Bohemians and Critics: American Theatre Criticism in the Nineteenth Century

Aldrich wrote literary reviews for the newly founded Saturday Press.

"Francis Henry Temple Bellew, an artist, painted a sign representing the Ornithorhynchus smoking a pipe while grasping a glass of beer" (15).

Bellew published a cartoon in the Picayune which depicted Edward G. P. Wilkins, John Brougham, Boucicault, Cornelius Matthew, Charles Gayler, Fitz-James O'Brien, and Benjamin A. Baker as "playwrights registering their dramatic works before the first copyright law went into effect" (52).

Henry Clapp, Jr. worked as a secretary for Brisbane in 1855-56.

Butler was one of several Pfaffians who organized Clapp's funeral.

The friendship between Daly and William Winter during the 1880s and 1890s caused people to question Winter's "critical integrity and earned him the nickname of 'Daly's house poet.'"

One of several women who frequented Pfaff's. She was a "feminist who fought actively to improve the role of women" (110).

Fox eventually married Stephen Ryder Fiske, but the couple first engaged in a scandalous affair. The affair prompted Mary's husband of the time, Mr. Burnham, to attempt to shoot and stab Fiske (110).

Gayler's The Child-Stealer is recommended by Clapp as an example of necessary "low comedy" (30).

Frank Bellew published a cartoon in the Picayune which depicted Edward G. P. Wilkins, Brougham, Boucicault, Cornelius Matthew, Charles Gayler, Fitz-James O'Brien, and Benjamin A. Baker as "playwrights registering their dramatic works before the first copyright law went into effect" (52).

Edward G. P. Wilkins accused Gayler of copying his play Many a Slip Twixt the Cup and the Lip from the French drama Les Crochets du Pere Martin. Gayler claimed he had never seen the French play and that his drama was written earlier.

Jefferson and Keene starred in The Siam Light Guard together as husband and wife.

Died in November(?) 1861. Also known by the alias, Inigo (37). He was replaced at the Albion by his friend, William Winter (79).

As a young writer, Twain was helped by Henry Clapp, Jr.

While discussing the value of American theatrical drama, Whitman suggests that "anything appealing to the honest heart of the people, as to the peculiar and favored children of freedom -- as to a new race and with a character separate from the kingdoms of other countries -- would meet with a ready response, and strike at once the sympathies of all true men who love America, their native or chosen land" (vi).

Whitman worked as an editor for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle from 1846-1848, during which time he continuously called for American theaters to hire American performers rather than import actors like Charles Kean and Ellen Tree (7-8).

Whitman also calls for reforms of the theatrical reviewing process: "There is hardly anything more contemptible, and indeed unprofitable in the long run, than this same plan of some paid personage writing laudatory notices to the newpaper, to be printed as spontaneous opinions of the editors" (8).

Thomas Bailey Aldrich wrote for Willis's Home Journal.