''Kit, the Arkansas Traveler'' or ''Kit, the Arkansas Traveller'' (or, in its initial version, ''Down the Mississippi'') is a
stage play
A play is a work of drama, usually consisting mostly of dialogue between Character (arts), characters and intended for theatre, theatrical performance rather than just Reading (process), reading. The writer of a play is called a playwright.
Pla ...
written in 1868 (and later reworked) for the American actor
Francis S. Chanfrau. It is one of the landmarks of that century's American genre of
border drama.
Creation
Chanfrau conceived a drama to star himself, and in 1868, he paid $300 to
Edward Spencer, generally understood to have been for fulfilling (under the title ''Down the Mississippi'') Chanfrau's commissioning of such a work.
[Roger A. Hall]
''Performing the American Frontier, 1870-1906''
pp. 20, 44, Cambridge University Press, 2001 Thomas B. DeWalden did further work on the play, and it opened in
Buffalo, N.Y.
Buffalo is the second-largest city in the U.S. state of New York (behind only New York City) and the seat of Erie County. It is at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of the Niagara River, and is across the Canadian border from South ...
in the first third of 1869. (By that time it had the title that names the lead character, offering the publicity benefit of evoking the decades-old
fiddle tune "The Arkansas Traveler" and a dialogue of the same sort that had generally been associated with the tune; both of those are indeed features of the version that would be taken to
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
.) It was poorly received, however, and Chanfrau prevailed on his friend, theatrical entrepreneur
Clifton W. Trayleure, to make further revisions.
The New York opening in May 1871, giving author credit to Spencer and DeWalden, was successful, and he logged some 300 performances across the country, generally crediting either Spencer alone, or Spencer and Trayleure jointly.
Plot
In the drama, Chanfrau played the hero Kit Redding. His wife and daughter are kidnapped by the villain, a frontier outlaw, in a prologue, or First Act. Between acts, years pass (depending on the performance, 12 years, 20, or perhaps other intervals), including the Civil War, and Kit mourns but grows rich.
In four remaining acts, he
* encounters the renamed villain in a hotel, but fails to recognize him;
* foils the villain's attempt to cheat him at poker aboard a river steamer;
* is recognized by the daughter (who makes him aware of the wife's death and the villain's former identity) and fights the villain on the steamer's deck; and
* pursues the villain ashore, kills him, and is reunited with the daughter.
References
1868 plays
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