Reviewed by Peter P. Reed | Book Review | The William and Mary Quarterly, LXV.4

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Reviewed by Peter P. Reed | Book Review | The William and Mary Quarterly, LXV.4 | The History Cooperative

Reviews of Books

Performing Patriotism: National Identity in the Colonial and Revolutionary American Theater. By Jason Shaffer. Early American Studies. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007. 240 pages. $45.00 (cloth). Votaries of Apollo: The St. Cecilia Society and the Patronage of Concert Music in Charleston, South Carolina, 1766–1820. By Nicholas Michael Butler. The Carolina Lowcountry and the Atlantic World. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2007. 399 pages. $49.95 (cloth).
Reviewed by Peter P. Reed, University of Mississippi
Jason Shaffer's Performing Patriotism and Nicholas Michael Butler's Votaries of Apollo both work to place early American leisure culture in a world of politicized and material Atlantic entertainments. Bolstered by reliable and resourceful archival research, these two new studies explore discrete local scenes within the Atlantic world's wide network of entertainment practices. Shaffer, centered on the colonial and early Republic's New England and middle Atlantic regions, approaches American theatricals thematically. Performing Patriotism follows texts and clusters of related performances to develop a historical account of the dramatic materials early Americans employed. This includes a compelling picture of English dramas recycled and adapted in new contexts to rehearse early American identities under construction. Butler's account treats early American musical association and patronage, directing sustained attention to the Charleston Saint Cecilia Society. Like Shaffer, Butler identifies the productive interplay of early American negotiations with Atlantic cultural practices. Both studies engage themes of the local and the cosmopolitan, both develop histories of nonprofessional entertainment, and both ultimately produce valuable accounts of local, material, and frequently contested performances.	1
Shaffer's study of American theater's Atlantic genealogies makes creative and careful use of archival sources to recover early America's complex stage practices. He offers a compellingly free-flowing account of plays and institutions, attending in turn to colonial student productions, closet dramas, propaganda plays, and postrevolutionary theater. Each setting (and the contexts are, indeed, always key to the readings) conditioned specific adaptations of and riffs on existing English dramatic forms. Looking beyond venues explored in recent institutional histories of early American theater, Shaffer uses the rubric of national identity to explore understudied forms and expressions. The circulatory energies of his method force him to sacrifice some chronological coherence but allow him to explore otherwise obscure and elusive spaces and themes.	2
Like Butler, Shaffer focuses on the transmission to America of traditional British cultural artifacts and performances. He posits a trio of character types (the tyrant, the sacrificial victim, and the patriot) whose recurring presence on American stages drew from older English models to rehearse and reenact American patriotism. Residual and adapted British plays such as Joseph Addison's 1713 tragedy Cato, Irish playwright George Farquhar's 1706 comedy The Recruiting Officer, and a selection of lesser-known but still important local productions (those closet dramas, propaganda plays, and student productions) ground his reading of early America's patriotic performances. To his credit, Shaffer avoids the usual suspects, the one-off efforts that historians have trotted out repeatedly to demonstrate the "rise" of American drama. Only one such play, Royall Tyler's 1787 The Contrast, makes a token appearance, and that as an example of the residual power of British forms.	3
This study reaches its most intriguing moments when examining the ways drama inflected offstage events, including the theatrical execution speech of Nathan Hale, the oratory surrounding the Stamp Act, and popular prologues, songs, poems, speeches, newspaper pieces, and pamphlets. Extending histories of popular culture and street performance, Shaffer's study also examines riots, street processions, Pope's Day celebrations, effigy funerals, and other popular acts. From these details Shaffer describes a culture in which everyday people inhabited and enacted theatrical roles. Shaffer understands elite forms of cultural production and reception as coexisting with popular spheres. Ultimately, he concurs with Butler in depicting performance amid the real, conflicting, and human variety of early American culture.	. . .

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