The colonial period

Until the arrival, in 1749, of identifiable actors and managers in the eastern part of the American continent, the nature and practice of theatrical performance are matters almost entirely of historical conjecture. What records exist of theatrical activity make little or no mention of playhouses, scenery, or modes of performance. We know from at least one instance in the sparse chronicles of colonial theatre that, in 1665, three young men, who were accused of “acting a play of ye Bare and ye Cubb, on ye 27th of August” (quoted in Odell, 1, 4), were ordered to appear in court in “those habilments that they acted in” before the judge in Accomac County, Virginia. Whether it was the costumes they wore or the excerpts from the play they recited for the judge’s edification, we know that he was persuaded to find them not guilty.

If the young men at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, indulged in theatrical activities (as some believe), they left little evidence of their efforts, but a few historians have read into these intimations a sense that the Virginia colony, and the South in general, was somewhat more tolerant of theatrical practice than its northern counterparts. Their position is strengthened by the discovery of the foundations of a playhouse, built sometime between 1716 and 1718, in Williamsburg. Erected by William Levingston, a merchant of New Kent County, the playhouse was probably nothing more than a large barn built with wood posts and beams with joists carrying the weight of the floor and ceiling.

On 15 September 1752, in Williamsburg, the capital of Virginia, the first play performed in America by a fully professional company was presented. It was Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice; its Virginia Gazette advertisement ended with the formulaic phrase “Vivat Rex.” It is hard not to see a certain symbolic significance in this production. First, company, play, and actors were British, as, of course, was the audience. After all, this was a British colony, and the Revolution was still more than two decades ahead. The influence of the British theatre, indeed, would remain central, if a matter of growing contention, throughout the period covered by this volume. Second, it was notable that the performance took place in a southern colony, for the fact is that theatre did not find a ready home on a continent that to some was to be a new Eden, a world in which God alone would have the prerogative of invention.

The only Word, the only authorized text, was to be the Bible, and man’s role was to be obedient to He who alone was the author of the human drama. The frivolous, the sensual, the illicit were to be shunned. Display was seen as unseemly, the aesthetic as suspect. Boundaries were to be respected, not transgressed, and the theatre, as the Puritans well knew, had always been about transgression. Those on board the Mayflower had not suffered the privations of sea crossing and winter storms to worship Dionysus. They had another God, who would not be mocked by those who seduced by their skills of mimickry or claimed a license to portray the proscribed.

Introduction

For those living during the transition, more than a new century seemed to dawn with the year 1801. Twelve years of centralizing, pro-British Federalist government was giving way to a new era. The ascendant Democrat-Republicans promised a reorienting of the nation’s political, economic, social, and cultural agendas. But despite Federalist fears of a wholesale dismantling of federal power and an embracing of radical French republicanism, the new cast of political leaders, epitomized by Thomas Jefferson, remained fundamentally committed to the established government infrastructure, to gentry governance, and to the preservation of republican virtue. As Robert Wiebe has noted, though members of both political parties saw their differences in stark contrasts, their dissimilarities were finally struggles “over the interior design of the same ideological house” (xiii). Though often distanced by both temperament and class from those they governed, this new leadership was destined to oversee a new wave of westward migration into the territories of the Old Northwest and the Louisiana Purchase, the United States’s tentative forays into international politics, and a second war with Britain. In turn, Jackson and his successors would grapple with the shift of political power to the frontier, the expansion of a commercial economy, the “Indian question,” an influx of new immigration and the consequent growth of cities, the emergence of irreconcilable sectional rivalries, and, eventually, a civil war that would irreversibly set the national course by ending slavery and establishing the primacy of the Union over the states.

Introduction

American culture before 1800 is not renowned for its theatre, and American theatre before 1800 is not known for its dramatic literature. The period is often characterized as a relatively barren era in which rare examples of theatrical writing appeared on odd occasions. Theatre historians describe long fallow stretches punctuated by sudden bursts of crude dramatic creativity, with plays remarkable only for their scarcity and inherent inferiority to European models. It is a perception that has influenced the development of American plays and playwrights since the first performances by Europeans more than four hundred years ago, and it still forms the basis of our present understanding of early American theatre.

A closer examination, of course, reveals a surprising number and variety of plays, written by an equally surprising assortment of playwrights, from politicians to preachers. Indeed, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries produced a remarkable collection of scripts, dialogues, dramatic discourses, masques, and other dramatic and paratheatrical endeavors. Far from being a barren and unproductive period, pre-nineteenth-century America saw drama as an integral part of culture and society. Admittedly, the dramatic literature of this early period has received scant attention, its significance overlooked and perhaps deliberately shunned by social critics fearful of idle representations or even aesthetic patriots determined to distill a purified American drama by expunging those works deemed unworthy and inferior.

Introduction

There are two areas of management (decision making) in the theatre. Artistic decisions about the physical setting (scenery and costumes) and the actors’ performances occupy the foreground and are normally made by the appropriate artists in terms of current conventions (styles). These change over time because of innovations introduced by individuals who find current practices unacceptably restrictive. The discussion of these sorts of decisions and changes belongs to other chapters of this book.

The background is occupied by a context of other conventions by means of which the theatre operates as a social institution. It is these nonartistic conventions and their changes that are the subject of this chapter. This goal of social management is to organize the relationship between performers and the public in such a way that it provides the theatre personnel with a living. In a commercial (nonsubsidized) theatre such as that in the United States, the management must arrange for the performance of something attractive to an audience at a convenient time in a convenient place at an acceptable price, so that the gross box office income at least equals (and preferably exceeds) the gross cost of creating the performance.

Obviously there is a middle ground in which the two areas of management meet. When artistic decisions require the spending of money they affect the cost of the performance and therefore its possibility of profit. Any decision to spend more money on theatres, scenery, costumes, or actors must be justified in terms of its potential to increase revenue more than it increases cost and thereby increase net income.

Introduction

The actress Olive Logan, reviewing the state of American theatre in 1866, found much about which to complain. The New York stage, once the home to Kean’s Shakespeare, was now filled with blood-and-thunder melodramas, appealing only to “Bowery B’hoys,” and with fantastic, fairy amazonia, drawing rows of “Bald Heads.” Since managers were only interested in cash rather than “the drama,” few standards remained. Everything, Logan claimed, “from educated dogs, performing fleas to the sermons of Henry Ward Beecher now comprises the show business.” As the rest of her essay made clear, Logan was only trying to make a salutary, pointed joke. As an aspiring author for the legitimate stage, she thought it possible that firm boundaries between frivolous, minor amusement and edifying drama might be reestablished. Yet, in giving us such an encompassing definition of the show business, even in irony, she exposed an important truth about the development of commercial amusements in America that would have been unthinkable only thirty years before. No matter how ludicrous the juxtaposition of secular fleas and the priestly Beecher, their respective performances were now fueled by the same energies of profit, fame, and celebrity. All forms of performance achieved their value on the same level ground of commercial return.

Rounding the bend three-quarters of a mile up river from a one-horse town in Arkansas, the raft on which Huckleberry Finn floats is “a most uncommon lively place.” At that point in Huck’s narrative, the makeshift showboat carries on its crowded deck a boy (Huck), a runaway slave (Jim), a “king,” a “duke,” and all their worldly possessions. These include the theatrical prerequisites, human and material, sufficient to rehearse a multitude of roles, which the travelers are prepared to perform for one another as well as for a larger public. The fact that Huck knows the truth about the purported royals – “that these liars warn’t no kings nor dukes, at all” – detracts not at all from their urgent preparations for the forthcoming stage show:

Following the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet, featuring Mr. Garrick as Romeo and Mr. Kean as Juliet, “assisted by the whole strength of the company,” and the “thrilling, masterly, and blood-curdling broad-sword conflict” from Richard III, the playbill promises that the evening will conclude with Mr. Kean’s rendering of “Hamlet’s Immortal Soliloquy.” Adult admission was set at a quarter, a dime for children and slaves (Twain, 141-42).

INTRODUCTION

During the Sung (A.D. 960–1279) and early Yüan (1279–c. 1320) dynasties, China's agricultural and industrial production, its domestic commerce, and its economic contacts with the “outside world” all expanded dramatically, reaching levels that far surpassed anything known in earlier periods of Chinese history. In recent years, William H. McNeill, Janet L. Abu-Lughod, and F.W. Mote have been among those who have argued that these developments not only had a profound effect on Chinese civilization, but on that of much of the rest of Eurasia. As Professor McNeill has put it,

“New wealth arising among a hundred million Chinese began to flow out across the seas [and significantly along caravan routes as well] and added new vigor and scope to market-related activity. Scores, hundreds, and perhaps thousands of vessels began to sail from port to port within the Sea of Japan and the South China Sea, the Indonesian Archipelago and the Indian Ocean. Most voyages were probably relatively short, and goods were reassorted at many different entrepôts along the way from original producer to ultimate consumer … [A]n increasing flow of commodities meant a great number of persons moving to and fro on shipboard or sitting in bazaars, chaffering over prices.”

By the time Marco Polo began his seventeen-year stay in China during the mid-1270s, this “increasing flow of commodities” meant that substantial quantities of Chinese raw silk, silk textiles, porcelains, and other goods were being carried by ship and caravan to other parts of Asia, to East Africa, and the Middle East, to the Mediterranean trading area, and even to the major markets of northwestern Europe.

THE PATTERN OF SINO-KOREAN TRIBUTARY RELATIONS

Korea is often referred to as a model Chinese tributary state. Indeed, it would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of Korea's tributary relations with China in the development of Korean political institutions and higher culture. Beginning in the seventh century, when the Korean kingdom of Silla entered into an alliance with the T'ang, the Koreans became skilled at adapting Chinese institutions to their own needs. Later, the kingdom of Koryŏ (Chinese: Kao-li, A.D. 918–1392) continued this pattern of adaptation, watching closely as the Liao, Chin, and Mongol states rose in succession, and evolving forms of tributary relations with each in turn. Korea came under more direct imperial control with the completion of the Mongol conquest in 1270. Thereafter, Koryŏ princes were reared in Peking and were married to Mongol princesses, and Mongol commanderies were established at P'yŏng-yang and Ssangsŏng. During the decades of Yüan overlordship, as the Koryŏ ruling lineage intermarried with the Yüan imperial family, certain other Korean houses became powerful by marrying daughters to high Yüan officials. Over time, Korean ties to the Yüan became so important that the Koryŏ regime was ill-prepared to cope with the fall of the Yüan in the mid-fourteenth century. In many respects, the fall of Koryŏ and the rise of the state of Chosŏn in 1392 was related to the transition from the Yüan to the Ming dynasty in China, and the evolving relationship between China and Korea during the Ming period is a good example of how the tributary system served each side, both as a political tool and security mechanism, and as a conduit for trade and cultural transmission.

The Ming dynasty is generally known as a period of stable, effective government during which some important new institutions developed. Although in the end the dynasty collapsed under the pressures of domestic rebellions and foreign invasions, it had long seemed the most secure and unchallengeable ruling house the Chinese had known, and its institutions were largely perpetuated with admiration by the succeeding Ch'ing dynasty.

The system of governance that matured in Ming times was the culmination of trends that became evident after the mid-T'ang period, developed markedly in Sung times, and were further stimulated by the Mongol occupation of China during the Yüan dynasty. The emperor was a supreme autocrat. Administration of the empire on his behalf was entrusted to Confucian-indoctrinated scholars who were selected for service on the basis of their scholastic merit as demonstrated in competitive recruitment examinations, who made career progress very largely on the basis of service judged by their peers to be meritorious, and who constituted a civil service that was significantly self-regulating.

The civil service dominated government to an unprecedented degree. It was not seriously challenged by hereditary nobles or military officers, although eunuch agents or manipulators of emperors often disrupted civil service dominance. Society at large was thoroughly integrated into the state to such an extent that, during the final decades of the Ming dynasty, rulers were securely in control of everything they wished to control, and no other group in society rivaled the status of the civil officialdom as the natural leaders of society.

THE TRIBUTE SYSTEM MATRIX

Between 1514 and 1662, the people and government of China were involved in, and affected by, the first stages of the development of a “modern world system.” This involvement was implemented via the sea routes linking all the continents except Antarctica and Australia in exchanges of trade goods, food plants, diseases, people, and ideas. Ming official concepts and formalized institutions of foreign relations offered little guidance to Chinese officials and had little effect on Sino-European relations after the first encounters with the Portuguese, but actual official responses were alert, flexible, and reasonably effective. Chinese merchants, craftsmen, and sailors became extremely vigorous participants in building a new world of trade and settlement around the South China Sea. The rise of Nagasaki and other ports of Kyushu, the beginnings of Chinese settlement of Taiwan, the sudden emergence of Hai-ch'eng and then Amoy, the flourishing of Macao, Manila, Banten, Batavia, Ayudhya, Melaka, and many more centers of commercial and economic growth depended very heavily on the activities of these Chinese entrepreneurs. The silk-silver trades with Japan and Manila had substantial effects on the Ming economy. The Roman Catholic missionary presence and Chinese responses to it, while on a small scale, reached all levels of Chinese society. As we seek to understand the vigor of these private involvements, we need to draw on our growing knowledge of late Ming culture and society, and especially of maritime China as a regional variant in society, economy, and polity. The changes in empire-wide politics so well summarized in Volume 7 frequently help us to understand the changes in official approaches to maritime problems.

The experience of life in China changed remarkably over three centuries of Ming rule. That, at least, is how it seemed to those who lived through the changes and felt obliged to record their surprise and dismay. By the middle of the dynasty, many literate observers were becoming aware that the institutions laid down by the founding Emperor, Hung-wu, were no longer guiding social practices. They credited this lapse variously to the recurrent problems of lax administration, low-level corruption, and a weakening of moral fibre. Writers of the late Ming knew differently. In their view, something more than just dynastic sag had taken hold. Many became obsessed with the extent to which Chinese society had grown away from what they were trained to believe it had originally been: an agrarian realm where superiors knew their responsibilities and inferiors their places. But, they felt, people no longer stayed put: class distinctions had become confusingly fluid; the cultivation of wealth had displaced moral effort as the presiding goal of the age.

The panicked indignation that can be found in writings of the late Ming may not represent the mood that all of that age shared, nor may it speak directly of the actual pressures to which an embattled elite felt vulnerable. But it came close. Some late-Ming writers, for instance, were aware that China was becoming a more crowded place than it had been at the beginning of the Ming, but only the more alarmist insisted that the population had more than doubled between the Hung-wu emperor's reign and the turn of the seventeenth century – as in fact it had. Others were sensitive to the difficulty that cultivators were having in gaining access to enough land to survive, but only a few were aware of the migration that had shifted China's population westward over the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and they tended not to grasp the scale of this movement.

INTRODUCTION

In the absence of a belief in a world-transcending creator and lawgiver to whom human society would have been bound to submit for its own salvation, the Chinese social order was understood by its members to flourish or perish by its harmonious or disharmonious relations with the encompassing cosmos. The cosmic order was experienced as normally life-giving and life-sustaining, and as governed by the known periods of solar, lunar and sidereal time. The importance of astronomy and of time periods defined by astral motion was reflected in Chinese religion in the sovereignty of the astral cult over all others. The polar-equatorial framework of Chinese astronomy located the cosmic sovereignty in the region of the north celestial pole which was viewed as the central palace of the heavens. Earth, as the counterpart of Heaven, was characterized by its fecundity, which worked under the rule of the seasons and was assisted by the cooperation of human communities in agriculture and husbandry. But Earth, as the place of burial, was also the passageway of souls leading from life to death and from death to life. Hence the association of cults of fertility and of the ancestral cult with the earth. The assumed survival of human and animal souls after death permitted the mythopoeic imagination to create and sustain an invisible world of active forces behind the visible phenomena long after the birth of Chinese philosophy in the late Chou period.

The active forces of the unseen world, understood as spirits, were accessible to human contact in the ceremonial settings of sacrifice and prayer; and through them, the cosmos was understood to be responsive.

INTRODUCTION

Many characteristic features of Ming fiscal administration trace their origins to the first Ming emperor's peculiar concept of government. In 1380, the office of the prime minister was abolished, never to be revived. Henceforth, the emperor acted as his own chief executive officer. After a series of bloody purges that lasted from 1376 to 1396, the bureaucracy was virtually reduced to a huge clerical pool, subservient to the sovereign but not empowered to make important decisions. The new system that the first emperor had created called for an omnipresent ruler who exercised personal control over a population officially reported at close to sixty million. The civil government functioned as not much more than a transmitter of imperial wishes.

The situation at the local level was the reverse of the situation at the top of the administrative hierarchy. Villages were organized into self-governing communities. The basis for these group associations was not civil law, but Confucian morality. With intra-community litigations settled by imperial adjudication and unruly persons punished by their own elders, local communities needed little official supervision. In fact, the first Ming emperor even refused to allow his governmental functionaries to enter rural areas. This organizational scheme reveals a curious amalgam of arbitrary, autocratic rules and idealistic notions. Such an administrative system was basically unsound. The success of its operation relied more on the ideological cohesion and administrative discipline that bound the governing as well as the governed than on official administrative procedures. The first Ming emperor, in fact, ran his administration by cowing his subjects with brutal and arbitrary punishments on the one hand and moral exhortations on the other.

APPENDIX

The subject matter of the individual chapters included in this volume is very diverse, and both the extant original sources and the secondary scholarship devoted to them varies greatly in its complexity. All the chapters provide in their footnotes references both to the major sources and to the most important secondary studies. Some of them, however, have an unusually complicated and wide ranging literature, and the authors have provided, in the following bibliographical notes, some guidance to the scholarship available on their field

BIBLIOGRAPHIC NOTES

THE MING AND INNER ASIA BY MORRIS ROSSABI

The Ming Shih-lu is still, despite the drawbacks described by Wolfgang Franke and others, the most important primary source on Ming relations with Inner Asia. Japanese scholars have facilitated use of the voluminous records in the Shih-lu by extracting and compiling the materials on Mongolia, Manchuria, Tibet, and the Western Regions, the Chinese designation for Central Asia. They have also extracted the materials on Korea and Manchuria found in the Yijo sillok, the Yi dynasty chronicle. I have provided a preliminary analysis of the value of these sources in my "Ming China's relations with Hami and Central Asia."