ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF ...

mild embarrassment on his use of Jim Crow, stating: “Everybody liked to hear Jim Crow
sung, so we had to do it.” 137 In another, Albert Smith lamented the “taste for spectacle”
that had replaced more ostensibly “legitimate” characters with the clown Jim Crow. 138
McPharlin reviews the history in accordance with these perceived essences.
Taking the position of puppet theatre apologist, he s ummarizes the history of the Royal
Marionettes as articulated, professional, “unique in size and importance,” and with “many
imitators.” He distinguishes them from such frontier “Punch men” as the Lanos, who,
though nearly “forgotten […] were the theatre […] in the theatre-hungry backwoods.” 139
He seems to agree with the debasing commentary of his nineteenth-century authors, yet
he feels that even these low-culture activities are important to the history of puppet
theatre.
McPharlin produces, what Husserl calls, a “law of genesis” for blackface
puppetry. 140 He rapidly breaks with the achievements of the Royal Marionettes, despite
his lengthy nod to their marked artistic success. By the time his history reaches the
“contemporary” world, he has articulated a simultaneously thematic and quality division
between forms of blackface puppets. He carefully distinguishes between low versions of
blackface puppetry, which he attaches to a body of fictions, explained as “minstrel
137
Paul McPharlin, The Puppet Theatre in America: A History 1524-1948 (Boston: Plays, Inc.,
1949), 147.
138 Albert Smith, Comic Tales and Sketches (London: Bentley, 1852), 19.
139
Paul McPharlin, The Puppet Theatre in America: A History 1524-1948 (Boston: Plays, Inc.,
1949), 220.
140 Edmund Husserl, “Static and Genetic Phenomenological Method,” The Essential Husserl:
Basic Writings in Transcendental Phenomenology, after Analyses Concerning Passive and Active
Synthesis: Lectures on Transcendental Logic, translated by Anthony J. Steinbock (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1999), 320.
108