The American Legacy
Metropolitan Playhouse
The American Legacy

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Self


Debt
Are Americans addicted to debt? Current events raise the question, but it has long haunted our national psyche, and the vanities that lead to over-extension, as well as the even criminal efforts to find relief from it, are not new in the headlines. Perhaps nowhere are the justices and injustices of debt's seductions and woes as uproariously detailed as in Mrs. Sidney Frances Bateman's Self: An Original Comedy, from 1856.

Between his spendthrift second wife, herimpecunious son Charles, and some problematic investments, Mr. Apex is nearly bankrupt. Happily, his dutiful daughter Mary willingly writes him a check for $15,000, which she has just inherited from an aunt. Unhappily, Mrs. Apex and Charles want that sum to pay off their debts, and they beat Mr.
Apex to the bank, cashing in check they have forged in Mary's name. When her father mistakenly believes Mary has retrieved her money and kept it for herself, he drives her, and her faithful servant Chloe, from the house.

But all is not lost! Mary has one hope: her wealthy godfather, Mr. Unit, if only she can get around his grumpy nature and rigorous ethics. With some effort, she does so. Unit confronts her father and stepmother and puts everything to rights with his money and advice, and, ashamed of their behavior, the Apexes reform, as do many of the satellite characters. A loving embrace brings the curtain down.

Social Security
Self is a blend of comedy of manners, family drama, and social satire. The tone of the play, from breezy bons mots to broadly comic minor characters, and a setting in the upper sphere of the social firmament all earn it a place in the line of comedies of manners, from Congreve
to Wilde to Barry…and maybe the Marx Brothers. But that place is distinctively American particularly because of the merchant-hero, the plainspoken, plain-dealing Mr. Unit. Whereas high-society comedies generally tease but celebrate the aristocracy, in a mid-century America anxious over its democratic identity, the chastened wealthy are mocked, and the earnest workers are celebrated. Metropolitan audiences will see the family resemblance in Fashion (1845) or The Contrast (1787) .

Within the light comedy, tensions among the family members are the very real stakes that give the play tension and heart. Animosity between spouses, affection between step-children, estrangements of children from parents, disappointments in friends, and the devotions that ultimately hold them together are all poignant within the play, even as they playfully evoke melodramatic conceits of the era.

That these real relationships can be threatened by vanity and posturing is the root of the satire. Upholding reputation is so important in this world that vital attachments and values are cast by the way-side. At the same time, rigorous adherence to puritanical tenets is parodied just as pointedly when old John Unit opens his crabby Yankee mouth. This social satire in Self is the essential text of the play. As Thoreau says in Walden (published two years earlier), "things are in the saddle and ride mankind." With the expansion of American farming, industry, and above all, transportation, many Americans had fallen from a Protestant Ethic articulated in Franklin’s Poor Richard's Almanac values—find prosperity by rising early, working hard, being frugal and diligent. Abandoning simple American homespun ways, they consumed excessively. The Apexes are not alone in their folly: Cypher Cynosure, a wealthy heir, holds all things French as superior to anything American. Mrs. Codliver is a hypochondriacal glutton who mangles the English language like Mrs. Malaprop in Sheridan's The Rivals. Mrs. Radius, the play's unrepentant villain, is a snobbish eavesdropper. Even the good Mr. Unit is a misanthrope and measures all things, including love and kindness, in dollars and cents. Their absurdity is our delight, and today we see that while The Gilded Age will come later, already the train is in motion. (It has not stopped yet.)

Relief

Brilliantly, this satire is given a singular and trenchant edge by the presence in the play of the black servant Chloe, whose common sense and ultimate elevation gives real and political weight to counter the fashionable follies. Uncle Tom's Cabin appeared four years before Self. Surely Mrs. Bateman sought for this Aunt Chloe to evoke Tom's wife Chloe, and she is a loving affirmation of the humanity of African Americans (and the inhumanity of their counterparts.) But what must the audience of 1856 thought when Chloe offers to sell herself to a slaver in order to save her mistress? And what did they think when, in the final scene, the racial divide is closed and Chloe is included in the climactic embrace as one of the family?

On the surface, Self is a confectioner's condemnation of the effects of egotism, vanity, and arrogance. Yet in the final lines, a wry accusation suggests that selfishness comes of best as well as worst intentions. In the end, when all the wrongs are righted, a leveling judgment is brought down upon everyone, good and bad, in the play and the audience. For our second play in the season of Justice, Metropolitan is proud to give a new life to a fascinating, funny, and nearly forgotten Self.

- Allan Lefcowitz and Alex Roe


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