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The Black Crook Myth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2010

Julian Mates
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Extract

Dates and events are frequently useful scholarly pigeonholes into which may be neatly tucked whole periods of literature or significant literary trends. The scholar knows them to be oversimplifications, but so long as their limitations are recognized, they remain useful tools for teaching, talking, and writing. Occasionally, however, history is hung from a date so unreliable and so unjustified that delineation of material is blurred rather than clarified, traditions are obscured rather than illuminated, and fields of research are closed rather than opened. American theatre history affords a perfect example of the misused common reference point. The year 1866, with its production of The Black Crook, has been accepted as the landmark indicating the beginnings of American musical comedy. Cecil Smith, in Musical Comedy in America, says, “For all important purposes, the history of musical comedy in America starts with The Black Crook, as everyone has always said it did.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , May 1966 , pp. 31 - 43
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1966

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References

NOTES

1 Smith, Cecil, Musical Comedy in America, New York, 1950, p. viii.Google Scholar

2 Eweti, David, Complete Book of the American Musical Theatre, New York, 1958, p. vii.Google Scholar

3 Island, LongNewsday, October 4, 1956.Google Scholar

4 The libretto for The Black Crook was not published; the following outline of the plot is taken from Charles M. Barras's original manuscript in the Harvard University Theatre Collection and the prompt copy in the Players Club, New York.

5 September 17, 1866; The Tribune review is contained in Freedley, George, “The Black Crook and the White Fawn,” Chronicles of the American Dance, ed. Magriel, Paul, New York, 1948, pp. 69–71.Google Scholar

6 Freedley, p. 65.

7 Whitton, Joseph, Inside History of “The Black Crook,” Philadelphia, 1897, p. 10.Google Scholar

8 Marks, Edward B. (They All Had Glamour, from the Swedish Nightingale to the Naked Lady, New York, 1944)Google Scholar, who cites the above Times article, says that author Barras had been a carpenter in his youth; the implication is that his early training may have helped his to see what scenic effects were possible on the stage.

9 Mates, Julian, The American Musical Stage Before 1800, New Brunswick, 1962, pp. 161–162.Google Scholar

10 Odeli, George C. D., Shakespeare from Betterton to Irving, New York, 1920, I, 36, 189.Google Scholar

11 Mates, pp. 177–179.

12 Broadbent, R. J., A History of Pantomime, London, 1901, pp. 144, 180.Google Scholar

13 Moody, Richard, America Takes the Stage, Bloomington, Indiana, 1955, p. 206.Google Scholar

14 Hamar, Clifford E., “Scenery on the Early American Stage,” The Theatre Annual, VII (1948–1949), 84.Google Scholar

15 New York World review, September 17, 1866, is contained in Kaye, Joseph, “Famous First Nights: The Black Crook,” Theatre Magazine, July, 1929, pp. 38, 52, 64Google Scholar; New York Clipper, September 22, 1866; New York Tribune, September 17, 1866.

16 Saddler, Donald, “The Black Crook,” Dance, October, 1941, p. 17.Google Scholar

17 Mates, pp. 166, 168–9, 170.

18 Bill cited in Mates, p. 171.

19 Mates, p. 172.

20 Quoted in Marks, p. 1.

21 Freedley, p. 66.

22 Review cited in article on The Black Crook in the Boston Sunday Herald, June 24, 1917.

23 White, Richard Grant, “The Age of Burlesque,” The Galaxy, August, 1869, p. 259.Google Scholar

24 Appleton's Journal of Literature, Science, and Art, July 3, 1869, p. 440.

25 From a scrapbook of clippings concerning The Black Crook in the New York Public Library, undated.

26 New York Clipper, September 29, 1866.

27 Kaye, pp. 38 and 1929 clippings re: The Black Crook in N.Y.P.L.

28 Odeli, George C. D., Annals of the New York Stage, New York, 1936, III, 313Google Scholar; Marks, pp. 227, 236, 251.

29 Marks, p. 7; Boston, Sunday Herald, June 24, 1917Google Scholar; Playbill for Whitman's Continental Theatre, Boston (in Players Club, New York, as are subsequent playbills unless otherwise specified).

30 Mates, pp. 140–153.

31 Saddler, p. 23; Marks, pp. 12–13; Boston, Sunday Herald, June 24, 1917Google Scholar; N.Y.P.L. clippings.

32 Whitton, pp. 5–10; Freedley, p. 65.

33 New York Clipper, September 29, 1866; Kaye, p. 38; Whitton, p. 32; N.Y.P.L. clippings.

34 Whitton, p. 18ff.

35 Cited in Marks, p. 7.

36 Boston, Sunday Herald, June 24, 1917Google Scholar; Marks, pp. 7, 12, 13, 15; Newark Theatre Bill; notes in Black Crook prompt book; clipping in N.Y.P.L.

37 Available in N.Y.P.L.

38 Available in N.Y.P.L.

39 Barras, Charles M., The Black Crook, Barclay and Co., 602 Arch. St., Philadelphia, 1873.Google Scholar

40 N.Y.P.L. manuscript prompt book and clippings.

41 Rourke, Constance, American Humor, New York, 1953, p. 231.Google Scholar