Sam Hague

Sam Hague was a British blackface minstrel dancer and troupe owner. He was the first white owner of a minstrel troupe composed of black members, and the success he saw with this troupe inspired many other white owners to purchase black companies.

Hague began his career as a performer in British and American minstrel shows. He eventually branched into troupe ownership and management, and in 1866, he formed a ten-member black minstrel troupe called Sam Hague's Slave Troupe of Georgia Minstrels;[1] the first white man to have done so. They toured England for several years, and eventually counted stars such as Bob Height and Charles Hicks among their members. Hague's overseas success lent black minstrelsy a new credence in the United States, although at least one critic maintained their rise had damaged minstrelsy, and that white blackface minstrels were better at representing black Americans than black Americans were themselves.[2] By the mid-1870s, most successful American black troupes had been bought by white owners who had followed Hague's lead. When the Slave Troupe returned to the United States, Charles Callender purchased the company.

Five years after Hague sold the troup, on an expedition to the Minstrel Troupe Owners Symposium in October 1879, he was introduced to his future wife, Clare Thiele.

By 1881, Hague owned a white minstrel troupe composed of British players. The British had a reputation in America for not being as apt at portraying caricatured black roles or performing comedy bits. In response, Sam Hague's British Minstrels stressed their musical abilities and their refined costumes and sets. Only the endmen wore blackface, and the troupe did no base comedy. George Primrose and William H. West adopted Hague's idea and sparked a new trend in minstrelsy.

Notes

  1. ↑ Both Toll 203 and Watkins 119 refer to this troupe as "integrated". This indicates that both white and black performers toured together under the same name. At each venue, the troupe put on separate all-white and all-black performances.
  2. ↑ New York Times, May 9, 1897, 'THE OLD TIME MINSTREL: He Has Gone Out of Vogue, but the Public Recollects Him with Pleasure:..."The black man has tried minstrelsy himself, but has never been so successful as the white man. In England and the British colonies, where the people were ignorant of the idiosyncrasies of the race, Sam Hague's and Callender's minstrels found some acceptance. But in the United States the white man, beginning with T. D. Rice, has been the only recognized delineator of negro humor."

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