Inventing the Tramp: The Early Tramp Comic on the Variety Stage

Authors

  • Michelle Granshaw University of Pittsburgh

Abstract

This essay examines the “tramp” on the variety stage at the moment of its cultural invention. In the wake of the Panic of 1873, the dominant imagination first invented the specter of the tramp as the nation debated how to deal with the new masses of mobile unemployed. For the earliest comic tramps in the 1870s, Irish and blackface comedy created a visual vocabulary that offered a quickly recognizable stand-in for the seemingly invisible crime of unemployment. As the decade progressed, performers portrayed the most popular comic tramps as Irish, aligning mobility with whiteness and turning the comic tramp into a performance of racial privilege. The Irish-American tramp may have reflected many of the negative characteristics of the tramp, including his wandering nature, his unemployment, and his drinking, but he also showed that the Irish-American comic tramp could be part of a community and in some instances, even a hero.

Author Biography

Michelle Granshaw, University of Pittsburgh

Michelle Granshaw is an Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research interests include American and Irish theatre and popular entertainment, diaspora and global performance histories, performance and the working class, and historiography.  Her articles have appeared in Theatre Survey, Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film, Journal of American Drama and Theatre, Theatre Topics, and the New England Theatre Journal. 

Downloads

Published

2018-11-27

How to Cite

Granshaw, M. (2018). Inventing the Tramp: The Early Tramp Comic on the Variety Stage. Popular Entertainment Studies, 9(1-2), 44–63. Retrieved from https://novaojs.newcastle.edu.au/kulumun/index.php/pes/article/view/211

Issue

Vol. 9 No. 1-2 (2018)

Section

Articles

License

Copyright for all material published in Popular Entertainment Studies resides with the Author.

Readers of Popular Entertainment Studies may, however, save and/or print any files from the journal for their personal use, as long as no alterations are made to the material and any subsequent citation is properly acknowledged. For any other use/reproduction of material (e.g. for course materials), express prior permission must be obtained from the journal's General Editor.

Authors are welcome to re-use/reprint their work elsewhere, as long as such publication includes due acknowledgement of the work's prior appearance in Popular Entertainment Studies. Authors are individually responsible for obtaining any necessary copyright permissions for images, photos, or other materials reproduced in their articles and for including any required credits. Copyright clearance for their use must be lodged with the journal if your submission is accepted for publication.

For more information, please refer to the copyright form.