John Howard Payne

Playwright

• Born: June 9, 1791
• Birthplace: New York, New York
• Died: April 9, 1852
• Place of death: Tunis, North Africa

Other Literary Forms

Though John Howard Payne wrote some dramatic criticism and several essays on political subjects, he is chiefly known as a dramatist.

Achievements

The achievement of John Howard Payne is difficult to gauge. His work is admittedly derivative; much of it consists of close translations and adaptations of other dramas, mostly French. At his best, however, he was a supreme adapter. He worked with astonishing speed, producing more than sixty plays in a career of little more than twenty years. His career, in fact, provides fascinating insight into the lifestyle of the dramaturgical hack of the early nineteenth century.

Theatrical houses of the day hungrily devoured any material, original or adapted, that would fill seats. Plagiarism was a minor concern in an age of uncertain and ill-defined copyright laws, and Payne thus provided a welcome service to theater managers and actors. Though not a creator, he was a literary carpenter, a superlative transmitter of popular drama. His knowledge of the contemporary stage and of what was dramatically effective often resulted not in slavish imitation but in the molding of a truly superior product from existing material, although that material was always suited to the popular taste rather than to the discriminating temper.

Payne’s position in the history of the drama can best be understood by comparing him to a scriptwriter; he produced quick-moving melodramatic plays for a general audience that used the theater at that time as general audiences of today use television. Much of his work was entertainment that never had any pretensions to art.

Biography

John Howard Payne’s career in the theater began when he submitted some critical reviews to newspapers at the age of twelve. His precocious interest was so intense that he founded his own theatrical newspaper, Thespian Mirror, when he was fourteen. Though short-lived—issued only from December 28, 1805, to March 22, 1806—the paper gave Payne a great deal of self-confidence and a few literary contacts. At fifteen he wrote his first play, Julia. Though a completely conventional melodrama, the play was a modest success and so impressed his friends that they arranged to send the young playwright to Union College in Schenectady, New York. He was there only two years, however, when his family’s bankruptcy forced him to return to New York City and to the pursuit of his overwhelming ambition, acting.

A genial, good-humored, handsome young man, Payne made his debut in 1809, at the age of eighteen. He played a number of roles, from Young Norval (a famous male lead in John Home’s popular tragedy, Douglas, pr. 1756) to Hamlet. Payne, in fact, was among the first Americans to play Hamlet, and the theatrical season of 1809 was to be the time of his greatest triumph as an actor. His fame as “the American Roscius,” a great Roman actor, followed him wherever he played—from Boston, Massachusetts, to Charleston, South Carolina. Whether because the novelty of his boyish good looks soon wore off or because his talent was too undisciplined or because established actors were jealous of his early success, Payne found his career stalling badly. For the rest of his life, in fact, his acting roles were irregular, and he was continually in debt.

It was during the time of his success as an actor that Payne wrote his second play, Lovers’ Vows, an adaptation of August von Kotzebue’s Das Kind der Liebe (pr. 1790). Payne used an English translation for his own adaptation, and though this work is not particularly noteworthy, it clearly shows Payne’s early disposition toward adaptation as a quick and easy way to make money.

Meanwhile, the American theater began to fall on hard times. The public taste, never very sophisticated, was being distracted by the War of 1812 and the resulting instability of the American economy. Still in debt and harboring his great ambition to succeed on the British stage, Payne left New York for Liverpool in January, 1813. His voyage signaled a turning point in his career; he was to remain a part of the European theatrical scene for the next twenty years.

By June, 1813, Payne had played at Drury Lane, one of the two legitimate theatrical companies in England, but there, too, audiences tired of the young actor, so that by the summer of 1814, Payne was penniless and facing an uncertain future. At this point, abreast of the latest dramas of England and France, Payne turned his talent as a speedy adapter of other plays toward earning money between acting engagements, which were becoming less frequent. As he had done in the United States, so he could do in Europe; hence, in August, 1815, he translated a popular French melodrama, La Pie voleuse (pr. 1815), and quickly wrote an adaptation, Trial Without Jury. He eventually sold it to Covent Garden, the rival house of Drury Lane. There is some doubt as to whether the play was ever performed, but there is no doubt about its effect on Payne’s career. The manager of Drury Lane, Douglas Kinnaird, was so impressed with both the speed and the theatrical “rightness” of Payne’s adaptation that he offered the twenty-four-year-old American the opportunity to supply Drury Lane with as many adaptations of successful plays as he could turn out. Kinnaird sent Payne to Paris, where, for a brief period, Payne worked as both a translator and an adapter, a virtual literary secret agent, in the service not of the government but of Drury Lane Theatre. Payne, in fact, boasted of a “system” whereby he could provide his employer with a complete adaptation of an original French production within four days.

Kinnaird and Drury Lane, however, treated Payne poorly. He was generally underpaid for his work, derived little or no credit for it, and received few opportunities to act, still his principal ambition. Dissatisfied, he left the employ of Drury Lane and went to work for Covent Garden, for which he labored for two years with the same results.

Payne’s ill treatment at the hands of theater managers such as Kinnaird and of actors such as Edmund Kean is a telling commentary on the harsh conditions of the London theater business of that period. Ironically, Payne produced his best work at this time. His Brutus is generally acknowledged as his finest play, though Payne himself admitted in his preface to the printed edition that he was indebted to at least seven previous plays on the same subject. Typically, he was paid poorly for it, receiving less than other playwrights customarily got for a curtain raiser. Yet, despite accusations of plagiarism, Brutus was to become one of the most famous tragedies in English during the entire nineteenth century. Its popularity in America was such that it held the boards for seventy years, supplying a meaty role for actors such as Edwin Forrest, Edwin Booth, and Kean.

Despite the enormous popularity of Brutus, Payne was still struggling against crushing debts, and when at last he despaired of fair treatment from both Drury Lane and Covent Garden, he opened his own theater at Sadler’s Wells in 1820. The enterprise was a disaster; Payne’s poor business sense and the failure of his own plays to draw audiences plunged him into bankruptcy, and he was arrested for debt.

From debtors’ prison, Payne still managed to keep up with the latest plays from the Continent. In three days, he adapted Thérèse. Selling the play to Drury Lane, Payne bought his way out of prison and fled to Paris; from there, he continued to sell his adaptations of popular French dramas to the British theaters. One such play was Clari. A typical melodrama of little literary value, it is nevertheless a noteworthy play because it contains the song “Home Sweet Home,” one of the best-known ballads of the era. Payne wrote only the lyrics; the melody was based on a French or Sicilian air. In the play, it is sung by the heroine, who longs for her rural homestead rather than a life of urban dissipation. Interestingly, Payne had not been “home” for ten years, and it would be yet another decade before he returned.

In Paris, Payne renewed his friendship with Washington Irving. The two had known each other as youths in New York City, and during these later years Irving gave his old friend some financial help as well as literary contacts. For a time, they even shared the same house in Paris, collaborating on a number of plays, among them Charles the Second, Payne’s best comedy. It clearly shows Irving’s hand in the urbane wit and comic verve of such characters as Captain Copp. Like Payne’s other works, Charles the Second is an adaptation. The plot is drawn essentially from a French comedy, although the characters and situations are made thoroughly British. The play is interesting as an example of Irving’s dramatic ability.

Back in London in 1824-1825, Payne courted the newly widowed Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, but no serious relationship seems to have developed. It is uncertain whether Payne’s attentions to her were based on her beauty of mind or her bounty of pocketbook. In any event, her stated preference for Irving (unreciprocated on Irving’s part) did nothing to dampen the Payne-Irving friendship.

For the next few years, Payne lived a precarious existence, still adapting dozens of plays and selling them to Drury Lane or Covent Garden. Finally, in 1832, penniless and disappointed, he returned to the United States, where he was surprised to find that he was a famous and respected man of letters. His plays had been popular in America since Brutus, and though he had never received royalties from any of them, dozens of his plays were running in American houses through the 1830’s. The fame and prestige that he had so long sought in Europe and that had eluded him had now settled on him in the United States. On his arrival, he was treated as the conquering literary man he had wanted to be in England. He was feted in Boston and New York; benefits were given in his honor; and several of his famous plays, including Brutus and Charles the Second, as well as his “Home Sweet Home,” were performed.

Payne’s career as a playwright was finished; for the next few years, he busied himself with visionary schemes. The year 1835 saw him in Georgia gathering materials for a projected series of articles on the plight of the Cherokee Indians, but both the material and the magazine for which it was intended died stillborn. While in Georgia, Payne was detained for his abolitionist activities, was called a troublemaker, and was asked to leave the state.

In 1842, still penurious but well known, Payne was appointed American consul at Tunis by President John Tyler. Recalled by the next administration, he again suffered financial difficulties until his appointment to the same post by President Millard Fillmore in 1851. He died, still in debt, in Tunis, the following year. Ironically, the man whose fame throughout the century was yoked to “Home Sweet Home” died in a foreign land, thousands of miles from his home.

Analysis

John Howard Payne wrote in one of his prefaces that it was “almost hopeless to look to the stage of the present days for a permanent literary distinction.” A broader view of the drama in England and the United States during most of the nineteenth century suggests that Payne’s admission bespoke not only his own limitations but also the relatively undistinguished record of most of the century’s dramatists before the arrival of Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw. On balance, one could justly claim that Payne’s enormous output in itself provides the scholar with a source sufficient to gauge accurately the dramatic tastes of an age.

Trial Without Jury

Trial Without Jury was one of Payne’s first translations, his first play written or adapted in England, and the work that established his position as “supplier” for Drury Lane and, later, for Covent Garden. An adaptation of the French melodrama La Pie voleuse, by Louis Charles Caigniez and Jean Marie Théodore Baudouin, the play is a source of controversy among scholars. There is some evidence that Payne’s play was never performed, as three other versions of the original exist in English by other adapters, including Thomas Dibdin and Isaac Pocock, both of whom were well-known hacks for Drury Lane. Aside from such scholarly discussion, however, and the interesting fact that the original version was turned into a libretto for a sparkling opera by Gioacchino Rossini, La gazza ladra (pr. 1817), the play is a trivial concoction that relies on a brilliantly theatrical gimmick.

Rosalie is the pretty young heroine, employed as a maid in the household of Mr. Gregory, a rich farmer, and his wife, Nannette. Rosalie is in love with the Gregorys’ handsome son, Henry, who is returning from a career in the army. The army is also the career of Everard, Rosalie’s father. As the play opens, the Gregorys are preparing a feast to celebrate Henry’s return. Rosalie is setting out the silver and plate, assisted by Coody, an honest manservant and country bumpkin. The family’s pet magpie sits in an open cage above the table. While Rosalie and Coody are engaged in friendly banter, the magpie swoops down, steals a spoon, and flies away.

Eventually, the loss of the spoon is noted by Nannette, who suspects Rosalie, since other spoons have disappeared over a period of time. Meanwhile, Rosalie’s father, facing court-martial for insubordination, visits his daughter for the last time, asking her to sell a silver spoon of his own and to give him the money later, in the woods. Rosalie sells the spoon, but the money is afterward found on her and she is accused of the theft of the Gregorys’ silver. A trial ensues; the prosecutor is a villainous magistrate who seeks vengeance on Rosalie because she had spurned his advances.

In the end, Coody spies the magpie stealing again. Following it, he retrieves a cache of plate, silver, and money. He makes all known; Rosalie is acquitted and is pledged to Henry; her father is exonerated; and the justice is relieved of his duties, which are now given to Gregory.

A modern reader might find it difficult to understand how anything could be made of such nonsense, material more suitable to parody and comic opera than to serious drama, but the original play and its adaptations were quite popular in their time. Despite its foolishness, Payne’s play proceeds smoothly. Further, Payne anglicizes the tone and feel of the play by a deft reliance on solid English idiom.

Brutus

Though it appeared rather early in Payne’s career as a playwright, Brutus is his finest achievement. First performed in December, 1818, the play held the stage for more than seventy years and became for many the supreme model for romantic historical tragedy. The importance of Brutus lies not in the creation of original characters or dramatic material, but rather in Payne’s complete mastery of the art of editing, in pruning and selecting scenes and characters from among the welter of dramatic predecessors. Brutus brings the skill of a first-rate adapter to the verge of art. Payne’s version has survived because he knew what would work dramatically. He combines, for example, the effective language of Hugh Downman’s 1779 version with the effective theatricality of Richard Cumberland’s contemporaneous treatment, transposing speeches from the middle of a scene to the end, and making the action more concise and logical.

The sheer theatricality of Brutus is impressive. The dialogue is crisp and fast-moving. Payne eliminated many of the excesses of orotund phrasing and simplified the plot, removing subplots and scenes of protracted rhetorical passion. Simplicity, in fact, is the play’s chief virtue. Brutus is remarkably free, for example, of melodramatic absurdity, though melodramatic elements are bound closely to the plot.

Junius Brutus, Rome’s leading citizen, has been killed by Tarquin, who now rules as king, together with his queen, the ruthless Tullia. The spirit of Junius is kept alive by his son Lucius, the Brutus of the play, who has survived the Tarquins’ onslaught by feigning madness. Throughout his early confrontations with Tullia and her dissolute son, Sextus, Brutus plays the fool, waiting for a propitious moment to rise up and make Rome a republic. Meanwhile, Brutus’s own son, Titus, is saddened by what he believes is his father’s madness; Titus keeps his own republican sentiments in check because of his love for Tullia’s daughter, Tarquinia.

Brutus’s propitious moment arrives when Sextus rapes a noble Roman matron, Lucretia. Lucretia kills herself, and the family seeks vengeance. Brutus abandons his pretense of madness, organizes the enemies of the Tarquins, and leads them to victory. Tullia is captured and dies on the tomb of her father (whom she had murdered), and the republic is restored. In the final dramatic scene, Titus, who has joined the Tarquins out of love for Tarquinia, is captured and brought before his father.

Titus faces Brutus without fear, asking only to be allowed to die on his own sword rather than suffer execution as a traitor. Brutus, however, must remain true to his republican principles: Though “a father’s bleeding heart forgives,” “the sov’reign magistrate of injured Rome” must condemn. As he gives the signal for execution, Brutus declares: “Justice is satisfied and Rome is free.”

Brutus’s dilemma in the concluding scene might have been dramatically powerful, but its impact is lessened because Payne provides no preparation for the conflict between paternal and national love, no scenes of intimacy between Brutus and his son to prepare for the climactic scene. The play is interesting as an example of sheer theater and controlled rhetoric, but there is in it little real characterization, little emotional charge, and thus little real tragedy.

Bibliography

Ailes, Milton E. “John Howard Payne: A Strange, Eventful History.” Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly, December, 1899, 115-130. This short biography of Payne is particularly interesting for its account of the exhumation of Payne’s remains from Tunis and their return to the United States, where they were laid to rest at ceremonies attended by then President Chester A. Arthur and his cabinet. Bandmaster John Philip Sousa and the U.S. Marine Band played Payne’s “Home Sweet Home.” The article clearly shows the esteem in which Payne was held even as late as 1900.

Hanson, Willis T., Jr. The Early Life of John Howard Payne: With Contemporary Letters Heretofore Unpublished. 1913. Reprint. New York: B. Blom, 1971. This standard biography of Payne is particularly interesting for the letters that it contains. Bibliography included.

Harrison, Gabriel. John Howard Payne: Dramatist, Poet, Actor, and Author of “Home Sweet Home”; His Life and Writing. Rev. ed. New York: B. Blom, 1969. A reprint of the definitive biography published in 1885, detailing Payne’s early career as child actor, his life abroad as dramatist, and his final years as editor and consul at Tunis. The study is valuable as a source of original material, such as Payne’s letters and excerpts from his voluminous journals. The book also includes Payne’s unpublished juvenilia and his critical reviews, and it provides estimates of Payne’s character from friends.

Overmeyer, Grace. America’s First Hamlet. 1957. Reprint. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1975. Overmeyer re-creates Payne’s career largely through views of him presented by his friends, particularly Washington Irving and Charles Lamb. The study also draws on Payne’s diaries, letters, and critical reviews, and it reveals Payne’s brilliant, if erratic, personality and his pioneering work in the early American theater.