The Arts of War and Peace: Theatricality and Sexuality in the Early Republic

By now, the importance of the theatre and theatricality for the study of early America must be clear to anyone following the field for the last several decades.1 From Kenneth Silverman's attention to theatrical events in his encyclopedic Cultural History of the American Revolution to recent work by Heather Nathans, Odai Johnson, and myself, the history of the early American theatre has become a subject meriting serious academic inquiry.2 Shields and Teute's study of the vexed national and gender identities on display at Lord Howe's legendary farewell bash stands out for its simultaneous analyses of the performance text, the participants, and the audience. Manly was originally played by John Henry, a Londonbom actor who had endured years of unprofitable touring in the colonial theatre before being forced to ride out the war in the West Indies and then returning to New York on an uncertain venture of resurrecting the North American theatre industry.* 11 Henry would have been a familiar face to his audience, standing there in another man's coat and uttering Manly's rejoinder to Charlotte that "there was a time when this coat was thought respectable, and some people even thought that those men who had endured so many winter campaigns in the service of their country, without bread, clothing, or pay, at least deserved that the poverty of their appearance should not be ridiculed."