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.On several occasions in the years from1825 to 1827, when Hewlett dropped the mask (which is to saythat, instead of imitating a white actor performing a certain role,he performed that role as himself), the character he portrayed wasRichard III.In May 1826, for example, he concluded his showat the Grove Hotel in New York by acting the  tent and dyingscene in Richard. 59 And, appropriately enough, when Hewlettarranged to have his image engraved, he had himself depicted asRichard.Several newspapers which reported the collapse of thefloor at the Greenwich performance noted that the black actorwas  vulgarly called  Dick Hewlett,  presumably because of hisfascination with that dramatic role.The press seems to havefound something amusing in this, but their smirks cannot concealan almost wistful air surrounding Hewlett s behavior, or the real-ity of white racism denying a talented black individual his fairchance.60The only way for Hewlett to perform his beloved Shakespeare ona New York stage would be in the company of other black actors.From January 1828 to March 1831, there is an almost completelack of documentation concerning Hewlett s career, but there issome evidence to show that he revived the African Theater in its1828 29 season.In the inaugural issue of an English publicationentitled The Family Magazine, which appeared in 1829, an anony-mous writer penned several paragraphs on  The Negroes of NewYork, based on his recent stay there.Having heard  that therewas a Negro theatre here in New York, the traveler had  imme-diately resolved to pay it a visit. When he located it  in a ratherretired street, the theater turned out to be  small, but tolerablywell fitted up better, indeed, than in the theatres in many of ourSHAKESPEARE S PROUD REPRESENTATIVE 167provincial towns ; it was also  well lighted and  the music, forAmerica, was very good. Julius Caesar was on the bill that night,and this white observer  sat near the stage and could not help butnotice the black actor playing Brutus; this actor,  after deliveringlong speeches, asked me twice, in an under-tone, how I liked hisacting. Although no names were mentioned in the piece, the ac-tor in question sounds very much like Hewlett.As usual, thewriter deployed the usual puns on color in his quest for literary ef-fect, but, for all that, he seems to have been quite taken by theperformance:  No sooner had I ceased smiling at the charmingPortia, than I was almost thrilled with horror at the dark visagesof the conspirators, with their white rolling eyes; and I began pos-itively to shudder at all this Rome in black.Apparently the patrons of the theater on that night were mostlyblack; the English traveler alluded to  that disagreeable feelingwhich comes over me and no doubt over every other White, whofinds himself amidst a numerous assemblage of Blacks before he isaccustomed to the sight. 61 This supposition raises the vexed andprobably unresolvable issue of precisely who made up the audi-ence for these black theatrical performances.Here the evidence isparticularly scanty, but, based on what little is available, it seemsfair to assume that Hewlett s solo acts drew a different crowd fromthat which attended performances by a company of black actors.Although whites came too, most of the members of the audiencefor the African Company s original performances, and for this re-vival of the company in 1828 29, were African New Yorkers.Incontrast, when Hewlett gave his imitations of famous actors, heprobably attracted a predominantly white audience, comprisedlargely of young males who were fast becoming the most impor-tant consumers of all kinds of popular entertainment.Although this was probably not immediately apparent, an audi-ence of this kind spelled trouble for Hewlett.On the one hand, its168 STORIES OF FREEDOM IN BLACK NEW YORKpatronage enabled the black actor to enjoy two years of popular-ity, but on the other hand, the young white men who frequentedhis shows were a volatile lot, sometimes dangerously so, combin-ing as they did a curiosity about the spectacle of a black man onstage and occasionally even an appreciation of his talent with anoften intense racism.This last point is well illustrated by the rec-ollections, written down decades later, of a white native of Albany,a man who could recall vividly the performances in 1826 of  theAfrican champion, Hewlet at the Vauxhall Garden in the statecapital.Although he acknowledged the high quality of the act-ing  this darkey was some in Richard and Othello, and  on thestage he tore King Dick to flinders  his reflections were mostnotable for their vitriolic nastiness.Not only did he recount withrelish some of Hewlett s later troubles in the 1830s, but he alsodelighted in emphasizing that  of a hot summer s night the audi-ence kept a respectful distance from the foot-lights (penny dips)in consequence of the strong goat-like odor diffused over the gar-den. 62 This sort of racial slurs and attitudes would prompt beforelong the savage race riots of 1834, but in the meantime they sim-mered beneath the surface.Although theater audiences were no-toriously boisterous at this time, it seems that Hewlett s shows of-ten brought out the worst in his young white patrons and, almostinevitably, sporadic outbreaks of violence occurred.Hewlett s audience was also fickle.Perhaps it is only hindsightthat makes the point clear, but it does seem that even in theseyears, the mid-1820s, there was always a sense that Hewlett s pop-ularity could not last.Notwithstanding his virtuosity, his act wasstill largely a novelty, and inevitably, one feels, young whiteswould tire of Hewlett s shows and find other ways to satisfy theirvoyeuristic desire to see blacks performing on stage.The ephem-erality of audience taste brings to mind Langston Hughes s ele-gant epitaph for that brief period a century later when, like mothsSHAKESPEARE S PROUD REPRESENTATIVE 169to a flame, many white New Yorkers were drawn to the goings onuptown:  That spring for me (and I guess for all of us) was the endof the Harlem Renaissance.We were no longer in vogue anyway,we Negroes.Sophisticated New Yorkers turned to Noel Cow-ard. 63 What happened in the late 1820s and 1830s resembled lessa turning to Noel Coward than a desire to see Al Jolson, or at leasthis blackfaced forebears.In 1829, the white entertainer GeorgeWashington Dixon, in blackface, sang  Coal Black Rose at vari-ous New York City venues, and the following year T.D.Rice first jumped Jim Crow [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]