Sam Hague

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sam Hague was a British blackface minstrel dancer and troupe owner. He was the first white owner of a minstrel troupe composed of black members, and the success he saw with this troupe inspired many other white owners to purchase black companies.

Hague began his career as a performer in British and American minstrel shows. He eventually branched into troupe ownership and management, and in 1866, he formed a ten-member black minstrel troupe called Sam Hague's Slave Troupe of Georgia Minstrels;^[1] the first white man to have done so. They toured England for several years, and eventually counted stars such as Bob Height and Charles Hicks among their members. Hague's overseas success lent black minstrelsy a new credence in the United States. By the mid-1870s, most successful American black troupes had been bought by white owners who had followed Hague's lead. When the Slave Troupe returned to the United States, Charles Callender purchased the company.

By 1881, Hague owned a white minstrel troupe composed of British players. The British had a reputation in America for not being as apt at portraying caricatured black roles or performing comedy bits. In response, Sam Hague's British Minstrels stressed their musical abilities and their refined costumes and sets. Only the endmen wore blackface, and the troupe did no base comedy. George Primrose and William H. West adopted Hague's idea and sparked a new trend in minstrelsy.

[edit] Notes

^ Both Toll 203 and Watkins 119 refer to this troupe as "integrated". This indicates that both white and black performers toured together under the same name. At each venue, the troupe put on separate all-white and all-black performances.

[edit] References

Toll, Robert C. (1974). Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-century America. New York: Oxford University Press.
Watkins, Mel (1994). On the Real Side: Laughing, Lying, and Signifying—The Underground Tradition of African-American Humor that Transformed American Culture, from Slavery to Richard Pryor. New York: Simon & Schuster.