Niamh Burns
Sinbad the Sailor
This essay will examine an orientalist playbill announcing the performance of the Christmas Pantomime Sinbad the Sailor at the Gaiety Theatre in 1892. I chose the Gaiety Theatre because it could be considered the closest representation of popular entertainment of the era, in contrast to The Abbey Theatre, for example, which was notoriously set up to facilitate the Irish literary revival (“History – Abbey Theatre”, n.d.). The Gaiety, instead, was established with the explicit purpose to “perform any interlude, tragedy, comedy, prelude, opera, burletta, play, farce or pantomime…” (The Irish Times, 2007). In other words, productions in the Gaiety could be best understood as ‘popular culture’ rather than ‘high culture’ (Kennedy, 1990). As such, looking at the productions in the Gaiety in their entirety – comprising plots, costumes, sets, actors, popular engagement with the plays, and so on – offers an insight into the kind of theatrical culture that Irish people were consuming at the turn of the century. I chose to discuss this time period for two reasons. Firstly, the late Victorian era is considered the high point of consumer culture in the British empire, which Ireland was still part of at the time, and as such there are plenty of available sources to work with. Secondly, the early twentieth century, especially 1916, is crystallised in the Irish collective memory as a period of anti-British sentiment. As such, I thought it would be interesting to explore the extent to which Irish people were happily consuming British cultural products at this time, despite the prevailing narrative of hostility towards Britain.
Adventure narratives like Sinbad the Sailor were popular in the Victorian era, and drew heavily on Orientalist tropes in their narratives and settings. Accordingly, this production presents itself as a good opportunity for exploring Irish consumption of Orientalist cultural products at the turn of the twentieth-century. My analysis raises a number of interesting questions about the consumption of Orientalist culture – itself a product of imperial ideology (Said, 1978). This includes, but is not limited to, the question: how embedded were Irish people in the cultural values and movements of the British empire? What does the enthusiasm for these productions say about Irish understandings of race and non-European culture? And to what extent, if at all, can the consumption of these orientalist performances be considered a benign form of popular entertainment?
“Adventure narratives like Sinbad the Sailor were popular in the Victorian era and drew heavily on Orientalist tropes in their narratives and settings.”
To begin with, we must first discuss the concept of ‘Orientalism’, and how it is connected to imperialism. Edward Said defines Orientalism as “a style of thought” based on a perceived distinction between “the Orient” and “the Occident”. Put another way, it is a way of thinking that is rooted in a belief that the “West” is distinct from the “East” (Said, 1978). According to Said, Orientalism can mean many things, and can be seen and applied to many aspects of this relationship between the East and West. However, for the purpose of our analysis, we will focus on Orientalism as a “corporate institution for dealing with the Orient.” This includes, “describing it, teaching it, settling it…”, all methods of “dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient” (Said, 1978). This form of Orientalism took off in the eighteenth-century, in parallel with the expansion of the empire. The cultural products born out of colonial encounters fuelled the “western fascination and appetite for the exotic” (Kennedy, 2017). This form of Orientalism – the obsession with the exotic in aesthetic forms, like theatre performances – is best understood as “latent orientalism”, “an almost unconscious…positivity that emphasised the Orient’s separateness” (Kennedy, 2017). This positivity or enthusiasm for the exotic is evident in the reviews and descriptions of the performances that we will look at, and is worth noting because it causes us to reconsider whether the consumption of these plays was a benign enjoyment of entertainment, or a more pernicious consumption of Orientalism.
The playbill for Sinbad the Sailor – in the form of a pantomime poster – is an adaptation of a story from the Arabian Nights: a collection of tales whose many reproductions contributed significantly to the vision of the Orient that was presented to European audiences (Kershner, 1998). According to Palestinian academic Ibrahim Muhawi, we should consider translations of the Arabian Nights, and reproductions of stories such as this pantomime version of Sinbad the Sailor, as a form of authorship (Muhawi, 1998). Each reproduction brings with it a new layer of interpretation by the author, in this case an Irish mind that was embedded in a culture of exoticisation of the Orient. The fact that the playbill for Sinbad the Sailor reads “written by Greenleaf Withers” suggests that Muhawi is right to consider the translators or directors of new versions of stories as authors. We know that this pantomime was written by Mr. Edwin Hamilton (presumably the person behind the nom de plume Greenleaf Withers) and that they also wrote other pantomimes like “Turco the Terrible” (The Irish Times, 1892), suggestive of the author having an enthusiasm for this form of Oriental tale. With this in mind, we can now consider Sinbad the Sailor as an Irish interpretation of an Arabic story, and analyse it within the context of Victorian Orientalism.
The main focus of this poster is an image of a child in the claws of a very large bird. The child, pale and chubby, with rosy cheeks, blonde curls, and dressed in soft shades of blue, is the perfect model of an angelic European ideal of beauty. The image of this angelic European child is juxtaposed with the poster’s background of muted sandy colours, which act as a nondescript imagined Eastern landscape. The palm trees and bushes, high rolling mountains in a sandy desert colour, a river that is only ever so slightly blue are all suggestive of a conception of Eastern waterways as somewhat murky and brown. There is no human presence in the scene except for the child. This could be read as an allusion to the wilderness – another eighteenth-century creation that was equally informed by imperial ideology (Cronon, 1996). The child out in this landscape by itself, accompanied only by wildlife, is reminiscent of adventure stories, which were popular among the children in the empire, such as Kipling’s The Jungle Book. These stories were informed by imperial encounters that saw the white European settlers as brave adventurers in the uncivilized world (Said, 1993).
Surviving sources attest to the fact that the creators of the pantomime wanted to present an orientalist fantasy, and were successful in their pursuits. In the same Irish Times article cited above, the author refers to the children who “were present in strong force” as “the youngest students of Oriental…literature”. (The Irish Times, 1892). Clearly, Orientalism then was not the pejorative term it is today, and people were openly enthusiastic about their fascination with the “Orient”. The entire production was an imagined version of the Orient. Even when engaging with stories set in real places – it is believed that the story of Sinbad the Sailor is set in Iraq (Britannica, n.d.) – the authors chose to create their own version of the Orient. For example, the opening scene is in the “port of Bailaora”, a fictional port that Hamilton presumably thought sounded Oriental.
“The positivity and fascination that the pantomime was met with suggests that this was indeed a form of latent Orientalism that contributed to “Europe’s collective day-dream of the Orient.””
My interpretation of the playbill and plot as an imagined vision of the East is supported by the press coverage of the pantomime. The Freeman’s Journal wrote that Sinbad the Sailor has always held an “irresistible fascination.” It is not elaborated on why exactly this is, but we can infer from the fact that they later refer to the “Oriental magnificence” of the scenes that the fascination is derived from a preoccupation with “the exotic”. The costumes are of “eastern colours”, made of “Indian silk”, and the “Indian ornaments” are described as “works of art” that are “most brilliant to look on” (The Irish Times, 1892). Every aspect of this culture that they are imagining is spoken of as an object, it is something to marvel at, something that causes fascination because of its difference. This exemplifies the very way of thinking that Said describes as Orientalism. Similar sentiments are echoed in another Irish Times article. Again, the “silks, poplins, brocades and so on” are complimented. The costumes are described as “thoroughly Persian in character” and are considered so accurate a reproduction of Oriental costumes that they “might be worn by an Eastern potentate” or monarch (Irish Times, 1892). Once more, the fascination with these objects is completely intertwined with the imperial project, these are all spoils of the empire that were brought home for the empire’s subjects to enjoy.
The positivity and fascination that the pantomime was met with suggests that this was indeed a form of latent Orientalism that contributed to “Europe’s collective day-dream of the Orient” (Kershner, 1998). Because pantomimes are productions for children, this also offers an insight into children as consumers, something we rarely look at. Children are impressionable, and what they consume at a young age will colour their views in the future. In this sense, looking at an Orientalist work like Sinbad the Sailor provides an insight into how young children would have perceived Middle Eastern culture, and can help explain why Orientalism as a cultural moveoment remained influential in society for so long. For example, the works of James Joyce are often analysed within the context of Orientalism. We also know that he attended the pantomime Sinbad the Sailor (Kershner, 1998). There is scope to argue, then, that pantomimes that imagined the Orient contributed to the next generation’s enthusiasm for Orientalism. As such, not only can we look at the consumption of this pantomime as an example of Irish consumption of Orientalist products, but in line with Muhawi’s theory, we can go so far as to propose that the theatrical adaptation of the story constitutes an Irish contribution to the broader body of Orientalist works in the Victorian era.
“Orientalism, as we have said, is rooted in a belief that there is a difference between the Orient and Occident.”
I will end with some reflections on what the consumption of this play says about Irish consumer habits and participation in empire. We have looked at the consumption of the play as something that was in some ways problematic. This is coloured by our contemporary understandings of Orientalism as a pejorative way of approaching non-western culture. Orientalism, as we have said, is rooted in a belief that there is a difference between the Orient and Occident. What constitutes this difference is precisely what makes Orientalism, and participation in it, problematic. The relationship between the two, which encompasses its difference, is an asymmetric power relation (Said, 1978). The Orient is not just different, it is less than the Occident. The imperial ideological underpinnings that coloured Western ideas of the difference between the Occident and Orient are what make Orientalism controversial. Because it is so completely intertwined with an imperial understanding of racial and social hierarchies, ideas of civilisation, savagery and so on, it is nearly impossible to read the reviews of plays that call Sinbad the Sailor “exotic” or “mysterious” without pausing to reflect on how those words have a pejorative undertone because of the culture that they are a product of.
This brings us back to some of the questions posed in the introduction. Why is Irish consumption of Orientalism at theatres cause for reflection? In my view, I believe it is worth looking at because it forces us to look at the consumption of these plays as more than a benign form of entertainment. It asks us to meditate on Irish understandings of race and culture in the twentieth-century, and its legacy today. Knowing as we do that racial sciences were popular at this time, looking at the consumption of plays – rooted in equally disparaging understandings of non-European peoples and cultures – allows us to reconsider the influential reach of these discourses. Was it only scientists in the Dublin anthropometric lab who were impacted by imperial understandings of race, or was a far larger section of the population also exposed to it, and engaging in it at the theatres? While my analysis does not provide a concrete answer to this, it does open up a new avenue through which to explore the influence of Orientalism and its implicit understandings of racial and social hierarchies.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
British Newspaper Archive, online at: https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk.
Irish Newspaper Archive, online at: https://www.irishnewsarchive.com.
National Library of Ireland, The Holloway Playbills Collection, online at: http://catalogue.nli.ie/Search/Results?lookfor=%22Holloway+Playbills+Collection%22&type=Title.
Secondary Sources
The Abbey Theatre. ‘History’, online at: https://www.abbeytheatre.ie/about/history/.
Britannica. ‘Sinbad the Sailor’, online at https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sindbad-the-Sailor.
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Kershner, B. (1998). ‘Ulysses and The Orient’, James Joyce Quarterly, Vol. 35, online at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25473906.
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Image: Brown Greenleaf Withers, National Library of Ireland, accessed online at: http://catalogue.nli.ie/ Record/vtls000224681.