Vaudeville shows in the post–Civil War era were informed by the old minstrel shows. For that reason, comedians were criticized as old fashioned and unoriginal. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle wrote in October 1877, “Hitherto … the form of amusement we call comedy has not changed much. We meet the same types every day played by the same men who pictured them twenty years ago. Indeed, the traditions of the stage have preserved the old men and maidens of the earliest times.” Immigration would change it. Jewish immigrants, Irish immigrants, Italian immigrants, and formerly enslaved African Americans took
...more
