Dan Rice

	Author(s): Carlyon, David Publisher: PublicAffairs Format: Paperback List Price:  $20.00
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Overview:
Dan Rice, alone in the world as a boy, had tried whatever came to hand. He was a pig presenter, strongman, lecturer, comic singer, and blackface performer. Then he joined the glittering world of the circus and quickly rose to prominence as a talking clown, tossing out quips, quoting Shakespeare, singing about bloomers, and feuding with Horace Greeley. He named his own circus "Dan Rice's Great Show" and labeled himself the Great American Humorist. The spitting image of Uncle Sam in a striped suit, top hat, and goatee, Rice spoke on issues of the day till he became one of the most famous men in America, probably seen by more people than any anyone else at the time. That fame propelled him to several campaigns for public office, including a brief run for president. So what happened? Why have so few people heard of Dan Rice? Rice rose to prominence because he was supremely adept at engaging audiences in what was then a bubbling public stew of participation. Circus, theater, minstrelsy, and lectures overlapped with politics, and crowds roared out with their boisterous opinions. Rice, took that energy and tossed it back, dazzling audiences. But polite society, propelled by a vague urge of "refinement." increasingly deemed robust amusements inappropriate. The raucous antebellum blend of performers and audiences and forms began to split along a new performance hierarchy of high and low.

Category: General