They Were Always Doing Shakespeare

Antebellum Southern Actresses and Shakespearean Appropriation

Abstract

Antebellum actresses performed in a wide variety of plays meant to appeal to the diversity of spectators who attended the nineteenth-century theater. Theater historians agree, though, that plays by William Shakespeare dominated standard repertory offerings. No one has recognized, however, that many of the non-Shakespearean plays actually appropriate Shakespearean plots, a phenomenon that may partly account for the popularity of these dramas. While many plays popular on Old South stages appropriated Shakespearean plots, four especially stand out for paralleling closely their early modern inspirations. Evadne (1819), by Richard Lalor Sheil, draws on Much Ado About Nothing (1600); Virginius (1820), by James Sheridan Knowles, uses Titus Andronicus (1592) as a guide; The Wife (1833), also by Knowles, follows the plot of Othello (1603); and The Honey Moon (1805), by John Tobin, corresponds to The Taming of the Shrew (1592). Evadne and Virginius stress the necessity of protecting a young, unmarried woman's purity while The Wife and The Honey Moon emphasize the importance of wifely fidelity and deference. As the experience of antebellum actresses Eliza Logan, Jane Placide, Frances Denny Drake, and Julia Dean Hayne shows, however, women who performed the lead female parts in these plays did not always live up to the expectations espoused in their stage roles; instead, they often exposed the artificiality of rigidly prescribed gender roles in their daily lives by transgressing against the very norms they affirmed on stage.