THE FIRST BLACK-FACE PERFORMER.
The late Laurence Hutton in “The Negro on the Stage,” states that Shakespeare’s Othello was one of the earliest black-face stage characters; giving the date of the appearance at the Globe Theatre, London, England, on April 30, 1610; Oronoko followed in 1696. But several hundred years before the jealous Moor’s appearance, a couple of young men, named Cain and Abel respectively, did a brother act, though not necessarily a brotherly act, for the first-named gentleman one day in a fit of peevishness did smite Master Abel with such force that the breath did leave his body; Cain was punished, as he should have been; his complexion was changed from Caucasian to Ethiopian; this was the first black face turn. Anyway, that’s how the story runs. With the reader’s permission we will skip about 1,700 years, and come down to the comparative present.
The late Charles T. White, who made a study of minstrelsy all his life and was himself contemporaneous with it from its inception, stated that according to Russell’s Boston Gazette of December 30, 1799, at the Federal Theatre, Boston, a Mr. Graupner sang a song called “The Negro Boy.”
Federal Theatre, Boston, Mass.
The First Recorded Black-Face Act Was Given Here December 30, 1799.
W. W. Clapp, Jr., in his “History of the Boston Stage,” avers that this would be impossible, as the news of George Washington’s death, December 14, 1799, did not reach Boston until December 24, and that the theatre was closed a week in consequence thereof. Granting this, six days would have elapsed, and the performance undoubtedly was given, for had it not, the advertisement which was inserted announcing the performance for that evening, would not under any circumstances have been printed. However, for the sake of argument, let us concede that the first black-face appearance (the term black-face as used here has reference to a single performer doing a specialty) was not on the date specified.
The next mention of a black-face performer, by Mr. White, was in 1815, when an actor known as “Pot Pie” Herbert sang “The Battle of Plattsburg” in Albany; Mr. H. D. Stone in the “Drama,” published in Albany in 1873, credits one “Hop” Robinson as the singer of the song; while “Sol” Smith, a reputed eye-witness, in his (Smith’s) autobiography, published in 1868, credits it to Andrew Jackson Allen, claiming that Allen sang it at the Green Street Theatre, Albany, 1815, playing a black-face character. Obviously there could be but one “first” and a period of fifteen years had apparently elapsed between the reputed appearance of Mr. Graupner and the last named gentleman; in other words, no claims have been made for others between 1799 and 1815. Nevertheless, there was an appearance between these dates, and by none other than Mr. Graupner himself, who, on September 4, 1809 (while “Daddy” Rice was an infant in swaddling clothes), appeared as the “Gay Negro Boy” in a circus at Taunton, Mass.; the honor then beyond any doubt is Mr. Graupner’s; and equally certain is the fact that he appeared in Boston, December 30, 1799. Black-face performers sprang up rapidly, and in earlier days no circus was considered complete without at least one of them.