SECOND LECTURE
The Nineteenth Century:
Melodrama
Read pp. 147-55 and
plays listed below for Weeks 3, 4 and 5. Remember to return to the Glossary to
refresh your memory on any bold-faced terms in this reading.
Parts of Second Lecture:
MELODRAMA, ABOLITION,
AND CIVIL WAR
Study Questions for Civil
War to World War I Readings
Study Questions for
Boucicault's THE OCTOROON
Study Questions for
Howard's SHENANDOAH
Study Questions for
Herne's MARGARET FLEMING
As I mentioned in LECTURE1, plays
like METAMORA reflected the political climate in ante-bellum
America. In fact, in his dissertation SYMPATHETIC VIBRATIONS, Mark Mullen
argues that “it was the explicit intention of many melodramas to intervene
materially in the political events of the day. … The audience at an
abolitionist melodrama, for example, was called upon to make donations to the
cause, to purchase abolitionist literature, or to lobby their representatives.”
Mullen includes METAMORA in his discussion of melodramas, because it
uses the techniques and reflects the political consciousness we will see in the
plays in this MODULE. Even the final play in the MODULE, James Herne’s MARGARET
FLEMING, uses many melodramatic techniques and reflects political events
through its minor characters, although Herne gives central stage to the
individual moral concerns of the Flemings. We will treat that play,
therefore, as a bridge to the realism that begins to dominate American
Drama at the turn of the century.
In the reading for this lecture, your editors argue for
a re-consideration of melodrama as a serious art form, while most critics have
considered it the antithesis of "good" art. We have seen that
the conventions of "good" dramatic art came from Aristotle and
survived changes over the centuries themselves. Why are these conventions
better than the conventions of melodrama, a form that provided entertainment
and a social forum for the majority of 19th century Americans? One
source offers a useful list of these conventions:
1. The virtuous hero/heroine is hounded by a villain and is
rescued from a series of life- threatening events.
2. An episodic story unfolds rapidly after a short expository
scene.
3. Each scene ends with a climax.
4. Important events occur onstage, including elaborate
spectacle.
5. Plot devices like disguise, abduction, concealed identity and
fortunate coincidence are used.
6. Villains are always defeated and then brought to justice.
7. Servants or lowly characters provide comic relief.
8. Song and Dance is used to highlight and underscore the
production.
TABLEAU
I would add a #9 as well, the use of tableaux,
which often accompany #3 to lock in a visual statement that encourages the
audience to interpret the scene and think about what it means, as we have seen
in METAMORA. Later filmmakers will call a tableau a “freeze
frame.” Unlike the heroic tradition we inherited from Classical Drama,
which depends on cause and effect arguments, melodrama's episodic structure
recognizes the importance of chance in our lives. We appreciate each
episode equally as contributing to the whole story and possibly offering the
needed opportunity or clue that can change the ending. Melodrama looks at
society through the eyes of ordinary citizens, for most of whom change could
improve their position in society. Conversely, the heroic leader Metamora sees
the power of white society bearing down on his people, but he chooses to fight
for what logic would tell him is a losing cause. Since the "Indian
tragedy" structure warns us that he must lose and die, we can admire him
as a hero and yet accept the demise of his people at the same time. So Stone's
play remains a tragedy, despite its melodramatic techniques. If it were a melodrama,
the hero would defeat the villain, but the "villain" is not easy to
identify in this play and even more difficult to defeat. So, as your editors
suggest, the play reinforces stereotypes of Native Americans and does nothing
to change the mind of its audiences about America's Indian Removal policies of
the time.
The first two plays of this MODULE, however, are true melodramas.
Mullen argues that melodrama can “be reconsidered as political theatre, an
early forerunner of agit-prop” (we will discuss agit-prop in
LECTURE4). Melodramatic conventions not only suggest artistic
expectations within which playwrights must construct their plays but also offer
the possibility at least of the "happy endings" that dominated
popular fiction in the period, especially fiction written by women (See Helen
Papashvily's study, All the Happy Endings, for instance). Although
Boucicault's abolitionist melodrama does not end happily on the American stage,
he is able to let love win in his London productions, and Howard will redefine
the Civil War in retrospect to offer reconciliations and hope for America's
future.
MELODRAMA,
ABOLITION, AND CIVIL WAR
Not only Native American issues
plagued the politics of antebellum America. The issue of slavery took
center stage, especially after the 1852 publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s
novel, UNCLE TOM’S CABIN. Although as a New England daughter, wife and
sister of ministers, Stowe herself would never have written a “wicked play” as
Jonathan refers to stage productions in THE CONTRAST, others would turn
her novel into the most produced play of all time, especially the version
written by George Aiken. Dion Boucicault’s abolitionist melodrama THE
OCTOROON owes much to these productions, as well as to the novel THE
QUADROON upon which he based the play (p. 118). Mixed racial heritage
had already become a recurrent theme in African American literature, usually
referred to by later critics as the “tragic mulatto/a” theme.
Although Bronson Howard’s melodrama of the Civil War, SHENANDOAH,
might be expected to address issues of slavery, there are no black
characters in this cast. Your editors point out Howard’s assumption that
audiences expect plays to focus on love (p. 193), and his play therefore echoes
the symbolic “reframing of the war as a type of tumultuous sectional love
affair in which (usually) a Northern hero wins back his Southern love” (p. 194).
This promise of a “rainbow after the storm” suited the political and social
needs of the time. Howard’s melodramatic spectacle also mirrors the
“spectacle” of war in the first scene, and Lee A. Jacobus in his edition of the
play in The Longman Anthology of American Drama points out that
Charleston “citizens did regard it as a social event, a virtual
fireworks.” This late melodrama (Herne’s realistic play appears only two
years later) no longer critiques society but instead reflects society’s image
of itself. The focus is on personal relationships; the war serves as a
backdrop against which these are played out. However, in such a sensation
melodrama, the spectacle itself is worth reading. The settings of the play
remind us that the Shenandoah Valley, while part of the Southern Confederacy,
was actually further north than Washington D.C. Washington itself was actually
below the famous Mason-Dixon line that is often thought to have divided North
and South during the War, but Maryland and of course the nation's capital
remained loyal to the Union. The dark section on the following map indicates
the area closest to the border between North and South that joined the
Confederate states.
Shenandoah thus becomes the perfect
setting for a "domestic" treatment of the war as a family
disagreement, with brother turned against brother. Still, such uses of
melodrama contributed to later rejections of the form as offering
oversimplified morality and excessive emotional appeals. Yet, in an age
when most people could not read, the melodramatic stage had provided an
essential forum for both shaping and responding to the mass audience and
critiquing society from the point of view of ordinary, often powerless
people. The development of the cinema will capture that mass audience,
while most theaters will shrink in size as melodramatic spectacle gives way to
realism’s verisimilitude and heroes and villains to role models and their
social responsibilities.
Although plays like SHENANDOAH convinced some playwrights that American Drama
needed to evolve in new directions, and James Herne represents one of the
earliest American attempts to follow the European realists led by Henrik Ibsen
who were turning away from melodrama, MARGARET FLEMING still
depends upon melodramatic plot devices and technical conventions. On the
other hand, while the healing powers of love are still operative in Margaret’s
sentimental mothering of the orphaned child, this “social problem” play focuses
instead on her husband Philip and his failure to represent moral values in his
role of an empowered social leader. Another socially empowered leader,
Doctor Larkin, delivers that criticism, while the ordinary people of the play
are presented almost naturalistically as victims of their environment.
These early forms of realism were often referred to as Ethical Idealism, and in
some ways they returned the stage to the Greek tragedy tradition of flawed
heroes who must redeem themselves to save society. Your editors discuss
this shift from the social to the personal focus on pp. 152-53. Realism
stepped onto the American stage, and audiences “stayed away in droves” (p.
234). Yet this new form would soon change American Drama forever, dominating
the 20th century stage. Gone were the elevated language and
spectacular staging of melodrama as well as its communal perspective; in their
place was “the quintessence of the commonplace” (p. 234).
Study Questions for Civil War to World
War I Readings
1. What additional information is given about
melodrama as a dramatic form in this introduction?
2. Consider the editors' comments on critical
condemnations of melodrama and their responses to those criticisms. Which
side of this argument convinces you? Why?
3. Notice how, according to this introduction,
theatre served to educate as well as entertain nineteenth-century audiences,
especially immigrants. Use Irish Americans as your primary example of
theater's various uses.
4. Notice the ways theatre is described as
reflecting the westward expansion of America in this period. In our anthology,
Moody’s THE GREAT DIVIDE is a later part of that response.
5. Review realism as the editors
describe it and the "particular historical moment" in which it
emerges as a dominant style in American drama. Consider how it alters
melodramatic language, actions, and scenic effects.
6. What do the editors list as "American
drama's traditional subjects"? What do they mean, in your words,
when they say that these themes are "rendered within a domestic
form"?
7. What do the editors say about dramatic
treatment of the "Women's Question" during this period, which
embodied the most active women's movement prior to the 1970s?
8. Overall, how do the editors present this as a
transitional period in both American history and American drama? Identify
specifics from the plays that reflect this.
Study Questions for Boucicault’s THE
OCTOROON
1. What does the title literally mean and which
character is it identifying? Find the line in which she describes herself
as an octoroon. How are mulatto and quadroon related to octoroon?
2. Boucicault could be objective about American
slavery because he was a recent Irish immigrant. How does he critique
slavery through the character of George Peyton and make Peyton's objectivity
believable?
3. The nineteenth century saw the industrial
revolution and the advances of science. Writers often tried to use new
inventions in their literature. What new invention appears in this play
and how is it used to offer evidence?
4. How does the opening of this play support the
editors' observation that it draws from the minstrel show
tradition? Does the later presentation of Pete and Grace on p. 135
develop these "happy darkies" further?
5. Melodrama has been described as having
simplified heroes and villains. Who are the hero and villain of this
play? How do you know? Do they lack the complexity of most
characters? Try to find examples of their stereotyped behaviors but also
examples of how their "other" side (good or bad) is suggested or
shown.
6. In Boucicault’s London productions of this
play, Peyton and Zoe marry. What does this shift from tragedy to comedy
say about contemporary American politics? What does it say about the
relationship between comedy and tragedy? What does it say about the form of
Melodrama in terms of the role of chance and coincidence?
7. Your editors describe this play as a sensation
melodrama (see Glossary). Notice the stage directions and lengthy
descriptions needed to create these "sensational" scenes, made
possible by improved stage machinery. What purposes do they serve? How do
they relate to the development of 20th century movies?
Study Questions for
Howard’s SHENANDOAH
1. Unlike Boucicault's play, which moves from a
happy minstrel scene to a tragic ending precipitated by the realities of
slavery, Howard's sensation melodrama of the Civil War seen in
sentimental retrospect moves "from storm to rainbow" (p. 192).
How do your editors see changing attitudes toward the Civil War as determining
this shift? Identify and explain at least two examples that support or
contradict their position.
2. How does Howard keep North and South
"united" through relationships between his characters? Identify
at least two pairs of characters and examples of their ongoing relationships.
3. What is the thematic significance of the
character "Jack" and how is he used in the play? How are we
prepared beforehand for his appearance? Do you consider this a useful
device? Why or why not?
4. Are the characters in this play more or less
complex than those in THE OCTOROON? Are the scenes more or less
believable? What do you see as major changes? What supporting
examples can you give?
5. How does Howard use extensive stage directions
to emphasize the emotions and sentimentality of the play? What are some
specific examples and how do you think these non-verbal techniques of
communication would affect the audience? Is this “good art”? Why or
why not?
6. How is the "aside" used to convey
information in this play? Identify and explain specific examples.
7. Although the traditional play calls for
a plot in which the rising action leads logically to the climax and resolution,
melodramas depend heavily on lost or postponed letters and other necessary
communication, on coincidence, on unexpected meetings, on carefully timed
entrances and exits so characters accidentally miss or meet each other, and on
other contrived techniques. Looking at both melodramas, trace the use of
these melodramatic conventions in each play. Are they effective devices
for you? Why or why not?
Study Questions for Herne’s MARGARET
FLEMING
1. Realism often deals with
subjects that are not discussed in public, especially during the Victorian
period, because they are not a part of our "ideal" picture of
America. What subject(s) are raised in this play that critique
society? Identify specific examples that you feel might have shocked
"polite society" of the time.
2. Although radical in form, early realism
still reflected conventional values. Identify examples of how Herne’s
title character reflects the “piety, purity, domesticity and submissiveness”
expected of women in that period.
3. Explore the real and symbolic uses of
blindness in the play. Identify and explain specific examples.
4. Realism depended heavily on a
new style of acting called the Stanislavski method, so playwrights began
to spend more time describing their characters physically and psychologically
in order to control presentations. Examine the ways in which the stage
directions describe a particular character and determine whether or not this
description matches with that character's later words and actions.
5. Since realism does not use the
sensational scenes of melodrama, it depends upon more subtle messages from
staging. These often involve symbolism of some kind. How do
the stage directions describe seemingly ordinary sets as symbolic? How
can this symbolism be made apparent to the audience?
6. On the other hand, realism does allow
actions to be depicted on the stage that earlier plays dare not portray because
Victorian values considered some subjects and actions to be too
"vulgar" or personal to be discussed or shown in public. Find
examples of such actions in this play.
7. Despite its idealization of the title
character, this play realistically examines aspects of the "double
standard" for men and women in American society. How is this theme
developed in the minor as well as in the major characters? How is it
related to economic differences between the characters?
LINKS: I have provided some general
sources appropriate to our course in Lecture1 and add further sources on
individual writers here, all of which you can use and many of which will have
links to further sources as well. Many sources lead to e-texts of other works
by our authors that you can then read online in your "Internet
library."
SYMPATHETIC VIBRATIONS: Mullen
E-texts of the plays: Plays
Boucicault: Boucicault
Minstrel shows: Minstrels
Vaudeville: Vaudeville
Melodrama Gallery: Gallery
Melodrama: Melodrama