Man Who Was Rip Van Winkle: Joseph Jefferson and Nineteenth-Century American Theatre - Hardcover

McArthur, Benjamin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300122322 ISBN 13: 9780300122329

Verlag: Yale University Press, 2007

Inhaltsangabe

The most beloved American comedic actor of the nineteenth century, Joseph Jefferson made his name as Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle. In this book, a compelling blend of biography and theatrical and cultural history, Benjamin McArthur chronicles Jefferson's remarkable career and offers a lively and original account of the heroic age of the American theatre.

Joe Jefferson's entire life was spent on the stage, from the age of Jackson to the dawn of motion pictures. He extensively toured the United States as well as Australia and Great Britain. An ever-successful career (including acclaim as painter and memoirist) put him in the company of the great actors, artists, and writers of the day, including Edwin Forrest, Edwin Booth, John Singer Sargent, and William Dean Howells. This book rescues a brilliant figure and places him, appropriately enough, on center stage of a pivotal time for American theatre. McArthur explores the personalities of the period, the changing theatrical styles and their audiences, the touring life, and the wide and varied culture of theatre. Through the life of Jefferson, McArthur is able to illuminate an era.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Benjamin McArthur is professor of history, Southern Adventist University. He is the author of Actors and American Culture, 1880-1920, and was an associate editor of the American National Biography.

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The Man Who Was Rip Van Winkle

JOSEPH JEFFERSON AND NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN THEATREBy BENJAMIN McARTHUR

Yale University Press

Copyright © 2007 Yale University
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-300-12232-9

Contents

Acknowledgments............................................................ixIntroduction...............................................................xiii1. Cradled in the Profession...............................................12. Marking the Progress of Civilization....................................293. Behind the Cart of Thespis..............................................544. An Actor Prepares.......................................................855. Echoing the Public Voice................................................1076. Triumphs in Comedy and Melodrama........................................1347. Nibbling at Stardom.....................................................1638. A Mighty Nimrod of Theatrical Touring...................................1849. Mr. Jefferson and Rip Van Winkle........................................21310. Bringing the "Sleepy Piece" Home.......................................24111. A Fellow of Infinite Jest, of Most Excellent Fancy.....................26912. Are We So Soon Forgot?.................................................305Epilogue: A Shy Thing Is Comedy............................................350Notes......................................................................357Index......................................................................423

Chapter One

Cradled in the Profession "I may almost say that I was born in a theatre," Joseph Jefferson confides at the opening of his Autobiography. "At all events, my earliest recollections are entirely connected with one." In an age when the socially conscious considered such origins dclass, Jefferson embraced his thespian pedigree without a hint of self-consciousness or embarrassment. Nor was the man who had delivered the famous paean to the "Little Church Around the Corner" for its kindness to a deceased and outcast fellow actor one to apologize for his own theatrical roots.

Those roots reached down as far as anyone's in the American theatre. He was Joseph Jefferson III, but he was actually part of the fourth generation of performing Jeffersons. Such family connections constituted the core of early theatre. Recall the Crummles family of Nicholas Nickleby, whose playbill "in very large letters" announced "Mr. Vincent Crummles, Mrs. Vincent Crummles, Master Crummles, Master P. Crummles, and Miss Crummles." The kinship basis of theatricals predated Dickens, reaching back to small itinerant troupes earlier in European history. It had been a family, the Hallams, which first brought professional theatricals to the British colonies in the 1750s. And the American frontier's westward march across the continent was accompanied by such barnstorming stage families as the Drakes and Chapmans.

Acting constituted a way of life. Wives acted alongside their husbands in this less patriarchal vocation. Indeed, they were among the few married women who could pursue a livelihood. Stage children performed among cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents. A multigenerational theatrical family could cast parts for the entire age range found in many melodramas. Even if they had wanted to, children might find it difficult to move outside the theatre, for the theatrical world was tightly bound, with few occasions for regular outside contacts. Parents' frequent travel denied children the usual clutch of permanent childhood friends. Grammar school education often gave way to the informal tutorials of the road. Their pertinent education occurred in the theatre. Children grew up poking around dressing rooms and wings, eavesdropping on the endless anecdotes of veteran players, literally and figuratively inhaling the greasepaint. It was an intoxicating environment. Add to this-less pleasantly -the ever-present drone of antitheatricality in Anglo-American culture, which drove actors to close ranks. This powerful sense of community seemed to hold children within its orb, even as some actor fathers (Junius Brutus Booth, for instance) pointedly advised their children to seek careers outside the theatre. More often, an acting career was an unstated assumption. "I can't even tell you when it was first decided that I was to go on the stage," Ellen Terry, the storied English beauty of the later Victorian stage recalled, "but I expect it was when I was born, for in those days theatrical folk did not imagine that their children could do anything but follow their parents' professions."

The Jefferson clan of Joe's childhood vividly illustrated the family basis of theatre. Fathers, mothers, and children acted, often from cradle to grave (in some cases a very early grave). Although members ventured forth periodically to work for other managers, most returned to the Jefferson troupe. Even after Joe had become a star in the 1860s and after the New York-centered theatre business no longer operated on kinship, he dutifully placed nearly all of his children at one time or another in his Rip Van Winkle productions.

Altogether, seven generations of Jeffersons labored in the theatre, reaching well into the twentieth century. Exact numbers are elusive, complicated by such questions as whether to include the branches of the various families the Jeffersons married into and those who acted for only a short time. The family genealogy tracing five generations indicates thirty-five members went on stage (not including their theatrical cousins, the Warrens).

Joe's great-grandfather, Thomas Jefferson (1728-1807), birthed the theatrical tradition. Family legend holds that as a young man he encountered the great David Garrick, who impressed by his rustic dash offered him a position. Jefferson performed with Garrick's Drury Lane Company in the 1750s, playing supporting roles in the Shakespearean productions Garrick so notably revived. Jefferson arrived during an efflorescence of English theatre, when the comedies of manners of Goldsmith and Sheridan graced the Georgian stage. Jefferson, admittedly, played a secondary role in this new Augustan age. His strengths lay in his versatility, strong declamation, and a superficial resemblance to Garrick (sufficient to allow him to be sometimes accepted as a substitute for the master). Most of his career, however, was spent away from the theatrical center of London, traveling with itinerant troupes in the provinces, and, increasingly, in managing his own theatre in Plymouth. Thomas Jefferson possessed the "docile amiability and droll humour" that would characterize many of his progeny. And as with his more famous descendants, only the imminence of death would drag him from the stage.

It was to Jefferson's second wife, a "Miss May," that Joseph Jefferson I (1774-1832) was born. After appearing on his father's Plymouth stage as a boy, Joseph headed to America in 1795. Charles Powell of the Boston Theatre, who had put Jefferson under contract and paid his way to America, was out of business by the time he arrived. Fortunately, Jefferson received an invitation to join the John Street Theatre Company in New York; in 1798 he moved to its successor, the Park. The Park's managers, William Dunlap and John Hodgkinson, were among the most important figures in early American theatre. Hodgkinson, the American stage's foremost player, was contentious and unscrupled, but he provided Jefferson an opportunity to advance in his line of low comedy. Jefferson spent five years at...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Yale University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2007
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0300122322
• ISBN 13: 9780300122329
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 460
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland