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Whitman was not alone in his appreciation of Robert Montgomery Bird's The Gladiator. For more than a thousand performances, Edwin Forrest, the most famous Amerian-born actor of his day, would play the title role of Spartacus- and the story of a slave, forcibly separated from his wife and child, who led a violent revolt against his Roman masters could not fail to resonate with a peculiar relevance in antebellum America. This unique volume includes The Gladiator and seven other ealry dramas that mirror American literacy, social and cultural history: Royall Tyler's The Contrast, a Sheridian satire about fashion-conscious New Yorkers; wWilliam Dunlap's Andrew; James Nelson Barker's retellling of the Pocahontas story, The Indian Princess; William Henry Smith's The Drunkard; Anna Cora Mowatt's Fashion, the most successful lniinteenth-century play by a female American laywright; George L. Aiken's 1852 dramatization of Uncle Tom's Cabin; and The Octoroon, Dion Boucicault's tragedy concerning a young woman doomed by her racial heritage.
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