{"id":10270,"date":"2010-11-27T01:03:22","date_gmt":"2010-11-27T01:03:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=10270"},"modified":"2011-11-14T02:25:53","modified_gmt":"2011-11-14T02:25:53","slug":"the-octoroon-early-history-of-the-drama-of-miscegenation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=10270","title":{"rendered":"The Octoroon: Early History of the Drama of Miscegenation"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Octoroon: Early History of the Drama of Miscegenation<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Journal of Negro Education<\/a>
\nVolume 20, Number 4 (Autumn, 1951)
\npages 547-557<\/p>\n

Sidney Kaplan<\/strong>, Instructor In English
\nUniversity of Massachusetts<\/em><\/p>\n

From the moment of its birth the American democracy has appeared to some of its best champions as the perfect subject for Aristotelian<\/a> tragedy. Could the democracy with an overwhelming reservation be anything other than the hero with a fatal flaw? The essence of slavery, complained Jefferson<\/a> at the close of the Revolution<\/a>, was the \u201cperpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other\u201d; he trembled for his country when he reflected that God was just and that his justice could not sleep forever. One ramification of this peculiarly American tragedy\u2014the \u201cproblem\u201d of passion between black and white\u2014has been a staple of our stage for almost a century. From Boucicault\u2019s<\/a> The Octoroon<\/a><\/em> in the decade before Gettysburg<\/a>, through O\u2019Neill\u2019s<\/a> All God\u2019s Chillun<\/a><\/em> in the era of the first World War<\/a>, to Hughes\u2019s<\/a> The Barrier<\/em> of the current guilty hour, the drama of miscegenation<\/a> has packed box and balcony throughout the land.<\/p>\n

Putting aside the question of its dramatic merit, it is easy to see why Boucicault’s play, from the historian’s point of view, is the most interesting of the genre; for not only did The Octoroon<\/em> for the first time, effectively and sympathetically, place a Negro in the center of an American stage, but also, in the troubled time of its premiere, despite all its meagerness as play or tract, it became a small portent of impending crisis and irrepressible conflict. As Joseph Jefferson<\/a> wrote, thirty years after its first night, The Octoroon<\/em> \u201cwas produced at a dangerous time\u201d; for the slightest allusion to the peculiar institution served then only \u201cto inflame the country, which was already at a white heat.\u201d<\/p>\n

Three days after John Brown<\/a> had been hanged in Virginia<\/a>, the curtain arose on The Octoroon<\/em> in New York<\/a>. On the evening of December 6, 1859, just as Brown’s coffin began the last lap on the journey North to the quiet Adirondack<\/a> farms, the Winter Garden<\/a>…<\/p>\n

Read or purchase the article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Octoroon: Early History of the Drama of Miscegenation The Journal of Negro Education Volume 20, Number 4 (Autumn, 1951) pages 547-557 Sidney Kaplan, Instructor In English University of Massachusetts From the moment of its birth the American democracy has appeared to some of its best champions as the perfect subject for Aristotelian tragedy. Could […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1196,8,6940,20],"tags":[4517,4516,304],"class_list":["post-10270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-slavery","category-usa","tag-sidney-kaplan","tag-the-journal-of-negro-education","tag-the-octoroon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10270\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}