Nearly a century-and-a-half after urban professional entertainers first attained instant popularity for music, dance, and humor performed in blackface, amateur minstrels in the rural Midwest continued to pack school auditoriums and smalltown theaters with their homespun variety. Blackening their hands and faces with storebought makeup (the modern equivalent of the burnt cork of the nineteenth century), farmers and schoolteachers sang spirited renditions of “There's Nothin Like a Minstrel Show” mechanics and school board members donned tutus in an exotic ballet burlesque; and a realtor with a rich baritone sang his version of “Mammy,” a perennial favorite.

As it affected the performing arts community, the Red Scare has been examined in great detail.1 Taken together, these studies make clear that external political forces influence the hiring decisions of performing-arts organizations. From the 1930s to the 1950s figures affiliated with left-wing causes and groups found their careers stifled either temporarily or permanently because of their political beliefs. Although attention has focused primarily on institutional pressures from outside the industry on leftist artists, we describe an instance of pressure from within the industry on an artist whose politics were isolationist rather than progressive. In this research note, we present the case of Lillian Gish, describing how interventionists pressured her to distance herself from the isolationism that she had publicly embraced in the period immediately prior to the entrance of the United States in World War II. The attack on those described as “Nazi sympathizers” and their isolationist brethren during 1940–4 has come to be described as the “Brown Scare,”2 playing off the more widely known “Red Scares” of 1919–20 and 1947–54.

“There is, indeed, little doubt,” the formidable scholar James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps confidently explained to the Victorian readers of his Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, “that the Birth-place did not become one of the incentives for pilgrimage until public attention had been specially directed to it at the time of the Jubilee.” That's broadly true. The earliest reference to the three-gabled, half-timbered house (two houses, originally) on Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon as the birthplace of William Shakespeare dates only from the late 1750s, when it was so named in Samuel Winter's town map. During the Stratford Jubilee, which David Garrick organized in 1769, the “small old house,” as the actor's first biographer called it, was fully recognized and promoted as the place where Shakespeare was born. Even so, Halliwell-Phillipps's observation conceals more than it reveals, because there is also little doubt that the dwelling that tradition calls Shakespeare's birthplace did not suddenly acquire that status during the first week of September 1769. The process by which the unremarkable piece of real estate that John Shakespeare purchased sometime in the late sixteenth century was transformed into what Barbara Hodgdon has rightly called the “controlling ideological center” of Shakespeare biography was long, slow, and far from inevitable. That process is the subject of this essay.

Eighteenth-century dramatists had little or no control over the production of their plays after the initial run. In spite of major strides made in copyright during the eighteenth century—developments that have long been studied and celebrated—dramatists were in an unenviable position when it came to owning their work. Literary property law initially extended only as far as print publication, not performance, and any theatrical company that was able to get hold of a playtext could produce that play without the permission of the author. As a result, dramatists received far less for their work than they otherwise might have.

In the last fifteen years, a growing number of theatre historians have examined the relation between the British stage and British Imperialism, suggesting that the theatre has both reflected and helped constitute modern colonialism.Articles examining theatrical orientalism and British Imperialism in Victorian and Edwardian periods include Michael Booth, “Soldiers of the Queen: Drury Lane Imperialism,” Melodrama: The Cultural Emergence of a Genre, eds. Michael Hays and Anastasia Nikolopoulou (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996), 3–20; Heidi J. Holder, “Melodrama, realism and empire on the British stage,” Acts of Supremacy: the British Empire and the stage, 1790–1930, eds. J.S. Bratton et al. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991),129–149; J.S. Bratton, “Theatres of war: the Crimea on the London stage 1854–5,” Performance and Politics in Popular Drama: Aspects of Popular Entertainment in Theatre, Film and Television, 1800–1976, eds. David Bradby, Louis James, and Bernard Sharrat (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 119–138; and J. Ellen Gainor, “Bernard Shaw and the Drama of Imperialism,” The Performance of Power: Theatrical Discourse and Politics, eds. Sue-Ellen Case and Janelle Reinelt (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1991), 56–74. John M. Mackenzie provides a thorough overview of nineteenth-century theatrical orientalism in Orientalism: History, theory and the arts (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), 176–199, and Gary Jay Williams examines orientalist images of colonial expansion in Covent Garden's 1816 operatic adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream in Our Moonlight Revels: A Midsummer Night's Dream in the Theatre (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1997), 76–92. While scholars have examined colonialism and theatre in a range of periods, studies of Renaissance theatre are particularly rich in this area. Examples include Paul Brown, “'This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine': The Tempest and the Discourse of Colonialism, ” in Political Shakespeare: essays in cultural materialism, eds. Jonathon Dollimore and Alan Sinfield (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), 48–71; Kim F. Hall, “Sexual Politics and Cultural Identity in The Masque of Blackness,” in The Performance of Power: Theatrical Discourse and Politics, eds. Sue-Ellen Case and Janelle Reinelt (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1991), 3–18; Patricia Parker, “Fantasies of 'Race' and 'Gender': Africa, Othello and Bringing to Light, ” in Women, “Race,” and Writing in the Early Modern Period, eds. Margo Hendricks and Patricia Parker (London: Routledge, 1994), 84–100; and Peter Hulme, Colonial Encounters: Europe and the native Caribbean, 1492–1797 (London: Methuen, 1986). At the same time, there has been an equally prolific effort by historians of the human sciences, examining a host of disciplines whose emergence coincided with colonial expansion.See Felix Driver, “Geography's empire: histories of geographical knowledge,” Society and Space, 10 (1992), 23–40; Brian Hudson, “The New Geography and the New Imperialism: 1870–1918,” Antipode 9 (1977), 12–19; George W. Stocking, Jr., Victorian Anthropology (New York: Free Press-Macmillan, 1987); Billie Melman, Women's Orients: English Women and the Middle East, 1718–1918 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992); and Nicholas Thomas, Colonialism's Culture: Anthropology, Travel and Government (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). Of course all of these works, like this essay, are indebted to Edward Said's Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books-Random House, 1979). If, as Talal Asad has asserted, “the colonial power structure made the object of anthropological study accessible and safe” Talal Asad, Introduction, Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter, ed. Talal Asad (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1973), 17. for the European researcher, it would seem by extension that this same power structure made the object of anthropological study accessible and safe to the British theatre-goer. As theatre historians have pointed out, British theatre managers have cited orientalist authorities ranging from Vivant Denon, who accompanied the French expedition in Egypt, to the press artists that accompanied British colonial armies.The Edinburgh Review attested to the popularity of Denon's Voyages dans la Basse et la Haute Egypte, asserting “Few publications, we believe, have ever obtained so extensive a circulation in the same space of time as these travels.” Cited in Patrick Conner, ed., The Inspiration of Egypt: Its Influence on British Artists, Travelers and Designers, 1700–1900 (Brighton: Brighton Museum, 1983), 29. Pieter van der Merwe argues in The Spectacular Career of Clarkson Stanfield 1793–1867 that Voyages soon became “the theatre's major source for Egyptian subjects” (Tyne and Wear County Council Museums, 1979), 89. I argue elsewhere that Augustus Harris's exhibition of artifacts and illustrations lent by soldiers and press artists in the Sudan Campaign was intended to lend credibility to his depiction of the region in his concurrent production. See “From Geography to Landscape: Imperial Theatre and the Domestication of Exotic Space” in Land Scape Theatre: Views of the Twentieth Century, eds. Una Chaudhuri and Elinor Fuchs (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, forthcoming). It was not simply that a new body o f research generated in colonialism's shadow provided raw material for Eastern plays, this research also served to “license curiosity” about the Orient (to borrow Nicholas Thomas's languageNicholas Thomas, “Licensed Curiosity: Cook's Pacific Voyages,” The Cultures of Collecting, eds. John Elsner and Roger Cardinal (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), 116–136.), transforming the theatre's detailed representations of the East into a scholarly and respectable undertaking that seemed, in some ways, allied with Europe's Imperial goals.

The founding of experimental ensembles dominates the history of Western theatre in the first half of the twentieth century. Groups of theatre artists, desperate to revive and resuscitate an art grown stale and lifeless, banded together, seeking common ground in the period's vast swirl of artistic and ideological sensibilities. These groups, from the Moscow Art Theatre to the Berliner Ensemble, produced a broad range of performances, yet all shared a common commitment to change and theatrical growth. Two of these, the Group Theatre and Jacques Copeau's Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier participated in and elevated this world-wide phenomenon. Since they share some common roots, an exploration of the relationship between the Vieux-Colombier and the Group yields some insights into the formation and maintenance of an acting ensemble.

This rather proud statement is by Gerhart Hauptmann; anyone I wishing to challenge the validity of the boast will be wise to consider first the number of professional Shakespeare performances in the German language as compared with those in English, to take account of the amount and quality of German Shakespeare scholarship, and to realize that Shakespeare had reached many peoples in Eastern and Northern Europe by way of German transmission. In addition, the citation well illustrates the spirit in which German intellectuals approach Shakespeare.

Some years ago, during a discussion in the ASTR Executive Committee about the relevance of the Theatre Library Association's participation in ASTR, a scholar on the cutting edge of contemporary theory is reported to have asked a TLA representative exactly what it was that libraries were doing to support postpositivist research. No one remembers what the answer was (it was evidently satisfactory), but I recall thinking that if I had been asked the question, my own reply would have been that libraries weren't doing anything at all; that the business of the library was to preserve the evidence as well as it could and provide access to it, so that scholars could make use of it in whatever manner they chose.

Martha Morton was a remarkable woman — a talented and energetic person whose career in the New York theatre extended from 1890 to 1915, a time when women were expected to concern themselves with traditional roles and when public life and outside work were adventures for only a few daring women. In spite of efforts to sweep her aside, Morton opened the doors for American women, who followed after her, to participate in the theatre as playwrights, directors, producers, and professional members of theatre organizations.

It was a hot, sweaty day in Newport News, Virginia, in 1986. Cornerstone Theater's designer, Lynn Jeffries, was building a set for the company's first community-based production, Our Town, cast in part with local participants. Three kids rode up on bikes and drawled, “What y'all doin’?” Jeffries responded that they were building a set for a play, noting that she felt like she was “speaking Chinese.” The boys sat for several more minutes. “Do you need help?” And that, according to Jeffries, was “where it all kicked in.”

Karaghiozis—Greek shadow puppet theatre—is a performance which developed in Greece over a period of a hundred fifty years, using local character types, costumes, and dialects, folk anecdotes, contemporary events, topical humor, themes and motifs of classical, hellenistic, and Byzantine origin, Greek legends, songs, and dances. It is modelled on a fourteenth-century Turkish prototype, Karagoz, which itself finds its roots in fool lore and the classical mime (the dominant form of entertainment in the eastern empire from the fourth century B.C. to 1400 A.D.). The Turkish performance was introduced into occupied Greece possibly as early as the seventeenth century (the time of the consolidation of the Turkish hold over Greece). It had certainly appeared by 1809, at which time the traveller John Hobhouse records the earliest known date of the Turkish performance in Greece.

Patience Worth, a British Puritan girl who lived and died sometime in the seventeenth century, produced a prolific four million words in the form of novels, plays, poems, prayers, and short stories. “Produced” is the best word for what she did; we certainly can't say she “wrote” them. We can't, in fact, say that Patience Worth existed at all. But neither can we comfortably say that Pearl Pollard Curran (1883–1937) wrote the material in question, though she is usually credited as its author. Between 1913 and 1937, Curran (Fig. 1), a St. Louis, Missouri, housewife, spoke these four million words aloud (often in an idiosyncratic, pseudo-Shakespearean dialect) with the aid of a Ouija board and a planchette. A series of secretaries transcribed what she said: Curran claimed that Worth was a thwarted authoress who had long been searching from beyond the grave for a suitable host and that she had selected Curran as her channel. Some of the material she (they?) generated was ultimately published with the assistance of Casper S. Yost (1863–1941), editor of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat and founder of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Intrepid librarians have cataloged this perplexing material in ways that attempt to account for its convoluted provenance: “Hope Trueblood, by Patience Worth, communicated through Mrs. John H. Curran, edited by Casper S. Yost, published by Henry Holt and Company, 1918.” Questions of authorship, ownership, and voice are central to this perplexing body of work.

In the papers of Sir Robert Walpole now deposited in the Cambridge University Library, there is an information prepared in 1724 by the office of the Attorney General for the prosecution of a number of players at the Court of King's Bench. This document provides insights not only into the climate of theatrical censorship at the time but also into the nature of the dramatic presentations at London street fairs such as this one at Bartholomew Fair in Smithfield. The actors and actresses involved were for the most part well-known professionals on the London stage. The offending dramatic vehicle, heretofore known only by its title as advertised in the periodical press, was a short comedy or droll called “The Prodigal Son,” based on the familiar parable in Luke's gospel (15: 11–32).

Firmin Gémier rose to the top rank of twentieth century French actors with a versatile talent that led to simultaneous success in the bourgeois commercial theatres of the boulevards, the elite independent theatres of the back streets, and the tawdry working class theatres of the suburbs. His historical reputation rests on his early career with Antoine's Théâtre-libre, and later accomplishments such as founding the Théâtre National Populaire, creating the role of Père Ubu, and tutoring Gaston Baty and Charles Dullin. Still, Gémier's work is seldom discussed and it is too easy to forget the major role he played in advocating the democratization of French theatre, a role he was uniquely suited to play given his eclecticism and willingness to popularize the Théâtre-libre style. He took middle ground between the elitism of Antoine and the commercialism of Sasha Guitry and encouraged later generations of theatre artists to actively seek an ever-widening audience.

On the night of 7 June 1861, at a playhouse in Albany, New York, actress Adah Isaacs Menken, on horseback, wearing nothing but a fleshcolored bodystocking, galloped up a stage mountain into theatrical history. The combination of danger and nudity shocked and excited her Victorian audience. In an age when women swathed themselves in yards of crinoline, her performance proved scandalous; critics agreed that, though she wore “pink fleshings,” she so explicitly revealed the female form that she might as well have been naked. One reviewer warned that “no pure youth could witness her performance and come away untainted. Naturally, such cautions increased curiosity; soon Menken became the most notorious, highest paid actress of her day. She toured with her show Mazeppa through the northeast, the American west, and the capitals of Europe before succumbing to cancer a short seven years later in Paris.

During the course of her summer's progress in 1575, Elizabeth I spent nineteen days at Kenilworth, the Earl of Leicester's Castle in Warwickshire, where she was presented with various entertainments—including plays, fireworks, bear-baitings, water-pageants, acrobatic performances, and dancing—at a cost of over a thousand pounds a day, as part of what has been called “unquestionably sixteenth-century England's grandest and most extravagant party.” Robert Langham, a minor court functionary who wrote an eyewitness account of the party, describes a “lyvely morisdauns” that was featured in this festive show of fealty to the queen. According to Langham, the morris performed for Elizabeth was danced “acording too the auncient manner” and featured “six daunserz, Mawdmarion, and the fool.” The dance was part of a bride-ale procession made up of “lusty lads and bolld bachelarz of the parish” arranged two by two in “marciall order,” who preceded sixteen horsemen and the bridegroom; after the horsemen came the morris dance, followed by three “prety puzels” carrying spicecakes and leading the bride (“ill smellyng” and “ugly fooul ill favord”), who was accompanied by “too auncient parishionerz, honest toounsmen” and a dozen bridesmaids. The procession marched to the castle in the great court in which a quintain had been set up for feats of arms; when these games were concluded, a performance of the traditional Hock Tuesday play from nearby Coventry was enacted. Though these festivities were staged outside her window, apparently the queen did not see much of them because, Langham tells us, “her highnes behollding in the chamber delectabl dauncing indeed: and heerwith the great throng and unruliness of the peopl, waz cauz that this solemnitee of Brydeale and dauncing had not the full muster waz hoped for” (11. 722–26). Elizabeth asked that the Hocktide play be performed again for her on the following Tuesday; Langham does not mention whether or not the morris dance was also repeated for the queen's pleasure.