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Black-Dialect Play, featuring "An Extravagantly Dressed Dude...."

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles Start Price:60.00 USD Estimated At:120.00 - 160.00 USD
Black-Dialect Play, featuring  An Extravagantly Dressed Dude....
Printed play, "The Nigger Boarding-House," "A Screaming Farce in one Act and one Scene for Six Male Burnt-Cork Characters," by Oliver Wenlandt, with directions for its performance. Dick & Fitzgerald, N.Y., 1898, 4 3/4 x 7 1/4, pale yellow wrappers, 24 pp. Cast including Pompey and Zeke, "fairly well dressed flashy niggers," and Masher, "an extravagantly dressed dude...A vacant giggle, commencing with an open-mouthed stare, a grin gradually spreading over his face, ending with a rapid titter, 'He, he, he!' on a high note, then suddenly serious." Entirely in dialect, landlady Mrs. Fizzy exclaiming, "Dear me! The imperdence ob de lower classes is something abdominal." Pomp remarks about Zeke's sister, "Well, next time I saw me, give her my complaint, and tell you she saw me, and she was asking after you, and was quite well, only you had an attack ob de chicken-box." For dinner, one describes "two or free pickled eels' feet, an' den herrin'-bone soup...." Listings of other plays for sale, including "Nigger Night School," "Darkey Wood Dealer," and "Pickles and Tickles," military plays including "Prisoner of Andersonville" (running 2 1/4 hours), comedies and dramas ("Girl from Porto Rico"), and Western plays ("Golden Gulch" and "Stubborn Motor Car," an excessively early reference to the horseless carriage). Text signature pulled at staples, quarter folds, some cover scuffing and wear, internally very good. Rare.