David Paul Brown's Sertorius, or The Roman Patriot (1830): Another Influence on John Wilkes Booth

Scholars like Albert Furtwangler and John P. Andrews have already demonstrated in writing their theories concerning the relationship between Shakespearean tragedy, especially Hamlet and Julius Caesar, and John Wilkes Booth's successful plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre on April 14, 1865.1 Other scholars have centered their analysis upon the psychological motives of John Wilkes Booth.2 Still others have limited their interest to examining the particular influence that Shakespeare's Julius Caesar had upon nineteenth-century American drama from its "middle period" as "typified by the Philadelphia school of playwrights" (Montrose 2.179).3 No one, however, has synthesized these diverse elements. When the connections are made, one can clearly see that there is another, as yet unnoticed, influence upon the psyche of John Wilkes Booth, and that is Paul David Brown's play Sertorius, or the Roman Patriot (1830).4 Among the plays presented on the American stage during the nineteenth century that dealt with concepts of patriotism and the violent betrayal of powerful leaders in times of civil war was David Paul Brown's Sertorius. A notable orator and successful lawyer by vocation in Philadelphia, Brown (17951872) wrote as an avocation during his free moments.5 He declared in a letter to a journalist who had expressed an interest in obtaining copies of Sertorius (1830) and The Prophet of St. Paul's (1836), that these plays had met with "more [success] than they were entitled to," and "although I have much pleasure in the composition of such matters, I have no interest in their fate" (Montrose 2.182). Furthermore, according to Ellis Paxton Oberholtzer, Brown wrote Sertorius during a period of two weeks "on his evening horseback rides to Yellow Springs, the popular spa of the day in the hills of northern Chester county" (241). It is possible to imagine that this equestrian mode of travel brought some form of soldierly inspiration to Brown, as he drafted a play about Roman military men at war with one another in Spain during the late republic. Brown's Sertorius took as its plot the life of Quintus Sertorius (c.126-73 B.C.), the anti-Sullan, Sabine soldier who made Spain his stronghold during Sulla's ascendancy in Rome. For a number of years while waiting for the Sullan regime to collapse, Sertorius kept the armies of Pompey and Metellus at bay in Spain. He did nothing, however, to betray the Roman commonwealth to outside enemies and refused to accept the offer of King Mithradates of Pontus to turn their combined forces against Rome. For his patriotic stance, Sertorius was assassinated at a dinner party by one of his own men, Veiento Perperna.6 Clearly influenced by Shakespeare, Brown's play is marked by both its "playful approach" and "its total lack of coyness in imitating Shakespeare's Julius Caesar" (Spann, Quintus 192-3). This can be seen in the second scene of play's first act which puts the gist of the dialogue of the cobbler from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar into the mouth of Caiphus the shoemaker, who talks with his friends Mucius the schoolmaster and Flavius the carpenter. In the fourth scene of the fourth act, Brown turns back to this configuration of characters. He tries to better Shakespeare, and brings Caiphus, Mucius, and Flavius back on stage for another exchange of witty dialogue. There the trio of tradesmen make a series of jokes based on schoolmasters from the ancient world and upon points of Latin grammar such as this banter about a battle fought between Pompey and Sertorius expressed in terms of cases and declensions (Montrose 2.230): Flavius: "Didst thou hear the progress of the fight?" Mucius: "In faith did I-through all its cases, from the nominative to the ablative..." Flavius: "But what said Pompey? he never declines;-at least I have heard it said, he seldom is in the vocative." In addition to these bits of anachronistic wordplay, the play's themes of patriotism and revenge during times of civil war obviously appealed to Junius Brutus Booth, who starred as its leading character during its nine performances between 1830 and 1832 (Montrose 2. …