Parlor Drama

Parlor Drama

Temperance advocates believed that engaging in participatory dramatic activities centered on temperance themes would disseminate their reform agenda to a broad audience while strengthening the convictions of the men, women, and children already involved in the movement. In addition to professional stage plays, many other performance and print genres were marshalled for the temperance cause, including lectures, recitations, dialogues, skits, and songs, as well as articles, pamphlets, poems, novels, short stories, and cartoons. After the Civil War, “temperance halls” sprouted up in cities and small towns, offering spaces for visiting lecturers and amateur performances.

Nineteenth-century Americans of all ages and both genders engaged in a variety of dramatic activities in their everyday lives, including storytelling, story dramatization, dramatic reading, recitation, parlor games, charades, farces, pantomimes, and tableaux vivants. Young and old alike gathered in homes, literary societies, and church assembly rooms to execute and listen to “literary and musical entertainments.” Mass commercial entertainment had not yet absorbed people’s intense devotion to amateur artistic pursuits. This was a world in which ordinary Americans were as much cultural producers as consumers, and created a sense of community based on planning, executing, watching, and discussing performances of literature and music.

Beginning in the 1850s, parlor drama collections and parlor game guides surged in popularity. Authors of parlor guides and amateur dramas realized that temperance was a widespread topic of discussion. By invoking temperance in their tableaux and plays, they hoped to convince readers that parlor theatricals were a respectable, ennobling, and family-friendly pursuit.