Part 6
There were some further corrections to be made to Dunlap’s history, but they were not very important or numerous, and some additional information to be added respecting theatrical performances in Maryland and Pennsylvania that was new and interesting. This was included in this special history, which, in addition to what had been previously published, was largely made up of the full casts, as they are called in theatrical parlance, of plays given at particular dates during the Colonial period; that is, the name of the performer of each part, taken from the small play-bills that are printed for the use of the audience. As it is the custom in theaters for the prompter to keep a file of these bills each season, and the habit of some persons to keep the play-bill of any performance they have seen, considerable collections of these small play-bills have been preserved, and exist in private collections or in institutions or clubs, of which Mr. Seilhamer has made copious use, and has also inserted in this volume long lists of the performances given at particular dates and tabulated statements of the leading parts of actors and actresses, and the statements of performances, culled from the Colonial newspapers, by all of which insertions the volume is augmented to the magnitude of a large quarto.
Dunlap, while stating that play-bills and theatrical advertisements are of assistance, or, as he expressed it, “throw light” (that is, they may assist the historian in the construction of his narrative), evidently thought that this minute information, or detail, of this kind was not, save in exceptional instances, to be inserted bodily in a history, for he apologizes to his readers for inserting three full casts of plays that were performed in the years 1752, 53, and 54, in these words: “Particularity of this kind would be unnecessary in regard to events of more recent date and _out of place in a history of a theatre_, but in this early stage of the work before us, we think a play-bill a valuable source of information and gladly insert it,”[22] and in this respect we incline to the opinion of Dunlap.
But Seilhamer does not. In this age of many books, the aim of able historical writers is condensation with clearness, but with him it appears to have been expansion with plenty of material; for while Dunlap, in a history extending over sixty-five years, inserts but three full casts of plays, Seilhamer, in one extending over only twenty-nine, years, inserts 253, and adds also one-fifth of that number of theatrical advertisements and numerous lists of performances at different dates, and tables of prominent performers’ leading parts, which are all incorporated with the text, and form a part of the narrative. I apprehend that it was the chief material that he had; that he meant to supplant Dunlap as the future historian of the American Theater, and that the amount of other information that was new, that is, that had not previously been published, would have been for such a purpose so insufficient that it was necessary to swell the book out to the dimension of a large quarto with material of this kind, connected together by a slight thread of narrative; material of which there was an abundant supply, for he followed up this publication by two more of the same kind in the years 1889 and 1891, each, however, distinguished from the other by a different title, the whole ending in 1797.
To his manifest desire to supplant Dunlap there could be no objection, if he had the ability to produce a better and more interesting book. On the contrary, a history of the American Stage from the earliest knowledge we have of it to the time of publication, by a writer who had the leisure to make the necessary research, and the art so to arrange his material as to make the work reliable and readable, would be a contribution to literature. Seilhamer’s opinion of what he could do, and had done, is subsequently shown by his constant abuse of Dunlap throughout these three volumes, for Dunlap’s name rarely, if ever, occurs without his applying to it some derogatory, contemptuous, or other abusive epithet. Such as the “marvelous chronicler,” “the quality of blundering for which he was remarkable,” or some like term or phrase to belittle him. He says in respect to his history, that “never was a book written to throw light upon a subject that so completely confused it.” “His dates are always wrong.” “He presents to the world the remarkable example of a man who wrote the annals of the American Stage from some scattered memoranda, and out of his own head,” and refers to the “readiness of assumption he was apt to resort to in the absence of facts,” “the consequences of which are” he says, “that the stream of American theatrical history was poisoned at its source”; that “his inaccuracies are so many and so unreasonable that it is impossible not to wonder at the mental equipment of a man that could be guilty of them.” “His statements of facts are” declared to be “always misstatements in whole or in part.” He finds him “inexcusable for not knowing the date of the first appearance of a certain actress and for his want of knowledge of an early American play.” He is declared to have been a failure in everything; as an historian, a novelist, an artist, a theatrical manager, and as a dramatist. A drama of his is a failure for the want of skill in the management of the plot, and the insufficiency of the characters and the incidents; another is disposed of as a “turgid melodrama without action”; all his plays and adaptations of plays are condemned as having passed into deserved oblivion; but as regards the history something had to be conceded, and it is therefore said that, “full of mistakes as it is--mistakes for which it is impossible to forgive him,” it has some features that commend it; such as the account he was able to give from personal knowledge of the players that were on the American stage in the first quarter of the century after the Revolution, which it is conceded “the world could ill afford to lose,” and might well be conceded, as it is more interesting than anything in Seilhamer’s three volumes. But even this is qualified by his saying, in respect to the Dunlap Society being named after him, that “there probably never was a writer less deserving of such an honor than Dunlap,” that his plays were “without merit, either for stage representation or as literary productions,” and that his history was “at once dull and inaccurate,” with the further observation that he “might have been looked upon as an interesting character, had he not been at once jealous and abusive of every one outside of his circle of friends, ignoring the efforts of others not inferior to his own.”
It may be said of this array of accusations against Dunlap that, except in some matters of little importance, they are merely Seilhamer’s own conclusions or assumptions, and derive no additional weight from any facts stated in his volumes. It is a literary mistake for an historical writer to indulge in such continued abuse as this of a previous writer on the same subject. If the first historian has made errors or mistakes, it is sufficient quietly to correct them; but to constantly abuse and belittle him is objectionable and offensive on the part of the second, for it is continually reiterating his own superiority and importance as an historian.
It is especially so in this writer, for he is as prone to indulge in conjectures or assumptions that afterward prove to be unfounded, as he asserts Dunlap is, and in matters quite as important; with this difference, that, when he refers to anything of this kind on the part of Dunlap, it is stigmatized as “the blunder of an ignorant historian,” one example of which will suffice. When Dunlap stated that it was the Hallam Company that first introduced the drama in America, he also stated that this was communicated to him by one of that company, Lewis Hallam, Jr., and which he might reasonably suppose to be true, coming, as it did, from one of that company; but when Seilhamer states that “the history of the drama in this country may be said to begin with the production of Addison’s ‘Cato’ in Philadelphia in August, 1749,” he does so upon the authority only of the item before referred to, which is an entry in a manuscript journal kept by one John Smith of Philadelphia, of the date of August 12, 1749, recording that Smith had been at a friend’s house whose daughter was going, as one of a company, to hear the tragedy of “Cato,” which at that time was the earliest reference known to the performance of a play in the American Colonies, and which Seilhamer assumed to have been the commencement of the drama in this country. Now it had been previously shown in the paper here reprinted, that there was a play-house in New York in 1733, sixteen years before. This interfered with such a conclusion, and as he could not avoid referring to this fact, he did so very boldly, declaring that “as an attempt to transplant the drama to the Colonies, it had no effect upon the development of the American stage,” giving this opinion respecting a period of which he knew nothing, for we now know that many years before this performance of “Cato” in Philadelphia, there were play-houses in New York, Virginia, and South Carolina; that a play was acted in the Colonies in 1718, and that plays may have been performed there as early as 1702.
It appears from “Watson’s Annals of Philadelphia” that there were theatrical performances in Philadelphia in January, 1749, seven months before this performance of “Cato” mentioned in Smith’s journal, and Dunlap also refers to theatrical performances there in 1749; and Watson and Dunlap were of opinion that these were performances by amateurs, for which Seilhamer takes Dunlap to account for, as he calls it, “a snap judgment” and “asserting what he knew nothing about”; “who,” he proceeds to say, “had made up his mind that the drama in America should begin with the Hallam Company, and so contemptuously ignored all previous theatrical efforts”; whilst he, Seilhamer, on the contrary was of the opinion that this performance of “Cato,” in August, 1749, was by Kean & Murray’s Company, who, it is known, came from Philadelphia to New York a year and a half afterwards; which may have been the fact, but there is no certainty about it, and for all that appears to the contrary, Dunlap and Watson may have been right; but Seilhamer evidently determined to dethrone Dunlap, and he therefore not only assumed this, but went much further, by stating that it was “certain” that Thomas Kean was the first actor to attempt _Richard III._ on the American stage. As Colley Cibber’s alteration of “Richard III.” was produced at Drury Lane in 1700, more than half a century before Thomas Kean played the character in New York, and as Cibber’s “Richard III.” was from the beginning and for more than a century afterwards one of the most popular plays that was during that period produced upon the English stage, it is as likely to have been played at Williamsburg or Charlestown or in New York in 1733 as any other; a period when we know that they had theaters at these places, but have very little information as to what plays were performed in them. And in both these erroneous assertions, that is, that the history of the American theater began in 1749, and that Kean was the first to play _Richard III._ in the Colonies, Seilhamer appears to have been unconscious that he was doing the very thing for which he so severely censured Dunlap, that is, giving a “snap judgment by asserting what he knew nothing about.”
Dunlap was, it is true, not remarkable as a dramatist or otherwise as a writer, but he was quite equal to the average literary man in this country at that time. It was a period that gave rise to the query in the “Edinburgh Review,” “Who reads an American book?” Cooper, to whom Dunlap dedicated his history, had not yet appeared, nor Halleck, Drake, or Bryant as poets; and in what might be called American dramatic literature, such as it was, Dunlap was then the most prominent and the most industrious. He wrote, including adaptations from Kotzebue and others, no less than eighty-seven plays. The writer of the article in the “New-York Times,” from which I have quoted, respecting the theater in Charleston in 1736, mentions Dunlap as the “first and most painstaking of the historians of the American stage”; which is true, for if it had not been for exertions of this nature on his part, a large portion of the early history of the American theater which is interesting would have been lost. He was also the historian of the arts of design in this country, which embraced an account of our painters, from William Watson in 1715 to William Page in 1832, which is full of material not elsewhere found, and which no one was so competent to gather as himself. He wrote a history of the State of New York, which, in the continuation of the narrative to the time of publication, supplied a want that it still continues to supply; and while, as a portrait painter, he was neither a Stuart nor a Jarvis, he was at least a respectable limner, and the statement of Seilhamer that “he painted numerous portraits with sketches of his theatrical contemporaries, most of them wretched caricatures,” is but an exhibition of the writer’s ignorance or of his malevolence.
The Dunlap Society was formed for the printing of papers connected with the history of the American theater, or reprinting what had become scarce upon that subject and was worth preserving. Societies of a like general nature have been formed in England and in this country, which have usually been named after some individual who at an early period was prominently identified with the subject matter in which the society is interested; and when what has been here stated respecting Dunlap is considered, with the fact that he was the first historian of the American theater, and the purpose for which the Dunlap Society was formed, it appears to me that the choice of his name for it was as appropriate, if not more so, than that of any other American of that period.
The concluding illustration is a facsimile of the oldest American play-bill as far as known, the original of which is in the possession of Mr. Thomas J. McKee of New York. It is thought worthy of insertion as a curiosity, and not as approving Mr. Seilhamer’s extensive use of such material, which, he says, is “introduced as a part of the record which it is the aim of this work to preserve with as much completeness as possible,” and again, that “the monument of the actors is the record of their work in the newspapers,” and it is due in justice to him to state that in the two later volumes, and especially in the third, there is much information that is new and interesting, the result, evidently, of a very thorough examination of the Colonial and other newspapers until within a few years of the commencement of the present century.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] 3 Bancroft’s “History,” n. s., chap. 19.
[6] “Caribbeana,” Vol. i, p. 380. London, 1741.
[7] Spottiswood’s Letters, collections of the Virginia Historical Society, Vol. ii, p. 284.
[8] “History of the United States of North America,” Vol. iii, p. 146, 147: London, 1836.
[9] Cookes “History of the People of Virginia,” Boston, 1890.
[10] Graham’s “History of the United States of North America,” Vol. i, p. 145, and note 1: London, 1836.
[11] Graham, p. 146.
[12] Part III, ch. 6.
[13] “The Drama in New Orleans,” by John Gaisford, etc., pp. 7, 8. New Orleans, 1849.
[14] Davies, “Dramatic Miscellanies,” Vol. iii, ch. 17.
[15] Smith’s “History of New York” with a continuation, pp. 239, 240, 271: Albany, 1814.
[16] This is an error in the writer, they were Norris and Fairbank, and the original _Sergeant Kite_ was Estcourt.
[17] Life of Cibber, by Bell, Chambers ed., 105, 106.
[18] A MS. volume, small 4°, Pp. (xvii), I-CXXX; Appendix, pp. XVI. Handsomely engrossed, with ornamental or fancy lettering for the title, the whole apparently the work of a professional clerk. Bound in old mottled calf, with gilt border, stamped back once gilt and lettered.
POEMS BY A. H. ESQR MS.
Bought from a London dealer in 1890, by William Nelson, of Paterson, New Jersey.
[19] “New-York Times,” Sunday, December 15, 1895.
[20] Dunlap, p. 16.
[21] Dunlap gives the full cast of the “Merchant of Venice,” the first play enacted by the Hallam Company in America, at Williamsburg, September 5, 1752, as he received it from Lewis Hallam, Jr., by which it appears that Mrs. Hallam, the manager’s wife, was the _Portia_, that Miss Hallam represented _Jessica_, “her first appearance on any stage,” and an actor named Malone played _Shylock_. The author of the novel states that his wish was simply to depict some Virginia scenes and personages ten years before the Revolution, or the Virginia of 1765, and trusts that his picture is at least truthful as far as it goes, which it probably is, with the anachronism of the appearance, in the year 1765, of Miss Hallam, a young girl of about eighteen, as _Portia_, thirteen years after she had made her first appearance on the stage in the same play as _Jessica_. But liberties of this kind are pardonable in a novelist. They are taken by great authors. Scott, in his novel of Kenilworth, the scene of which romance is laid in the year 1575, represents Lord Leicester, in passing through the court-rooms, stopping to compliment Shakespeare on the success of his recent poem of Venus and Adonis, Shakespeare being then eleven years of age. The poem was printed in 1593, eighteen years after the event described by the novelist, or when Shakespeare was twenty-nine years of age.
[22] 2 Dunlap, 24, 48: London ed.
A CONSIDERATION OF THE OBJECTIONS MADE TO THE STAGE.
This supplement began with the statement that among the earliest information that we possess respecting the drama in America, is a passage in a letter objecting to the performance of a play, and it may be appropriately closed by a brief enumeration of the objections generally made to the theater, and the conclusion that seems to follow from a review of them.