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A "Jubilee" that Ushered in the Theater
In
the mid-1800s, Yale undergraduates gave thanks with a program of
farce, drama, and hijinks known as the Thanksgiving Jubilee.
November
1998
by Judith Ann Schiff
Judith
Ann Schiff is Chief Research Archivist at the Yale University Library.
Yale
undergraduates can give thanks this month for a weeklong Thanksgiving
break, a luxury
that students of previous centuries would have surely welcomed.
But those students of yesteryear had their own Thanksgiving tradition.
It took place on a stage rather than around a family banquet table,
and it eventually paved the way for undergraduate theater in the
College.
As hard as it is to
imagine Yale without theater, there was a time when treading the
boards was considered an offense against the College. Reflecting
Yale's puritanical origins, the College Laws until the end of the
18th century held that "If any Scholar shall any where act
a Comedy or a Tragedy, he shall be fined three Shillings, one Shilling
if he shall be present at the acting of one; and if in acting he
shall put on Women's Apparrel, he shall be publicly admonished."
A version of this rule was printed in the College Laws until 1897,
although it became less and less of a deterrent.
The event that broke
down the theater taboo, the Thanksgiving Jubilee, evolved from respectable
beginnings. In the 19th century, when the College year was three
semesters long, the only vacation day between mid-September and
the Christmas holiday was Thanksgiving. Where once students had
gathered in the Chapel for a long-winded Thanksgiving Day sermon,
they were increasingly able to travel home for the holiday as transportation
improved, so the sermon was dropped by the mid-1800s.
But inevitably, a few
students were unable to go home. To console themselves, they began
to write parody sermons and speeches that were performed on Thanksgiving
eve. By 1860, it had become an event named the Jubilee, and in that
year was moved to Tuesday so that all of the students could attend.
Set pieces evolved, such as the custom of choosing the shortest
freshman for President and the tallest for Secretary, and the reading
of a "Censor's Report" by a senior holding an immense
roll. The addition of comic poems and female impersonations led
to the production of staged and costumed plays. As one contemporary
student writer described it, "smut and vulgarity also grew
apace, until it culminated in 1865 in the production of an indecent
farce." The offenders were suspended by the faculty, who also
decreed that no female characters should be represented. Students
got around the ruling by wearing gender-ambiguous Turkish costumes.
On November
16, 1869, a new standard of refinement was introduced with the admission
of ladies to a special reserved section and the absence of tobacco
smoke. First on
the program was the usual election where the freshmen candidates
were passed to the stage over the heads of the upper classes, followed
by a witty Thanksgiving sermon, a "savory side-splitting farce"
entitled A Race for Dinner, and a minstrel show. Then came
what proved to be the hit of the vaudeville-flavored evening-a play
titled A Pretty Piece of Business. Its elegant scenery and
properties had been rented from a city theater. In the five-character
play, the three female roles were played by Frederick H. Baldwin,
Class of 1872 (seated left in the photograph above), Frederick H.
Hoadley, Class of 1870 (seated right), and Robert Baldwin, Class
of 1870. This carte-de-visite portrait is notable as the earliest
known photograph of a Yale theater production. Both the "make
up" and acting of the gentlemen were highly praised in a Yale
Literary Magazine review that boldly stated: "We think this
play may be safely styled the best piece of acting ever given in
college."
By 1880, the Jubilee
had been taken over by the fraternities,
which continued to hold elaborate fall productions into the 20th
century. In 1899, a new tradition of Yale theater quality was born
with the founding of the Yale Dramatic Association. "Real"
undergraduate actresses, of course, would have to wait until 1969.
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