It was only a year or two after the quartet of Emmett, Brower, Whitlock,
and Pelham had shown the possibilities of the new form of amusement that
troops of negro minstrels began to supply an entire evening's amusement.
The regulation First Part was devised with its curving row of vocalists,
instrumentalists, and comedians. The dignified Interlocutor took his
place in the middle of the semicircle, and uttered the time-honored
phrase: "Gentlemen, be seated. We will commence with the overture."
Bones captured the chair at one end, and Tambo pre-empted that on the
other; and they began their wordy skirmish with the Middleman, in which
that pompous presiding officer always got the worst of it. This device
for immediate and boisterous laughter, this putting down of the
Middleman by the End-man, the negro minstrels appear to have borrowed
from the circus, where the clown is also permitted always to discomfit
the stiff and stately ring-master.
But altho the minstrels may have taken over this effective trick from
the circus, with which some of the earlier performers had had intimate
relations, the trick itself is of remote antiquity. The side-splitting
colloquy of the End-man with the Middleman may be exactly like the
interchange of merry jests between the clown and the ring-master, yet it
is far older than the modern circus. It existed in Paris, for example,
in the sixteenth century, when the quack doctor was accompanied by his
jack-pudding. Many of the dialogs heard on the Pont-Neuf between Mondor
and Tabarin have been preserved, and the method is precisely that of the
dialogs between ring-master and clown, Interlocutor and End-man, even to
the persistent repetition of the question which contains the catch.
"Master," Tabarin would begin, "can you tell me which is the more
generous, a man or a woman?" And the quack doctor would solemnly reply:
"Ah, Tabarin, that is a question which has been greatly debated by the
philosophers of antiquity, and they have been unable to decide which is
truly the more generous, a man or a woman." Then Tabarin would briskly
retort: "Never mind the old philosophers. I can tell you." And with
great contempt the ponderous quack doctor would return: "What, Tabarin,
do you mean to say that you can tell us which is the more generous, a
man or a woman." Tabarin promptly responded that he could. "Then," asked
Mondor, "pray do so. Which is the more generous, a man or a woman?" And
thereupon, to the great disgust of Mondor, Tabarin would proffer his
ribald explanation. Unfortunately the explanation he gave is frankly too
ribald to be given here, for nowadays we are more squeamish than the
idlers who gathered around the quack doctor's platform in Paris three or
four centuries ago. The dialogs of Mondor and Tabarin were brief enough,
but they often made up for their brevity in their breadth.
This kind of catch-question was known in England, under Elizabeth, as
"selling a bargain," and it is not infrequent in the plays of the time.
It will be found more than once in earlier plays of Shakspere; for
example, when his "clowns" (as the low-comedy characters were then
called) were allowed to run on at their own sweet will. Not a little of
the dialog of the two Dromios is closely akin in its method to the
interchange of question and answer between the Interlocutor and the
End-man. We may be sure this method of evoking laughter was employed
also by the improvising comedians of the Italian comedy-of-masks, with
which negro-minstrelsy has other points of resemblance. It must have
been popular with the wandering glee-men of the rude Middle Ages; and
now that negro-minstrelsy is disappearing and now that our circuses
have burgeoned into three rings under a tent too vast for any merely
verbal repartees, it has not departed from among us, since it still
survives as the staple of the so-called "sidewalk conversationalists"
who swap personalities in our superabundant variety-shows.
We do not know with historic certainty how soon the First Part
crystallized into the form which has long been traditional--the opening
overture, the catch-questioning of End-man and Middleman, the comic
songs of Bones and Tambo in turn, the sentimental ballads by the
silver-throated vocalists, and the concluding walk-around. The rest of
the evening's entertainment never took on any definite framework, altho
the final item on the program was likely to be a piece of some length,
often a burlesque of a serious drama then popular, and this little play
"enlisted the whole strength of the company." Between the stately First
Part and the more pretentious terminating sketch, the minstrels
presented a variety of acts in which the several members exhibited their
specialities. A clog-dance was always in order--altho the mechanical
precision of this form of saltatorial exercise was wholly foreign to the
characteristics of the actual negroes whom the minstrels were supposed
to be representing. A stump-speech was certain of a warm
reception--altho this again departed from the true negro tradition, and,
in fact, often degenerated into frank burlesque, wholly unrelated to the
realities of life. Sketches, like those which Rice had earlier composed
for his own acting, were likely to have a little closer relation to the
genuine darky.
Yet here again the negro minstrel was not avid of overt originality. He
was willing to find his profit in the past and to translate into negro
dialect any farce, however ancient, which might contain comic situations
or humorous characters that could be twisted to suit his immediate
purpose. He seized upon the ingenious plots of certain of the pantomimes
brought to America from France half a century ago by the Ravels. And on
occasion he went, unwittingly, still further afield for his prey. There
is in print, in a collection of so-called Ethiopian drama, an amusing
sketch, entitled the 'Great Mutton Trial'; and the remote source of this
is to be sought in the oldest and best farce which has survived in
French literature. 'Maitre Pierre Pathelin' is now acted occasionally by
the Comedie-Francaise in Paris, in a version which preserves its
original flavor; but in the eighteenth century an adaptation, made by
Brueys and Palaprat, and called the 'Avocat Pathelin,' was popular. It
was this later perversion which served as the basis of an English farce,
entitled the 'Village Lawyer,' and the 'Great Mutton Trial' is simply
the 'Village Lawyer' transmogrified to suit the bolder and more robust
methods of the negro minstrels.