes in their work. You can also
see that in the artist, in the novelist. He does not remain the same.
He becomes bigger through working. The actor must not remain the
same. OR)
Unto her death at the age of ninety, I am pleased to remark in this
anniversary year, Stella Adler did not remain the same.
CONTRIBUTORS
WELDON B. DURHAM is professor at, and chairman of the
Department of Theatre at the University of Missouri-Columbia. He
is editor of a three-volume history of American theatre companies
and author of articles in leading theatre journals on American
theatre history in the early twentieth century.
FAY CAMPBELL KAYNOR is a native of Massachusetts with an
interest in biography. Her work can be found in regional
magazines and academic journals. She received her BA from
Randolph-Macon Women's College in Virginia. In 1992 she
donated funds to the New York Public Library Performing Arts
Collection at Lincoln Center in order to have the Dramatic
Magazine photographed on microfilm.
jOANNA ROTTE is on the theatre faculty of Villanova University.
Her book, Scene Change, A Theatre Diary: Prague, Moscow,
Leningrad was published by Limelight Editions. She has just
completed Acting With Adler, a comprehensive exploration of
Stella Adler's teachings.
YVONNE SHAFER teaches at St. John's University, Staten Island. In
1995 Shafer received a Fulbright to teach American theatre in
Brussels at the Universite Libre. She is the author of American
Women Playwrights 1900-1950 (1995) and August Wilson (1997).
She is currently completing a book entitled Acting and Directing
O'Neill for St. Martin's Press.
jEFFREY ULLOM is finishing his Ph.D. in dramatic criticism at the
University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. He has written,
directed, designed, and acted in numerous award-winning shows
and for the 1995-96 season, he was a dramaturg in the literary
department of the Actors' Theatre of Louisvi lie, working with
playwrights such as Tony Kushner, David Henry Hwang, and
Naomi Wallace.
80
Erratum
In our Spring 1999 issue a I ine of text was omitted between
pp. 25-26 in Theresa May's article I.'(Re)placing Lillian
Hellman: Her Mascul ine Legend and Feminine Difference."
The full line of text should read:
Was it "Hemingwayesque virtues" which compelled
her ferocious attack on the anti-Communist left in
Scoundrel Time? "Loyalty" which prompted her to
characterize John Melby as '.'a friend in the foreign
service" when he was a lover of two years with
whom she contemplated marriage?
We apologize for our mistake.
81
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