Simms and the British Dramatists

That the works of William Godwin, Sir Walter Scott, and to some degree James Fenimore Cooper contributed significantly to the patterns, structures, and plots of William Gilmore Simms' novels has been generally accepted. It has not been pointed out, however, that one of the shaping influences on his handling of character and situation within the framework these writers contributed was the drama of the English Renaissance and Restoration. Its influence on his diction and on the uninhibited gusto of his writing has been noted, 1 and the assumption that his greatest comic character, Porgy, was a direct imitation of Shakespeare's Falstaff has been made frequently. 2 However, an examination of Simms' methods of characterization in his seven connected Revolutionary romances 3 —his most serious and ambitious novelistic project—reveals that the British dramatists were his tutors in more than diction and that Porgy, rather than being an exception to Simms' usual practice in characterization, is actually in keeping with his method and has but superficial similarities to Falstaff.