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The Gladiator (play)

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The Gladiator
Edwin Forrest as Spartacus
Written byRobert Montgomery Bird
Date premiered26 September 1831 (1831-09-26)
Place premieredNew York City
Original languageEnglish
SubjectThracian slave revolt
GenreMelodrama
SettingRome and parts of Italy, 73 B.C.

The Gladiator is a tragic melodrama in five acts written by Robert Montgomery Bird originally starring Edwin Forrest. It first premiered on September 26, 1831 at the Park Theatre in New York City.[1]

Background

Metamora; or, The Last of the Wampanoags, a play by John Augustus Stone won Forrest's inaugural play prize in 1829.[2] A huge success, Metamora inspired Forrest to continue offering the prize. Robert Montgomery Bird, a doctor without "an all-consuming passion for medicine," hearing of the prize, penned and submitted his first play, the blank verse tragedy Pelopidas, or The Fall of the Polemarchs.[3] Although Pelopidas won the prize, it was not produced or published until 1919, possibly because Pelopidas does not dominate the action of his play in the way Metamora managed and therefore failed to show off Forrest's abilities adequately. The following year, however, Bird won Forrest's prize a second time with that play that would become his most impactful, The Gladiator.[4] Bird's brother Henry, in a letter advised Robert to continue with The Gladiator as Spartacus was "altogether more suited to Forrest's Roman figure & actions."[5]

Characters

  • Marcus Licinius Crassus -- A Roman praetor.
  • Lucius Gellius -- A consul.
  • Scropha -- A quaestor.
  • Jovius -- A centurion.
  • Mummius -- Lieutenant to Crassius.
  • Batiatus Lentulus -- A Capuan lanista.
  • Bracchius -- A Roman Lanista.
  • Florus -- Son of Lentulus.
  • Spartacus -- A Thracian gladiator.
  • Phasarius -- Spartacus' brother.
  • Ænomaiis -- A gladiator from Gaul.
  • Crixus -- A German gladiator.
  • boy -- Son to Spartacus.
  • Julia -- Niece of Crassus.
  • Senona -- Wife of Spartacus.
  • Citizens, soldiers, etc.[6]

Synopsis

The play opens with Phasarius, a Thracian slave and other gladiators decrying the position of Rome and considering a revolt against the state left vulnerable by its colonizing and war-mongering generals. However, upon heading from his lanista, Bracchius, that a newly captured Thracian gladiator is an even better fighter than himself, Phasarius resolves to postpone his plans for coup. This newly captured slave is Spartacus, who agrees to battle so that he may free his also captured wife and child. Upon meeting each other in the arena of the amphitheater, however, Phasarius and Spartacus recognize each other as brothers, refuse to fight and incite their fellow gladiators to revolt.

I thank the gods I am barbarian;
For I can better teach the grace-begot
And heaven-supported masters of the earth,
How a mere dweller of desert rock
Can bow their crown'd heads to his chariot wheels.

Spartacus, in Robert Montgomery Bird's The Gladiator (1831)[7]

War ensues. The gladiator army, led by Spartacus is initially incredibly successful in their crusade against the Romans.However, the two brothers have differing agendas: while Spartacus wants to return with his wife, Senona and son to his beloved Thrace and his live as a shepherd, Phasarius wants to sack Rome. Phasarius eventually defects from his brother's army when Spartacus forbids his advance on Julia, the captured niece of Crassus, a Roman praetor. Splintered, the various rebelling armies are easily defeated by the Romans. Phasarius, reconciled and reunited with his brother's dwindling campaign, attempts to escort Senona and her son through a forest to safety. In this attempt, Senona and her child are slain by waiting Roman troops, while Phasarius manages to stumble back to Spartacus and deliver the tragic news before he too dies. Enraged, Spartacus refuses a pardon granted to him by the Romans. In his final bloody fight, Spartacus manages to kill his former captor, Lentulus, before he is felled by multiple Roman troops over the cries of Julia's protest.

[8] [9]

Production History

The Gladiator premiered at New York's Park Theatre on September 26, 1831.[10] Although the weather on opening night was poor, the actors in secondary roles of questionable distinction and the sets and costumes "wretchedly bad," the play was a massive success and was received with increasing enthusiasm each of the four nights it played.[11] This original production was noted for the play's climatic Act Two in which Spartacus and Pharsarius refuse to slaughter each other. This scene was staged in a spectacular way, the likes of which had not yet been seen that century.[12]

After such success in New York, the production moved to Philadelphia, where it was first produced on October 24 and Boston, where the play was seen in November.[13]

The Gladiator was such a success for Forrest that he opened with it when he traveled to London in 1836. Although Forrest was a success at the Drury Lane Theatre on October 17 with The Gladiator, the audience demonstrated their desire to see Shakespeare as The Gladiator was seen by many in the audience as anti-British.[14][15]

Although The Gladiator remained an central part of Forrest's repertoire, as with many pre-Civil War plays, it eventually fell out of favor as naturalism and "realistic representation" became more popular.[16]

Slavery in The Gladiator

Bird's opinion on Slavery in the United States is often questioned in regards to The Gladiator. The play was written in a time of great abolitionist activity: William Lloyd Garrison founded The Liberator, an influential anti-slavery newspaper, the same year as Bird wrote his play.[17]

In his appraisal of the work, Whitman insists that, "this play is as full of 'Abolitionism' as an egg is of meat."[18] Yet later scholars have dissented from Whitman's surety.[19] Certainly, Bird did not want his play to be "damned" in the south.[20] And while Bird himself was worried that, The Gladiator produced in a Slave state would lead to, "the managers, players, and perhaps myself ... rewarded with the Penitentiary," he also differentiated between "nobel" Thracian rebels and "violent" African American slaves.[21] Writing in his journal of the Nat Turner slave rebellion, Bird remarks, "if they had had a Spartacus among them to organize the half million of Virginia, the hundreds of thousands of the [other] states, and lead them on in the Crusade of Massacre, what a blessed example might they not give the world of the excellence of slavery."[22]

Criticism and Legacy

From the very first performance in New York City the play was a major success, both commercially and critically. Amongst other praise accorded The Gladiator, it was called "the best native tragedy extant," "decidedly the best drama ever written in this century"[23] with "the stamp of genius in every lineament."[24] The prominent Philadelphia critic, Wemyss called the play, upon its opening in that city, "the perfection of melodramatic tragedy."[25] The play was indeed a huge success in Philadelphia as well as Boston and other cities in the Northeastern United States.[26] Writing in ''The Brooklyn Eagle'' in late 1846, Walt Whitman also discusses Forrest's talent, citing the actor as "a deserved favorite with the public."[27]

While the relationship between The Gladiator and its playwright to slavery is much debated (see above), the play is often seen as the pinnacle of romanticism in American drama.[28] Written only a few years following the inauguration of Andrew Jackson, the play is Anti-imperial and anti-British where distant colonies are persecuted while ancient lineages reign dominant over "the new blood of the poor," a common theme in Jacksonian political rhetoric.[29]

The Gladiator played successfully across the country for 70 years. A marker of its enormous success may be seen in how many performances were produced: by 1854, The Gladiator had been performed over 1000 times, a remarkable feat. It was considered to be the first time a play had reached such a threshold in the playwright's lifetime. Forrest retained the play in his repertoire until his death, and it was eventually taken up by John Edward McCullough and Robert Downing.[30]

See also

References

  1. ^ Dahl, Curtis (1963). Robert Montgomery Bird. New York: Twayne. p. 56.
  2. ^ Moody, Richard, ed. (1966). Dramas from the American Theatre: 1762-1909. Cleveland: World Publishing Company. p. 229.
  3. ^ Moody, Richard, ed. (1966). Dramas from the American Theatre: 1762-1909. Cleveland: World Publishing Company. pp. 230–231.
  4. ^ Halline, Allan Gates (1935). American Plays. New York: American Book Company. p. 155.
  5. ^ Richards, Jeffrey H., ed. (1997). Early American Drama. New York: Penguin Classics. p. 166.
  6. ^ Richards, Jeffery H., ed. (1997). Early American Drama. New York: Penguin Classics. p. 172.
  7. ^ Bird, Robert Montgomery (1997). RIchards, Jeffrey H. (ed.). The Gladiator. New York: Penguin Classics. p. 220.
  8. ^ Bird, Robert Montgomery (1997). Richards, Jeffrey H. (ed.). The Gladiator. New York: Penguin Classics. pp. 173–242.
  9. ^ Dahl, Curtis (1963). Robert Montgomery Bird. New York: Twayne Publishers. p. 57.
  10. ^ Dalh, Curtis (1963). Robert Montgomery Bird. New York: Twayne Publishers. p. 56.
  11. ^ Dahl, Curtis (1963). Robert Montgomery Bird. New York: Twayne Publishers. p. 19.
  12. ^ Moody, Richard (1955). America Takes The Stage: Romanticism in American Drama and Theatre, 1750-1900. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. p. 194.
  13. ^ Dahl, Curtis (1963). Robert Montgomery Bird. New York: Twayne Publishers. p. 56.
  14. ^ Moody, Richard (1955). America Takes the Stage: Romanticism in American Drama and Theatre, 1750-1900. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 194–195.
  15. ^ Halline, Allan Gates (1935). American Plays. New York: American Book Company. p. 159.
  16. ^ Moody, Richard (1955). America Takes the Stage: Romanticism in American Drama and Theatre, 1750-1900. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. p. 30.
  17. ^ Halline, Allan Gates (1935). American Plays. New York: American Book Company. p. 157.
  18. ^ Moses, Montrose J.; Brown, John Mason, eds. (1934). The American Theatre as Seen By Its Critics: 1752-1934. New York: W. W. Norton. p. 69.
  19. ^ Richards, Jeffrey H. (1997). Early American Drama. New York: Penguin Classics. p. 168.
  20. ^ Grimsted, David (1968). Melodrama Unveiled: American Theatre and Culture 1800-1850. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p. 169.
  21. ^ Dahl, Curtis (1963). Robert Montgomery Bird. New York: Twayne Publishers. p. 59.
  22. ^ Dahl, Curtis (1963). Robert Montgomery Bird. New York: Twayne Publishers. p. 59.
  23. ^ Moody, Richard, ed. (1966). Dramas from the American Theatre: 1762-1909. Cleveland: World Publishing Company. p. 233.
  24. ^ Dahl, Curtis (1963). Robert Montgomery Bird. New York: Twayne Publishers. p. 56.
  25. ^ Quinn, Arthur Hobson (1951). The Literature of the American People. Irvington Publishers. p. 477.
  26. ^ Dahl, Curtis (1966). Robert Montgomery Bird. New York: Twayne Publishers. p. 56.
  27. ^ Moses, Montrose J; Brown, John Mason, eds. (1934). The American Theatre as Seen By Its Critics: 1752-1934. New York: W. W. Norton. p. 69.
  28. ^ Moody, Richard (1955). America Takes the Stage: Romanticism in American Drama and Theatre, 1750-1900. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. p. 28.
  29. ^ Dahl, Curtis (1963). Robert Montgomery Bird. New York: Twayne Publishers. p. 58.
  30. ^ Dahl, Curtis (1963). Robert Montgomery Bird. New York: Twayne Publishers. p. 56.
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