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Solo Black Performance before the Civil War: Mrs. Stowe, Mrs. Webb, and ‘The Christian Slave’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2009

Susan F. Clark
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Abstract

In contemporary culture, an ‘Uncle Tom’ has become so derided a figure of complicity in racism that it is perhaps only with difficulty, and a corrective historicist awareness, that we can come to acknowledge both the good intentions and the undeniable effectiveness of Harriet Beecher Stowe's original – a novel in which, interestingly, women play no less prominent a part than black characters. Indeed, it is likely that the proliferating stage adaptations of Mrs. Stowe's novel were largely responsible for creating the stereotype Uncle Tom in a popular imagination on which such melodramatized accounts had a lasting impact: and it was partly in response to such perversions that Mrs. Stowe herself set out to dramatize her novel. The result, The Christian Slave, has remained relatively unknown not least because of the premature death of its solo performer, Mary Webb – herself a pioneer among black performers who achieved recognition from white audiences. In the following article, Susan F. Clark examines the play in its contemporary context, contrasts it both with other stage versions and with the seminal novel, and examines the relationship between its black performer and her audiences. Susan F. Clark is Assistant Professor of Theatre History at Smith College, Massachusetts, and is currently working on a full-length study of interpretations of Uncle Tom's Cabin on the American stage.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Theatre Quarterly , Volume 13 , Issue 52 , November 1997 , pp. 339 - 348
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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References

Notes and References

1. See Wilson, Forrest, Crusader in Crinoline: the Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe (Lippincott, 1941)Google Scholar and Hedrick, Joan D., Harriet Beecher Stowe: a Life (Oxford University Press, 1994)Google Scholar.

2. Hedrick, p. 256.

3. The Illustrated London News, 2 August 1856, p. 121.

4. Hedrick, p. 249.

5. Akenside, Mark, an English poet and physician, published The Pleasures of Imagination, a didactic poem, in 1744Google Scholar.

6. The Liberator, 26 March 1852.

7. The Liberator, 7 July 1852.

8. The New York Albion, 7 June 1856.

9. The New York Herald, 1 November 1853.

10. Interview with Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1899.

11. Lapsansky, Phillip S., ‘Afro-Americana: Frank J. Webb and His Friends’, The Annual Report of the Library Company of Philadelphia for 1990 (Philadelphia, 1991) p. 36Google Scholar.

12. Webb, Frank, ‘Biographical Sketch’, in The Christian Slave, by Stowe, Harriet Beecher (Phillips, Sampson, and Low, 1856), p. iGoogle Scholar.

13. ‘Biographical Sketch’, p. ii.

14. Grimke, Charlotte Forten, in Stevenson, Brenda, ed., The Journals of Charlotte Forten Grimke (Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 144Google Scholar.

15. ‘Biographical Sketch’, p. ii.

16. Letter from Harriet Beecher Stowe to Mr. and Mrs. Edward Baines, 24 May 1856, Katherine Day Collection, Harriet Beecher Stowe Centre.

17. ‘Biographical Sketch’, p. iii.

18. Taken from the cast lists found in Aiken's, GeorgeUncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly, in Gerould, Daniel C., ed., American Melodrama (Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1983)Google Scholar, and Stowe, Harriet Beecher, The Christian Slave (Sampson and Low, 1855)Google Scholar, reprinted in Douglas Jerrold, ed., Jack Runnymede: The Man of Many Thanks (Bunce and Brother, n.d.).

19. The Christian Slave (1855), p. 67.

20. Ibid., p. 58.

21. The Christian Slave (Sampson Low, 1856). This rare edition, published to coincide with Mrs. Webb's reading tour of Great Britain, can be found at the Harriet Beecher Stowe House, Hartford, Connecticut.

22. Longfellow, H. W., in Longfellow, Samuel, ed., The Life of H. W. Longfellow, with Extracts from His Journals and Correspondence (Ticknor, 1886), p. 269Google Scholar.

23. 2 August 1856, p. 122.

24. The Daily Plain Dealer, undated clipping, Harriet Beecher Stowe Centre.

25. The Illustrated London News, 2 August 1856, p. 122.

26. Boston Evening Transcript, 12 December 1855.

27. The Illustrated London News, op. cit.

28. The Worcester Daily Spy, 8 December 1855.

29. The Journals of Charlotte Forten Grimke, p. 264.

30. Selzman, Jack, Smith, David Lionel, and West, Cornel, ed., ‘Frank Webb’, Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, Vol. V (Simon and Schuster Macmillan, 1996), p. 2796Google Scholar.

31. The National Anti-Slavery Standard, 16 April 1859.