1. There are no catalogs of primary sources, no annotated guides for early printed sketches, and, consequently, no bibliographical control of the evidence required for a thorough study of minstrelsy. The following secondary sources are indispensable: Rourke, Constance, American Humor: A Study of the National Character (1931; rept. New York: Doubleday, 1953)Google Scholar; Nathan, Hans, Dan Emmett and the Rise of Early Negro Minstrelsy (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1961)Google Scholar; Toll, Robert C., Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974)Google Scholar; and Winans, Robert, “Early Minstrel Music,” in Musical Theatre in America: Papers and Proceedings of the Conference on the Musical Theatre in America, ed. Loney, Glen B. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1984), pp. 71–98Google Scholar. Background studies on the treatment of blacks in theatrical works include Boskin, Joseph, Sambo: The Rise and Demise of an American Jester (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986)Google Scholar; Hughes, Langston, “The Negro and American Entertainment,” in The American Negro Reference Book, ed. Davis, John P. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1966)Google Scholar; and Bogle, Donald, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies and Bucks (New York: Viking, 1973).Google Scholar

2. The first quotation is from Rehin, George F., “Review Article: The Darker Image – American Negro Minstrelsy through the Historian's Lens,” Journal of American Studies 9 (1975): 365–73, 369CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and the second is from Dormon, James H., “The Strange Career of Jim Crow Rice,” Journal of Social History 3 (1969): 108–22, 122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. Ellison, Ralph, Shadow and Act (New York: Random House, 1964), p. 48.Google Scholar

4. Levine, Jacob, “Approaches to Humor Appreciation,” in Motivation in Humor, ed. Levine, Jacob (New York: Atherton Press, 1969), p. 13Google Scholar. See also Keith-Spiegel, Patricia, “Early Conceptions of Humor: Varieties and Issues,” in The Psychology of Humor: Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Issues, ed. Goldstein, Jeffrey H. and McGhee, Paul E. (New York: Academic Press, 1972), pp. 4–34Google Scholar; and Corrigan, Robert W., “The Psychology of Comedy,” Comedy: Meaning and Form, 2nd ed. (New York: Harper and Row, 1981), pp. 165–90Google Scholar, for key essays by Freud, Jekels, Grotjahn, and Sartre.

5. Singer, David L., “Aggression Arousal, Hostile Humor, Catharsis,”Google Scholar in Levine, , Motivation, pp. 103–127, 125.Google Scholar

6. Huggins argued further that “the white man who put on the black mask modeled himself after a subjective black man – a black man of lust and passion and natural freedom (license) which white men carried within themselves and harbored with both fascination and dread” (Harlem Renaissance [New York: Oxford University Press, 1971], pp. 253–54)Google Scholar. Huggins denies that whites could portray real blacks “objectively” because whites simply could not know the subjects of their portraits. If whites portrayed the “subjective” black man who lived only in the white mind, that portrait was not of the “black” man; it was only a reverse image of the white and another example of the the masking function of blackface entertainment.

7. Ellison, , Shadow and Act, p. 49.Google Scholar

8. See Elkins, Stanley, Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959)Google Scholar; and Wittke, Carl, Tambo and Bones: A History of the American Minstrel Stage (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1940), p. 3Google Scholar. For an appraisal of the controversy Elkins raised, see Lane, Ann J., ed., The Debate over Slavery: Stanley Elkins and His Critics (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971)Google Scholar. For a more recent summary of the same issues, see Frederickson, George M., “White Images of Black Slaves in the Old South,” in The Arrogance of Race: Historical Perspectives on Slavery, Racism, and Social Inequality (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1988), pp. 207–15Google Scholar. My conclusions about stereotypes are based on Brigham, John C., “Ethnic Stereotypes,” Psychological Bulletin 76, no. 1 (1971): 15–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Vinacke, W. Edgar, “Stereotypes as Social Concepts,” Journal of Social Psychology 46 (1957): 229–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and those cited in note 22 below.

9. The first quote is from Wittke, Carl, Tambo and Bones, p. 3Google Scholar; and the second is from Paskman, Dailey and Spaeth, Sigmund, “Gentlemen: Be Seated!”: A Parade of the Old Time Minstrels (New York: Doubleday, 1928), p. 1.Google Scholar

10. Green, Alan W. C., “‘Jim Crow,’ ‘Zip Coon’: The Northern Origins of Negro Minstrelsy,” Massachusetts Review 11, no. 2 (1970): 385–97, 397.Google Scholar

11. Saxton, Alexander, “Blackface Minstrelsy and Jacksonian Ideology” American Quarterly 27 (1975): 3–28, 8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12. Ostendorf, Berndt, “Minstrelsy and Early Jazz,” Massachusetts Review 20 (1979): 574–602, 575.Google Scholar

13. Dennison, Sam, Scandalize My Name: Black Imagery in American Popular Music (New York: Garland, 1982), p. 154.Google Scholar

14. Toll, , Blacking Up, p. 272.Google Scholar

15. My choice of authors is based on the number of known works written by or attributed to a particular individual. The principal authors were Charles White (75 as author, 14 as co-author with Leavitt), Frank Dumont (38), George Griffin (26), Andrew Leavitt (28 as co-author with Hubert Egan, 14 co-authored with White), George Coes (21), and Henry Llewellyn Williams, Jr. (16).

16. Toll, , Blacking Up, pp. 56–57.Google Scholar

17. Sollors, Werner, Beyond Ethnicity: Consent and Descent in American Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 131.Google Scholar

18. Flynn, Joyce, “Melting Plots: Patterns of Racial and Ethnic Amalgamation in American Drama Before Eugene O'Neill,” American Quarterly 38, no. 3 (1986): 417–18, 426CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A most helpful study of blackface clowning outside the theater is Davis, Susan G., “‘Making Night Hideous’: Christmas Revelry and Public Order in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia,” American Quarterly 34 (1982): 185–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For essays dealing with the varieties of American ethnic theater, see Seller, Maxine Schwartz, ed., Ethnic Theater in the United States (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1983).Google Scholar

19. White, Charles, arr., The Live Injun; or, Jim Crow (Chicago: Dramatic Publishing Co., ca. 1874), p. 2Google Scholar. The title page indicates that the play was first performed in 1865. Throughout this study, the date given in parentheses after a title will be the date of the first performance if known or the date of the copyright, whichever comes first. The performance date is taken from the title page of the edition, the copyright date from the National Union Catalog [NUC] Pre-1956 Imprints (London: Mansell, 1971)Google Scholar. If neither date can be established, the date given is an estimate based on information found in NUC, publishers trade catalogs, or, whenever possible, from the contemporary sources and performance data cited by Odell, George C. D., Annals of the New York Stage, 15 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1927–1949).Google Scholar

20. Stowe, William F. and Grimsted, David, “Review Essay: White-Black Humor,” Journal of Ethnic Studies 3 (1976): 78–96.Google Scholar

21. Rehin, George F., “Harlequin Jim Crow: Continuity and Convergence in Blackface Clowning,” Journal of Popular Culture 9, no. 3 (1975): 682–701, 690.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22. Abrahams, Roger D., “The Negro Stereotype: Negro Folklore and the Riots,” in The Urban Experience and Folk Tradition, ed. Paredes, Americo and Steckert, Ellen J. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971), p. 69Google Scholar. See also Szwed, John F., “Race and the Embodiment of Culture,” Ethnicity 2 (1975): 19–33Google Scholar. Some of these ideas were first presented in my “‘Backside Albany’ and Early Blackface Minstrelsy: A Contextual Study of America's First Blackface Song,” American Music 6, no. 1 (1988): 1–27.Google Scholar

23. Hamm, Charles, Yesterdays: Popular Song in America (New York: Norton, 1979), p. 137.Google Scholar

24. Cantwell, Robert, Bluegrass Breakdown: The Making of the Old Southern Sound (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984), p. 262.Google Scholar

25. See Holmberg, Carl Bryan and Schneider, Gilbert D., “Daniel Decatur Emmett's Stump Sermons: Genuine Afro-American Culture, Language, and Rhetoric in the Negro Minstrel Show,” Journal of Popular Culture 19, no. 4 (Spring 1986): 27–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Mahar, William J., “Black English in Early Blackface Minstrelsy: A New Interpretation of the Sources of Minstrel Show Dialect,” American Quarterly 37, no. 2 (Summer 1985): 260–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “‘Backside Albany’ and Early Blackface Minstrelsy: A Contextual Study of America's First Blackface Song,” American Music 6, no. 1 (Spring 1988): 1–27.Google Scholar

26. The sample of works was taken from the lists of plays given in the Publishers Trade List Annual (PTLA), 1872–1888Google Scholar. The series begins with the Annual American Catalog, which covers 1869–72, followed by the PTLA from 1873–88 and The American Catalog (New York: Peter Smith, 1941)Google Scholar covering the 1876–1920 period. Other useful sources include Dramatic Compositions 1870–1916 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1918)Google Scholar, National Union Catalog Pre-1956 Imprints, and Engle, Gary, “The Atkinson Collection of Ethiopian Drama at the University of Chicago,” Resources for American Literary Study 1, no. 2 (Autumn 1971): 181–99Google Scholar. At least five hundred titles were published between 1855 and 1900 by the following firms: T. S. Denison (Chicago), Dick and Fitzgerald (New York), Samuel T. French (New York), Lee and Walter (New York and Philadelphia), Robert T. De Witt (New York), The Dramatic Publishing Company (New York and Chicago), The Happy Hours Company (New York and Chicago), and the Ames Publishing Company (Clyde, Ohio). For information on Albert D. Ames (1849–87) and his Series of Standard and Minor Drama, see Stoddard, Roger E. and Litchfield, Hope P., “A. D. Ames, First Dramatic Publisher in the West,” Books At Brown 21 (1967): 95–141.Google Scholar

27. The collection contains at least four different types of sketches: (1) burlesques of popular scenes from plays by Shakespeare, English comedy, and French or American melodrama; (2) processional or “parade” pieces, which provided opportunities to exhibit Yankee, Dutch, Irish or other “eccentric” or “exotic” characters; (3) topical skits or short plays satirizing contemporary political or social issues; and (4) domestic or courtship sketches usually dealing with a domineering wife or with a young couples’ plots to outwit a cantankerous and overprotective father.

28. Levine, Lawrence W., Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), p. 40.Google Scholar

29. The best studies of Shakespearean burlesques are Browne, Ray B., “Shakespeare in 19th Century Songsters,” Shakespeare Quarterly 8 (1957): 207–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “Shakespeare in American Vaudeville and Negro Minstrelsy,” American Quarterly 12 (1960): 374–91Google Scholar; Haywood, Charles, “Negro Minstrelsy and Shakespearean Burlesque,” in Folklore and Society: Essays in Honor of Benjamin A. Botkin, ed. Jackson, Bruce (Hatboro, Pa.: American Folklore Society, 1966), pp. 77–92Google Scholar; and Shattuck, Charles H., Shakespeare on the American Stage: From the Hallams to Edwin Booth (Washington, D.C.: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1976).Google Scholar

30. In Charleston, South Carolina, for example, the five most popular antebellum plays (by number of performances) were Richard III (90), Hamlet (82), Macbeth (75), Othello (63), and Romeo and Juliet (63) (see Hoole, W. Stanley, “Shakespeare on the Ante-bellum Charleston Stage,” Shakespeare Association Bulletin 21 [1946]: 37–45)Google Scholar. Other useful bibliographical information can be found in Jacobs, Henry E. and Johnson, Claudia, An Annotated Bibliography of Shakespearean Burlesques, Parodies, and Travesties (New York: Garland, 1976).Google Scholar

31. Rice introduced his Othello to New York during the 1833 season and played it continuously in that city throughout the 1840s. For Rice's early career, see Odell, , Annals, vols. 3 and 4, passimGoogle Scholar; Smith, SolTheatrical Management in the West and South for Thirty Years (1868; rept. New York: Benjamin Blom, 1968)Google Scholar; Hutton, Lawrence, Curiosities of the American Stage (New York: Harper and Row, 1891), pp. 115–19Google Scholar; and Dormon, , “The Strange Career,”Google ScholarNathan, , Dan EmmettGoogle Scholar, and Ramshaw, Molly N., “‘Jump Jim Crow’: A Biographical Sketch of Thomas D. Rice,” Theatre Annual 17 (1960): 36–47.Google Scholar

32. The acting styles of great American and English actors were frequently parodied because of the many excesses and idiosyncracies associated with their conceptions of Shakespeare's characters. For information on actors and acting styles, see Downer, Alan S., “Players and the Painted Stage: Nineteenth-Century Acting,” Publications of the Modern Language Association 61 (06 1946): 522–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar; the “Acting and Actors” section of “A Bibliography on Theatre and Drama,” Speech Monographs 16, no. 3 (11 1949): 1–112Google Scholar; and Wilson, Garff B., A History of American Acting (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1966).Google Scholar

33. Griffin, George W., Hamlet the Dainty, an Ethiopian Burlesque on Shakespeare's Hamlet (New York: Samuel French, ca. 1875)Google Scholar, reprinted in This Grotesque Essence, ed. Engle, Gary D. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978), pp. 85–90, 88Google Scholar. My Shakespeare quotation is taken from the Norton Critical Edition of Hamlet: An Authoritative Text, ed. Hoy, Cyrus (New York: Norton, 1963), pp. 18–19Google Scholar. After reviewing Hamlet the Dainty and Poole, John's Hamlet Travestie (1810)Google Scholar, I have found that Griffin's text is virtually identical with the edition of Poole's play reprinted in Salomon, Jacob B., Nineteenth-Century Dramatic Burlesques of Shakespeare: A Selection of British Parodies (Norwood, Pa.: Norwood Editions, 1979), pp. 8–35Google Scholar. See Engle for reprints of Ryman, and White, 's Julius the Snoozer (1875)Google Scholar, Uncle Eph's Dream (1871)Google Scholar, and other blackface plays.

34. White, Charles T., 100th Night of Hamlet, a Negro Sketch (New York: Robert M. De Witt, 1874 [performed at the American Theatre, April 3, 1865]), p. 2Google Scholar. Charles White is known today only as the composer of “De Floating Scow of Ole Virginia,” with its famous refrain “Oh! Carry me back to ole Virginia shore” (1847). A brief summary of his life will be found in Rice, Edward LeRoy, Monarchs of Minstrelsy, from Daddy Rice to Date (New York: Kenny, 1911)Google Scholar. White was often billed as the “celebrated black Apollo” because of his appearance in “reproductions of ancient sculpture and paintings, usually by men of athletic mold, who figured in the circus or between play and farce at the minor theatres” (Odell, , Annals, vol. 5, pp. 378, 491)Google Scholar. White ended his career playing the blackface “wench” part of Mrs. Jackson in Harrigan and Hart's Reilly and the 400. See Harlow, Alvin F., Old Bowery Days: The Chronicles of a Famous Street (New York: Appleton, 1931), p. 442.Google Scholar

35. Engle, , Grotesque Essence, p. xxiiiGoogle Scholar. Dormon's excellent discussion of audiences in Theatre in the Antebellum South complements Engle's observation (p. 241) that “there is considerable evidence that some incidents involving audience participation resulted from the curious phenomenon of an auditor's becoming so involved in the plot … that make believe became reality” (pp. 235–36). Dormon also discussed seating arrangements for audiences, observing that “insofar as they were able, period managers segregated their lower-class patrons from the upper classes, and the Negroes from the whites.” Audience studies are fairly rare, but good overviews of the New York scene will be found in Lawrence, Vera Brodsky, Strong on Music: The New York Scene in the Days of George Templeton Strong, 1836–1875 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), vol. 1Google Scholar; for New Orleans, see Roppollo, Joseph P., “Local and Topical Plays in New Orleans, 1806–1865,” Tulane Studies in English 4 (1954): 91–124Google Scholar, and “Audiences in New Orleans Theatres, 1845–1861,” Tulane Studies in English 2 (1950): 121–35.Google Scholar

36. White, , 100th Night, p. 4Google Scholar. Sam's lines are “To be or not to be? That is the question [Hamlet, 3.1.56]. List 'tis now the witching time of night and crows have gone to roost. Now o'er one half the world nature seems dead and wicked dreams dome in your head…. I go; the bell invites me; hear it not Smithers; ‘tis a knell that summons them to heaven or — [sic]” (Macbeth, 2.1.49–64).

37. Dormon notes that Othello was “among the most popular of the Shakespearean tragedies in the South as in the North, despite its celebrated inter-racial match” and that the “anomaly” was because “Othello” was commonly viewed as an anti-miscegenation play” (Dormon, , Theatre, p. 276)Google Scholar. The strongest evidence comes from James Hackett's statement that “the great moral lesson of the tragedy of Othello is, that black and white blood cannot be intermingled in marriage without a gross outrage upon the law of Nature” (Hackett, James, Notes, Criticisms and Correspondence on Shakespeare's Plays and Actors [1863; rept. New York: Benjamin Blom, 1968], p. 224)Google Scholar. For a study of Edwin Forrest's conception of the role as revealed in his own promptbooks, see Allen, Barbara, “Edwin Forrest's Othello,” Theatre Annual 14 (1956): 7–18Google Scholar. A few playrights, such as Raux, Eugene in The Road to Fortune (Philadelphia: G. B. Ziegler, 1846)Google Scholar, did not treat racial intermarriage as a serious social problem.

38. McConachie, Bruce A., “‘The Theatre of the Mob’: Apocalyptic Melodrama and Preindustrial Riots in Antebellum New York,” in Theatre for Working-Class Audiences in the United States, 1830–1890, ed. McConachie, Bruce A. and Friedman, Daniel (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1985), pp. 17–46, 35.Google Scholar

39. Griffin, George W., Othello, a Burlesque (New York: Happy Hours Company, ca. 1880)Google Scholar. Quoted from Engle, , Grotesque Essence, p. 70.Google Scholar

40. Engle, , Grotesque Essence, pp. 70–71.Google Scholar

41. The most popular version of the comic courtship song known as “The Low-Back'd Car” was Samuel Lover's (1797–1868) setting of a traditional Irish air known in England as “The Jolly Ploughboy.” For an arrangement with all the verses, see Ives, Burl, Irish Songs (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1955), pp. 37–39Google Scholar. Lover's “Irish evenings” were very popular in the United States, where he appeared between 1846 and 1848. “Blighted Flowers” was probably written by Michael Balfe (1808–70), the composer of The Bohemian Girl (1843). The song was available in the United States as late as the 1880s because it was listed in Epstein, Dena, ed., Complete Catalogue of Sheet Music and Musical Works, 1870 (New York: De Capo Press, 1973)Google Scholar, a reprint of the 1871 catalog published by the Board of Music Trade of the United States of America. The song does not seem to have been as popular as other Balfe favorites. I was unable to locate a copy of the song to compare with the parody used in this sketch.

42. Engle, , Grotesque Essences, p. 71.Google Scholar

43. Sollors, , Beyond Ethnicity, p. 226Google Scholar. Language differences played an important role in many American comedies because they were the primary indicators of differences for every ethnic type. According to Allen, Irving, “Ethnicity, in fact, may be the largest single social theme in North American slang and popular speech”Google Scholar (Allen, Irving Lewis, The Language of Ethnic Conflict: Social Organization and Lexical Culture [New York: Columbia University Press, 1983], p. 9).Google Scholar

44. The statistical evidence will be found in Bruce, James D. and Rodman, Hyman, “Black—White Marriages in the United States: A Review of the Empirical Evidence,” in Interracial Marriages: Expectations and Realities, ed. Stuart, Irving R. and Abt, Lawrence E. (New York: Grossman, 1973), pp. 147–60Google Scholar. See also Romulo, Beth Day, Sexual Life between Blacks and Whites (New York: World, 1977).Google Scholar

45. Christy, George N. (1827–1868Google Scholar; recte Harrington) was in Edward Rice's words “one of the greatest performers that ever graced the minstrel stage.” His work can be dated fairly well because his associations with various companies were documented in his autobiography (see Rice, , Monarchs of Minstrelsy, p. 20).Google Scholar Christy appeared with Griffin between January and September, 1867. It would appear likely that the series of plays mentioned here was produced during that association.

46. For the principal stage Yankees, see Hodge, Francis, Yankee Theatre: The Image of America on the Stage, 1825–1850 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964)Google Scholar; and Dorson, Richard M., Jonathan Draws the Long Bow (New York: Rockland Editions, 1939).Google Scholar

47. White's parade play may have been taken from Griffin, 's The Ticket Taker; or, The Masquerade BallGoogle Scholar, which is reprinted in Engle, , Grotesque Essence, pp. 78–84.Google Scholar The only difference between the two is that Macbeth's witches (played by beardcostumed males) and Hamlet suffer from an all-consuming passion for alcohol:

Hamlet: To be or not to be — that's the question. Whether it were better to suffer the slings and juleps to go by discarded, or to take up arms against the outrageous Excise Law [an 1866 New York law regulating liquor distribution], and find myself ten dollars out in the jail; to drink — [sic]

The importance of lotteries and other games of chance for 19th-century audiences cannot be underestimated. White's Captain Slim is a stereotype based on popular characters who “struck it rich,” but Slim's sudden wealth also illustrates a widely held belief that economic success is merely a matter of chance. For information about lotteries and other confidence games, see Williams, Francis Emmitt, Lotteries, Laws, and Morals (New York: Vantage, 1958)Google Scholar; and Ezell, John Samuel, Fortune's Merry Wheel: The Lottery in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960).CrossRefGoogle Scholar How Claude and Pauline got into minstrel shows is somewhat complex because both were originally characters in Bulwer-Lytton, Edward's The Lady of Lyons; or, Love and Pride.Google Scholar For the play, see Brown, Calvin Smith, ed., The Later English Drama (New York: A. S. Barnes, 1898), pp. 293–371Google Scholar; for a summary of the Lady of Lyons and its sequels, see Dormon, , Theatre, pp. 266–68.Google Scholar Dormon also notes an 1846 St. Louis burlesque entitled The Lady of Lions, which featured Meddlenot, Clod, a “Boston gardener”Google Scholar (Dormon, , Theatre, p. 267).Google Scholar For information about the play's popularity in New York, see Ireland, Joseph N., Records of the New York Stage from 1750 to 1860, 2 vols. (1866; rept. New York: Benjamin Blom, 1966), vol. 2, pp. 436–40.Google Scholar For more on Mose, who was introduced to New York audiences in A Glance at New York (1848)Google Scholar, see Dorson, Richard M., “Mose the Far-Famed and World-Renowned,” American Literature 15 (1943): 287–300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The Mose plays were also “parade” shows featuring characters “typical” of specific local scenes.

48. White, Charles T., The Hop of Fashion; or, The Bon Ton Soiree (New York: F. A. Brady, ca. 1856), pp. 11, 12.Google Scholar White's quotations from Macbeth differ in several minor respects from the modern editions of the play. My comparison was based on The Tragedy of Macbeth ed. Waith, Eugene M., rev. ed. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1954), p. 56.Google Scholar

49. Blayney, Glenn, “City Life in American Drama, 1825–1860,” in Studies in Honor of John Wilcox, ed. Wallace, A. Doyle and Ross, Woodburn (1958; rept. Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries, 1972), pp. 99–128Google Scholar, cites a number of such works, the best known of which may be Tyler, Royall, The Contrast (1787)Google Scholar, Barker, J. N., Tears and Smiles (1807)Google Scholar, Linsley, A. B., Love and Friendship; or, Yankee Notions (1807–1808)Google Scholar, Bird, Robert Montgomery, The City Looking Glass (1828)Google Scholar, and Brougham, John, Life in New York; or, Tom and Jerry on a Visit (1856).Google Scholar

50. Blayney, , “City Life,” p. 117.Google Scholar For the plays mentioned in the text, see Mowatt, Anne Cora, Fashion (1845)Google Scholar, in Best Plays of the American Theatre: From the Beginning to 1916, ed. Gossner, John (New York: Crown, 1967), pp. 97–135Google Scholar; Preuss, Henry, Fashions and Follies of Washington Life (Washington, D.C.: published by the author, 1857)Google Scholar; Matthews, Cornelius, False Pretenses; or, Both Sides of Good Society (New York: n.p.)Google Scholar; and Raux, Eugene, The Road to Fortune (1846).Google Scholar

51. Steinberg, Stephen, The Ethnic Myth: Race, Ethnicity and Class in America (New York: Atheneum, 1981), pp. 117–18.Google Scholar

52. McConachie, Bruce's essay “Using the Concept of Cultural Hegemony to Write Theatre History” in Interpreting the Theatrical Past: Essays in the Historiography of Performance, ed. Postlewait, Thomas and McConachie, Bruce (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1989), pp. 37–58Google Scholar, was helpful in clarifying some of the social and cultural implications of blackface entertainment.

53. The Tom and Jerry show was one of the models for the American “slice of life” plays. Moncrieff, William T.'s Tom and Jerry; or, Life in London (1823)Google Scholar and Tom and Jerry's Funeral (1824)Google Scholar were imitated by Tom, Jerry and Logic's Visit to Philadelphia (1844).Google ScholarTom and Jerry in America (1845)Google Scholar provided a vehicle for showing the diversity and oddities associated with the United States. See Boardman, Gerald, American Musical Theatre: A Chronicle (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 9.Google Scholar

54. The sketches have generally been viewed as emphasizing that African-Americans were incapable of holding “power roles” in American life. Even if some members of the audience accepted such an absurd notion, others could understand the broader application of the lines to all the powerless classes in American society.

55. See Gruber, William E., Comic Theatres: Studies in Performance and Audience Response (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986)Google Scholar, for a discussion of the various concepts of status reversal, inversion ritual, and misrule. For a reprint of Freud, 's “Jokes and the Comic,”Google Scholar see Corrigan, , Comedy: Meaning and Form, pp. 167–74.Google Scholar

56. Caputi, Anthony, Buffo: The Genius of Vulgar Comedy (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1978), p. 93.Google Scholar Caputi's discussion of buffo suggests that there is a much stronger correlation between the American blackface humor and the “vulgar” or popular traditions of European comedy than has been noted in the literature about minstrelsy.

57. Frye, Northrop, “The Argument of Comedy,” in English Institute Essays, 1948, ed. Robinson, Eugene (New York: Columbia University Press, 1949), p. 61.Google Scholar My discussion is also indebted to Martineau, William H., “A Model of the Social Functions of Humor,”Google Scholar in Goldstein, and McGhee, , Psychology of Humor, pp. 101–24Google Scholar, especially because the theory of in-group and out-group responses to humor stimuli suggests that minstrel show audiences might be viewed as a collection of in-groups, each of which could develop quite different and not necessarily compatible interpretations of the comic actions taking place on the stage.

58. Leavitt, Andrew J., Squire for a Day (New York: De Witt, ca. 1875 [performed at the Theatre Comique.…, New York, November 24, 1873]), p. 7.Google Scholar

59. Callow, Alexander B. Jr., The Tweed Ring (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), p. vii.Google Scholar The canal and county courthouse scandals, discussed on pp. 182–206, are especially relevant to the dialogue of Julius the Snoozer.

60. Ryman, Addison and White, Charles T., arr., Julius the Snoozer; or, The Conspirators of Thompson Street (New York: Robert M. De Witt, 1876)Google Scholar; and Engle, , Grotesque Essence, pp. 164–172, 170.Google ScholarBlayney, (“City Life,” pp. 115–16)Google Scholar cites a number of plays satirizing the actions of “sham commissioners and coroners,” law enforcement officers, and politicians of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston.

61. For information on the draft riots, see Foner, Philip S., History of Black Americans: From the Compromise of 1850 to the End of the Civil War (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1983), pp. 398–402Google Scholar; and McCague, James, The Second Rebellion: The Story of the New York City Draft Riots of 1863 (New York: Dial Press, 1968).Google ScholarMcPherson, James M., in Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 609–11Google Scholar, reviewed all the recent studies of the riots and concluded that the 1,000 “killed” casualty figure still mentioned in many sources is exaggerated and that the actual death toll did not exceed 105.

62. White, Charles T., The Draft (New York: De Witt, 1874 [performed at American Theatre, 12 7, 1865]), pp. 4–5.Google Scholar

63. Grawe, Paul H., Comedy in Space, Time and Imagination (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1983), p. 14.Google Scholar For more on why audiences laugh at the classic fool or incompetent clown, see Lehman, Benjamin H., “Comedy and Laughter,” University of California English Studies 10 (1954): 84–101.Google Scholar

64. White, Charles T., arr., Hard Times: A Negro Extravaganza in One Scene by Daniel D. Emmett (New York: De Witt, 1874 [first performed in New York, October 12, 1855]), p. 3.Google ScholarHard Times is also reprinted in Nathan, , Emmett, pp. 415–26.Google Scholar

65. McConachie, Bruce, “Using the Concept of Cultural Hegemony to Write Theatre History,”Google Scholar in Postlewait, and McConachie, , Interpreting the Theatrical Past, pp. 37–58, 52.Google Scholar

66. Dumont, Frank, What Shall I Take? (New York: R. M. De Witt, ca. 1876Google Scholar [performed by Dupres' and Benedict, 's Minstrels, 09, 1874]), p. 3.Google Scholar

67. Griffin, George, The Hypochondriac: An Ethiopian Farce (New York: Happy Hours Company, ca. 1875), p. 7.Google Scholar

68. Plot summaries are taken from “Denison's Descriptive List” of plays “of approved merit suited to the present day,” which was bound into the Townsend, 's Negro Minstrels, pp. 17–18.Google Scholar

69. White, Charles T., Laughing Gas (New York: De Witt, ca. 1874 [first performed by Wood's Minstrels, 1858]), p. 3.Google Scholar

70. Grote, , The End of Comedy (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1983), p. 31.Google Scholar

71. White, Charles T., arr., The Darkey's Stratagem (New York: De Witt, 1874), p. 8.Google Scholar The same kind of comic twist occurs in White, 's The Black Chemist.Google Scholar Pete Grabem, a poor, uneducated black character, outwits a pompous doctor/ chemist by impersonating the son of Horace Greeley - a “noted bachelor” according to the script - and stealing the Doctor's prize invention, the Secesh [sic] Soother, which is a storage battery capable of killing 25,000 men. See White, Charles T., The Black Chemist (New York: De Witt, ca. 1874 [performed at the American Theatre, June 16, 1862]), p. 3.Google Scholar

72. White, Charles T., Sam's Courtship (Chicago: Dramatic Publishing Company, ca. 1874 [performed at White's Opera House, New York, 1852]), p. 7.Google Scholar

73. White, Charles T., Wake Up William Henry (New York: De Witt, ca. 1874Google Scholar [performed at the American Theatre, March 24, 1862]), p. 5. Emphasis is added to distinguish between the stage directions and the text. Russel Nye noted that seventy-two books on phrenology were published between 1825 and 1855 and that, however foolish the idea may appear today, “the concept of the individual that it projected reinforced the individualistic, democratic spirit of the age” (Russel Nye, Society and Culture in America, 1830–1860 [New York: Harper and Row, 1874], p. 335Google Scholar As shown in the following introduction, minstrel lecturers saw phrenology and mesmerism as related “sciences”: “De subject dat I call upon myseff to spoke to you about on dis ‘tickler’ caision am de twin sister to Freenology.” For that lecture, see Levison, William H., ed., Black Diamonds; or, Humor, Satire, and Sentiment Treated Scientifically … a Series of Burlesque Lectures (Upper Saddle Brook, N.J.: Gregg Press, 1969), pp. 144–46Google Scholar; for the one on phrenology, pp. 140–43. This publication is virtually identical to an English collection entitled Irish Diamonds; or, A Theory of Irish Wit and Blunders (London: Chapman and Hall, 1847).Google Scholar The easy passage of the same jokes and comic sketches across ethnic and racial boundaries supports Rehin's view (see the note above) about the “universality” of some comic material and suggests another significant research topic for investigations of ethnic humor.

74. Lynn, Kenneth S., “Uncle Tom's Cabin,” in Visions of America: Eleven Literary Historical Essays (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1973), pp. 27–48, 27.Google Scholar

75. Frederickson, , “Social Origins of American Racism,” Arrogance of Race, p. 204.Google Scholar

76. Frederickson, , “White Images of Black Slaves in the Old South,” p. 210.Google Scholar

77. The first quotation is from Dormon, James H., “Shaping the Popular Image of Post-Reconstruction American Blacks: The ‘Coon Song’ Phenomenon of the Gilded Age,” American Quarterly 40, no. 4 (1988): 450–71, 450CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and the second is from Denning, Michael, Mechanic Accents: Dime Novels and Working-Class Culture in America (New York: Verso, 1987), p. 207.Google Scholar