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.