[78-L] Charles Correll WAS RE: Stephen Foster

[Chris Zwarg]

At 06:53 24.01.2009, you wrote:
>Hello, David:
>
>You're not kidding, but surely Charles Correll was.  Or was it the
>well-known and widespread practice of "Southerners" (of all ethnic
>backgrounds) to wear blackface that led Correll and Gosden to do the same in
>"Check and Double Check"?  I guess Mr. Correll  was kidding himself.
>
>--Mark Hendrix

Or might he have been referring (ironically) to the plausible idea that there were White Southerners who spoke in a similar vein, just as there must have been Blacks who pronounced somewhat differently? You don't see blackface makeup on radio after all, so it is exclusively your *imagination* that lets you see two African-American simpletons, or two White comedians in front of a microphone - you might well imagine them running around naked if your fantasies predispose you to do so! 

Also, it is *extremely* unlikely that the so-called "Minstrel" stage dialect (which BTW varies greatly between different performers) actually represents the actual language of a really-existing person or group of persons, for the simple reason that no stage language ever "holds the mirror up to Nature" but is always stylized and stereotyped in some way; more so in the olden days without any means of amplification. Listening to Ellen Terry's Ophelia, you are hard put to imagine a Medieval Danish maiden actually speaking late-Victorian English like that. What you hear is an ACTRESS giving her interpretation of a theatrical part. To assume otherwise is to try and determine the true physiognomy of the Apostles by studying Leonardo's "Last Supper". You can hear many Londoners that somehow remind you of what Stanley Holloway does in "My Fair Lady", so you recognize that's the dialect Alfred P. Doolittle is supposed to speak, but I'd venture a bet not one actual person exactly uses Holloway's pronunciation for every single word.

Chris Zwarg