Playing 'America' on nineteenth-century stages; or, Jonathan in England and Jonathan at home

This dissertation, prepared towards the completion of a Ph.D. in Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, examines "Yankee Theatre" in America and London through a post-colonial lens from 1787 to 1855. Actors under consideration include: Charles Mathews, James Hackett, George Hill, Danforth Marble and Joshua Silsbee. These actors were selected due to their status as iconic performers in "Yankee Theatre.".;The Post-Revolutionary period in America was filled with questions of national identity. Much of American culture came directly from England. American citizens read English books, studied English texts in school, and watched English theatre. They were inundated with English culture and unsure of what their own civilization might look like. A post-colonial crisis, in other words, gripped the new nation.;This dissertation attempts to explain "Yankee Theatre," a performance tradition popular from the mid-1820s to the mid-1850s, within this complex, transatlantic sociopolitical situation. It begins with a discussion of early Yankee plays and explains how they were written against the "empire," distinguishing the new citizen from the English subject. But "Yankee Theatre" was not only popular in America. Several actors traveled across the Atlantic to perform on London stages. Thus, this dissertation also explains the pressures they faced in fighting for international success. It encompasses how the English understood the Yankee and how an imperial standard was established overseas. It offers an account of why English audiences were unhappy with the first American Yankee actors they witnessed, and outlines how future Yankee actors were caught in this web of criterion and taste for years to come.;"Playing America" asserts that "Yankee Theatre" addressed specific problems, issues, and questions arising from America's post-colonial status. When the post-colonial crisis passed, Yankee Theatre also ended. By the mid-to late-1850s, the minstrel replaced the Yankee as the symbol of the nation.;An examination of "Yankee Theatre" allows for a greater understanding of circum-Atlantic performance as well as issues of nationalism and national identity in the theatre. Research methodologies include historical and textual analysis as well as post-colonial, literary, and dramatic theory.