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The
Stephen Foster
Story
A Symphonic Drama
Based on the Life and Music of the Composer
by Paul Green
A Samuel French Acting Edition
samuelfrench.com
Copyright © 1960 by Samuel French, Inc.
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ISBN
978-0-573-68054-0
Printed
in
U.S.A.
#21331
To
the memory of
TED CRONK
THE STEPHEN FOSTER STORY
lNTRODUCI'ION
SYMPHONIC OUTDOOR DRAMA
A strange thing is happening in the southeastern part of the
United States. Along with good roads, new industries, schools,
motels, tobacco, vegetables, electronics and farm fish ponds, the
people are going in for a new sort of enterprise in a big waysymphonic outdoor drama.
King Cotton is dying and dramatic art is flourishing I
Well-equipped amphitheatres, some of them costing hundreds
of thousands of dollars and subsidized into being by interested
citizens, municipalities, historical commissions, and in some
cases by actual financial aid from the state governments themselves, as in North Carolina and Virginia, are springing up all
over the place.
Local and professional playwrights are writing historical
dramas for these amphitheatres. And each summer hundreds of
young people-Qne could say thousands-actors, singers, dancers, technicians and production staff personnel- are assembled
from neighboring communities and colleges to put these plays
on. And professional talent from the larger middle-western
cities and from Broadway is most often recruited to help out.
And everybody gets paid for his services.
These are plays, not old-timey pageants. Some of them do incline to the pageant notion in looseness of structure and temporal sequencing of scenes. But the concept behind them and
working in them all is one of organic dramatic form. Each has a
story to tell, each has suspense as to outcome, characters are
arrayed against characters, and issues and results develop from
the inner motives, ambitions, feelings and opposing moral
forces.
The South is busy dramatizing its history.
So popular is this form of entertainment becoming that it can
be spoken of as something of a people's theatre movement-at
least the beginning of it. And it is spreading into other parts of
the country. Whether it will develop to any sort of fine maturity
comparable to the outdoor drama of the ancient Greeks, of
course no one can say. But at the moment it looks as if it
might. For the productions are getting better as they are getting
more numerous all the time.
However, as they thrive they are already threatened. The two
4
INTRODUCTION
5
most obvious enemies are television and air-conditioning. As
time goes on, more and more people may want to stay at home
of nights snug in their cool sitting-rooms watching the spew of
commercialism and grim gun-shooting, or sit in their cool hotel
lobbies doing the same.
But for the present the movement is growing. And since millions of automobiles are being sold in America each year and
people like to get in them and go somewhere, it may be that
these plays will still continue to draw their homefolk crowds and
tourists as well, and so things will equal out.
The first of these symphonic outdoor dramas was staged on
Roanoke Island, North Carolina, in 1937. The local citizens
there got the idea of commemorating the three-hundred-andfiftieth anniversary of Virginia Dare's birth on that island and
the tragic settlement which Sir Walter Raleigh had attempted
there. It was in 1584 that Raleigh first sent out a band of explorers to find a place for a colony in the New World. They hit
on Roanoke Island, which was described on their return to England as "the goodliest land under the cope of heaven." In 1585
a hundred men arrived and built a fort there which they called
the Citie of Raleigh. But after a year of discouragement they
returned home with Sir Francis Drake, leaving fifteen of their
fellows to hold the place.
Within a few months Sir Walter sent out what he hoped
would be a permanent colony, consisting of a hundred and
twenty-one men, women and children. They found that the
fifteen men had been killed by the Indians or drowned trying to
escape. The newcomers took possession of the fort and began
to clear the land, build houses and plant fields. Here on August
18, 1587, Virginia Dare was born, the first child of English
parents in the New World and the granddaughter of the governor of the colony, John White. And here two days later the
Indian chief, Manteo, was baptized in the Christian faith, the
first Protestant baptism in America. A few weeks later White
returned to England for supplies and was caught up in the war
with Spain. He did not return to Roanoke Island till some three
years had passed. When he arrived, he found the fort ruined,
the houses fallen in, and the people gone. And no one knows to
this day what happened to the colony. It has been one of history's greatest mysteries.
The citizens of this island and nearby communities decided
to memorialize these historic events. They got together and
raised money among themselves and with the additional help of
the W. P. A. in labor and materials built an amphitheatre for
the celebration near the water's edge right where the ancient
Citie of Raleigh had stood.
The play written for this commemoration was called "The
6
THE STEPHEN FOSTER STORY
Lost Colony," and it told of the sufferings and trials of this
tragic band of pioneers. Most of the action had to be imagined,
for the historical records as to individuals were of the scantiest
The play ended with the colonists marching off into the wilderness to escape a threatened attack from the Spaniards, disappearing "into the vast unknown out of our sight forever," as the
old historian in the drama said.
Now this story had to deal with the entire group of people
and not with just a few, for all had suffered, all had struggled
and all had perished. Naturally as the action proceeded, some
characters rose to more prominence than others as always happens in life. But essentially it was a drama of them all that had
to be told.
It turned out that in bringing these people to dramatic life
before a big outdoor theatre audience, I found use for nearly all
the elements of theatre art-spectacle, music, song, dance, pantomime, chorus (we had the services of the fine Westminster
Choir from Princeton, New Jersey), sound effects and a microphone with amplification for narration when needed.
But all these elements had to do service to the story line of
the piece, and they were made to adhere and cohere into a thickened unity of effect, helping to keep the narrative moving and
infused with feeling as it moved right on up to the dynamic and
explosive climax. Otherwise we would have had something of
the dull pageant chronicling mentioned before.
The characters in the play and the theatrical elements accompanying and surrounding and sometimes spilling in on them
were used much like the instruments, say, in an orchestra-each
coming forward to fulfillment, sometimes singly and sometimes
in company, and then retiring and giving place to others and
they in turn yielding to others likewise, and all strongly controlled, as I say, by the definite story line. And always there was
music, music!
A true dramatic democracy, or communism if you wish.
In looking around for a term to describe this sort of play, I
hit on the word "symphonic," using it in the original Greek
sense of "sounding together," that is a working and cooperating
of all matters each with the other. It seemed to fit.
The Roanoke piece was meant to run only the nine weeks of
the one season celebration. But it proved so popular that it was
repeated the next season and has been repeated every swnmer
since, except for a blackout period during the war years, running six nights a week from late June to Labor Day. (This is
the usual schedule for all of these plays.) So it has gone on playing summer after summer, some seasons good, some bad, but
still managing to survive these twenty-three years.
Other localities around the South got interested in having
INTRODUCTION
7
their history dramatized. In 1939 the people of Fayetteville,
North Carolina, celebrated the founding of their town by staging "The Highland Call," a play of the same type written about
the Scotch settlers in the Cape Fear River Valley and their famous heroine Flora McDonald who lived among them there and
who suffered a tragic upheaval of her life because of her Tory
sentiments in the Revolutionary War.
Then in 1947 the people of Virginia, under the leadership of
the former governor, Colgate W. Darden, Jr., later president of
the University of Virginia, built a beautiful brick amphitheatre
on the shore of Lake Matoaka (Pocahontas) at the edge of the
College of William and Mary woods in the outskirts of Williamsburg, and "The Common Glory," another symphonic
outdoor drama dealing with Thomas Jefferson's fight for democracy, was staged there. Working with Darden were anumber of young theatre people from the University of Virginia
and William and Mary-Althea Hunt, Roger Boyle, Howard
Scammon, Roger and Sue Sherman, AI Haak, Carl Fehr, Myra
Kinch, Anthony Manzi, and especially the dedicated Allen
Matthews. The play caught on from the first and was a success.
It has played every summer since then, this being the fourteenth
season.
Then in 1950 a group of citizens in western North Carolina
built a stunning mountainside amphitheatre at the village of
Cherokee in the Great Smokies, and Kermit Hunter, a talented
young playwright at Chapel Hill, was commissioned to write the
story of the tragic Cherokee Indian people and their "trail of
tears." Hunter turned out an imaginative and touching script,
and the production became a resounding success.
Following this, Hunter turned his attention to the Revolutionary history of the North Carolina Piedmont. An amphitheatre was built by the citizens of Boone, and here was staged
in 1952 his "Horn in the West" which told the story of the
patriots' rebellion against the royal governor, William Tryon.
It was a success too and has been playing every season since.
Other successful outdoor plays of this fine and prolific dramatist are "Chucky Jack" and "Thy Kingdom Come." At present
he is at work on two or three more.
Of course tourism often has something to do with the local
citizens' interest in these plays. That is only normal and healthy.
But commercialism is not the first interest. History is.
A statistician friend of mine recently worked up a few figures
on the dramas that have been staged in North Carolina and
Virginia since the movement got started. He found that some
four million people have attended the plays in the two states,
paying between eight and nine million dollars in at the box
office. And with the addition of tourist items of gas, hotel, food,
8
THE STEPHEN FOSTER STORY
and purchased doodads added, he concluded that some of the
localities had made more money out of symphonic drama than
any other preceding business. He estimated, for instance, that
the eight plays in North Carolina and Virginia have already
brought to these two states forty to fifty million dollars in new
income.
And so it has gone-with other projects starting up in Tennessee, Kentucky, Florida, and here and there a sporadic one in
the middle Atlantic states, in the midwest, in the northwest, the
west and the southwest-with their own local writers, actors,
directors and staffs.
If the Roanoke Island drama was the first of these plays and
somewhat set the type, the beginning of the matter goes back
further than 1937 for its inspiration. It goes back to one manto Professor Frederick H. Koch, or "Proff" as we students at
the University of North Carolina affectionately called him.
Koch came to Chapel Hill from North Dakota in 1918 as a
professor of dramatic literature. He started a class in playwriting- an unheard of thing in the whole sand and clay reaches of
the South. He founded the Carolina Playmakers, with folk plays
as his hobby.
He had the wild theory that everybody was an. artist-more
or less. And most everybody was a playwright too if he only
knew it, he said, and his business as a teacher was to show that
this was so.
He was an enthusiast, and he filled his students with something of his own joy and enthusiasm. He taught us all- Thomas
Wolfe, Jonathan Daniels, Betty Smith, Hubert Heffner, George
Denny, Legette Blythe, Bernice Kelly Harris, Noel Houston,
Robert Carroll, Richard Adler, David Sievers, Walter Terry,
Kay Kyser, Whitner Bissell, Robert Armstrong, John Harden,
Lamar Springfield, Shepperd Strudwick, Douglass Watson,
Robert Dale Martin, Frances Gray Patton, Josefina Niggli,
Loretta Bailey, William Woods- to call some names at random
-and dozens and dozens of others- he taught us all to look
around us with fresh eyes, to write about our own localities,
about what we knew, about our own folklore, legends, customs
and traditions, and especially about our own local folk history.
During his more than twenty-five years at Chapel Hill, Koch
-with his associates Samuel Selden, Harry Davis and John W.
Parker-kept a ferment of playwriting and producing of original folk-plays going on. And through touring groups, published
volumes and university extension services, the cause of playmaking was spread throughout the state.
When the time came for the writing of "The Lost Colony"
Koch gave me a lot of encouragement and was the advisory
director of that play for its first two seasons.
INTRODUCTION
9
"Proff" died in 1945-as he would have wished to die--suddenly and in the midst of a fine creative activity and contrary
to h1s announced expectancy of five-score years at least.
And the work went on.
Samuel Selden, a quiet gracious man, but also an enthusiast,
succeeded Koch as head of the dramatic arts department at the
University and director of the Carolina Playmakers. And he has
been a key figure in pushing forward the symphonic drama
movement beyond the borders of the state. He has directed a
number of these plays, among them "The Lost Colony," "Forever This Land," "Wilderness Road," "The Confederacy," and
"The Stephen Foster Story."
Closely associated with Selden have been Harry E. Davis,
John W. Parker, Kermit Hunter, Foster Fitz-Simons, Irene
Smart, Kai Jurgenson, and Thomas Patterson-to mention a
few-all disciples and hard-working evangelists in the Koch
tradition.
I believe Koch's instinct was right in coming to the South to
put his dramatic theories to work. I don't think he and his followers would have had the same success in any other part of
the country. The South was the one place to do it.
And there are a number of reasons why.
We are a people and a land rich with dramatic materialstuffed with folklore, superstition, folksong, folk hymns, ballads, Negro spirituals, legends, wild tales, night-riders, feuds
and murders and even a stew of prejudice. And above all we
are a land chock-full of history and historic characters, of battles, of heroes, of statesmen, and of colorful stentorian demagogues.
And we are a people who have suffered mightily. And suffering is the very heart of dramatic literature--of any literature
no doubt. Unlike the rest of the nation, we have known the long
grind of poverty, have groaned with the tortures of our conscience over the evils of slavery and race prejudice, have endured defeat in war, been overrun and occupied by an invader
(even our brother!), had our homes and cities burned, our
fields devastated and stained with the blood of thousands of our
young men. And we ourselves helped do the burning and the
staining. The rest of the country has never felt these evils to
any_ like extent.
Yes, we have known failure and frustration, dark brooding
and despair, anger and black suffocating hate, deep inferiority
and terror and fear-known and felt all these to the bone.
Our very existence as a people here in the South has been
something of an epic tragic drama-a sort of huge and terrifying Job story, if the truth were acknowledged. And no doubt it
was but logical that as time went on and the bent of the age got
10
THE STEPHEN FOSTER STORY
right that we should-for sympathy's sake if for no other reason
- begin to set forth to the world something of our story not only
in fiction and poetry but in drama.
Our different experience and conditioning have helped, I believe, make possible our present literary renaissance as well as
the symphonic drama movement. And the South is different.
We have an almost idolatrous love of the past, of our heritage,
of our tradition, for instance. And we have a strong sense of
place. We love our neighborhood, our home, our friends and
kinsfolk with a passionate love.
And so it is but natural that we Southerners support and
crowd to see these plays that tell of the old ways, of the old
days, the old graces and beloved things, tell of our gallant heroes
and our brave events. We delight in seeing them re-enacted before our eyes on a stage. And from the influ.."< of tourists from
other parts of the country it would seem that the rest of America likes to see them too.
And another element, an outside one, which has helped along
these projects is the Southern climate. Our summer nights are
conducive to gatherings whether for Ku Klux powwowings or
for heroes' honoring. It is never too cold and rarely too hot.
Most of the rains fall in late afternoon, leaving the nights in the
main clear for our purpose. And we are agrarian people, an outdoor people. We belong to the outdoors. And there is something
about gathering under the stars to witness one of these dramas
that naturally works its magic in us.
We Southerners especially love spectacle. We like flag-waving, marching men, bugles sounding and drums beating. We
delight in battle scenes, cannon flashing and the smoke and turmoil of clashing arms and Indians on the warpath. We like
dancing and singing, music and good speech-making too. (Who
doesn't?) And we usually get a good dose of all these in the
outdoor dramas. And the people listen with joyous intentness as,
say, one of our pioneer leaders turns from his bloody warring
and mounts a stump to declaim forth the principles he believes
in and for which he and his followers are fighting-"! will carry
on to the last ounce of my strength, fight on till here in my heart
I know I have done all that can be done. My men, they will not
quit, and I will not quit. Let it be said of us in future generations if anything is said- they gave all they had, they would
not weaken, they stood and fai led not to the last!"
The heroes in these plays then are usually he-men and the
heroines she-women, and most always they are depicted as being
up against terrific odds and enemies, real enemies, hunger, cold,
Indians, disease, mutiny, tyranny, ignorance, greed, hate or what
not-all healthy outside enemies and not inside self-sick and
teeny pathological ones. And these characters need a lot of room
INTRODUCTION
11
to strut their stuff in, to wage their struggles in, and sitting outdoors we like to see them have plenty of space to do that strut·
ting, that struggling. A small intense psychological drama would
die in its tracks in one of these amphitheatres.
And finally these symphonic dramas often gain a strange and
gripping sense of living actuality and dramatic realism from
being staged on the spot or near where some of the heroic characters lived and died and the historic events themselves took
place. And throughout the land there are hundreds of such
places-waiting.
However successful the movement has been to date, it is still
in its infancy. But as our people learn more and more about the
theatre, as our public becomes more and more conditioned to
seeing these plays, I think the writing and the production will
vastly improve. And the subject matter will broaden too. History
will no longer be the main source to draw on. The imagination
of the poet will be turned loose to new and inspiring creations
of his own. And the greatest need at the present is for talented
playwrights. Maybe before too long some of the dramatists now
coagulated around Broadway and Times Square can be separated and turned outward into "the provinces." The country
needs them. And a mighty storehouse of native dramatic subject
matter already awaits their using.
Long before Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides made their
glowing contributions to the world's dramatic literature, a multitude of now nameless writers helped prepare the way with
their beginning dramatic spectacles on the scattered hillsides of
Greece. Perhaps it is not too much to hope that we too here in
the South in this symphonic outdoor drama movement are helping prepare the way for something wonderful to come in this
land of ours.
I like to believe so.
Reprinted from This Is the South
by permission of Rand McNally Co.
"Foster's songs have been received into the world's
choir. His music lives and has become universal, but
the name and memory of the man who created it lie
dead amidst the singing crowds. . . . "
-Young Ewing Allison in his
My Old Kentucky Home.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
For dramatic clarity I have in certain instances in this play
freely interpreted the facts of Stephen Foster's life, but the
main course of the action is authentic.
THE STEPHEN FOSTER STORY
CHARACTERS
(In the Order of Their Appearance)
a young poet and song-writer, i1l love with
Jane McDowell.
LIEVY PISE, a Negro servant itt the Foster household, a friend
and confidante of Stephen.
DUDLEY MORTON, a risittg young lawyer a1Jd business man, also
in love with latte McDowell.
WILLIAM B. FosTER, SR., Stephen's father.
ELIZA FOSTER, Stephen's mother.
STEPHEN FoSTER,
WILLIAM B. FOSTER, JR. ~
D UNNING FosTER
Stephen's brothers.
MoRRISO N FosTER
HENRY KLEBER, Stephen's friend and former music teacher.
GussiE JoRDA N, a tavern girl, in love with Stephen.
GoTTLIEB IcoE, a wealthy builder attd indttstrialist.
REv. THEODORE LYMAN, rector of Tr·inity Episcopal Church.
THE HoN. ]AMES BucHANAN, U.S. Secretary of State.
THE HoN. JoH N RowAN, owner of Federal Hill Plantation
at
Bardstown, Kentucky.
ROBERT RIDDLE, editor of the Pittsburgh "Commercial Appeal."
DR. ANDREW McDowELL, a physiciatt.
MATTIE McDowELL, his wife.
JANE McDowELL, their daughter.
ANDREW CARNEGIE, a telegraph messettger boy.
MRs. CARNEGIE, Andrew's mother.
JosH P oLLOCK, the town ne'er-do-well and friettd of Stephen.
JoE AIKINS, a Negro butler and tnatt-of-all~work in the McDowell home.
ANDREW ROBINSON
J. CUST BLAIR
CHARLES SHIRAS
CHARLIE RAHM
HARVIE DAVIS
FRANK D ENNISON
RoBERT McDowELL
WILLIAM DENNY
JoHN D uNCAN
local young men of the town, friends of
Stephen's and members of his choral
club. Kttown as Kttights of the Square
Table.
14
SuSAN P ENTLAND
RACHEL KELLER
JULIA MURRAY
} ESSIE LIGHTNER
GINNIE CROSSMAN
LIL OGDEN
local girls, friends and sweethearts of
the abo'lle yo:mg men.
CAROLINE DENN Y
MARY ERWI N
S OPHIE WILKINS
A LABOR OVERSEER.
RIVER ROUSTABOUTS.
E. P. CHRISTY, the minstrel king.
AuNT CHARITY, an old Negro slave at Federal Hill.
MARY, her daughter, al-so a slave.
L UCY LE MoYNE, a Kentucky beauty.
THE RoN. HENRY CLAY, U. S . Senator from Kentucky.
REBECCA RowAN, wife of John Rowan and mistress of Federal
Hill.
EuLALIE RowAN, a Negro household servant at Federal Hill.
MR. HASSELL, a member of a Louisville shipping firm.
A FARM OvERSEER at Federal Hill.
ToM, a slave field-hand at Federal Hill.
MR. T AMBO, a minstrel md man.
MR. BoNES, also a minstrel end man.
OTHER MINSTRELS.
HIS SATANIC MAJESTY.
M usiCIANS, with banjo, gttitar, trumpet, accordion, trombone
and drum.
DREAM FIGURES.
CITIZENS OF BARDSTOWN.
15
THE STEPHEN FOSTER STORY
SCENES
ACT I
ScENE
ScENE
SCENE
ScENE
ScENE
1. The back porch and yard of the Foster home in
Pittsburgh, a July day in 1849.
2. On the bank of the Allegheny River, several weeks
later.
3. It£ and around the McDowell home it£ Pittsburgh,
Christmas Eve of the same year.
4. A shipping warehouse on the Allegheny River, some
weeks later.
5. In and arotmd the Federal Hill ma1£Sion at Bardstown, Kent"cky, some da~J'S later.
Intermission
ACT II
ScENE
ScENE
SCENE
SCENE
1. 11£ and arou11d the McDowell home, an evenit~g in
May, 1850.
2. At a Pittsburgh theatre, 11ight of the same day.
3. A Series of Mood Actions, a few weeks laterAction A and B- The Foster home, aften won
and evening.
Action C-Nighttown Of£ the river, a few hours
later.
Actio~£ D-In and arotmd the McDowell home,
a few mi11utes later.
4. A boat landi11g on the Alleghmy River, a July day,
1850.
TIME
July, 1849 to ]1,/y, 1850.
PLACE
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Bardstown, Kentucky .
16
ACT ONE
ScENE 1
The overture begins, and the lights in the theatre go doum to
half-dim. This overtt4re consists of organically connected
selectio1~s of Stephett Foster's music-passing into a sort of
gloria with the words-"W eep no more, my lady." Durittg the development of the overture the lights go on dowt~
attd out. Then as the music continues with a'' eerie quality
pervading it, we see in the distance as if on an eminence
at the rear, the old Federal Hill mansiot~ ("Kenttfcky
Home"), risi11g out of a mist like something in a dream.
The music comes to its echo-chamber climaz. When the
instrument accompaniment ceases, we hear the soaring
heavenly voices of the unseett * chorus singing the final
words "For my old Kmttteky home far away." As the
chorus holds in its conclt,ding chord, the vision of the old
matJSion vanishes, a11d the music dies away. There is an
itJ.stant of silence in the darkness. Then the sound of a flute
is heard over at the Left. The light comes up there, revealing STEPHEN FosTER seated at the edge of a woods
composing a sotlg. He plays a bit on his flute, stops,
writes a few snatches of melody attd words in his little
notebook, hu11J.s along as he writes and even grunts out a
few words. Closing his eyes, he plays on. The song he is
making is "Ah, May the Red Rose Live Alway." Presently
the voice of LIEVY PisE is heard calling in the dark11ess
over at the Right.
LIEVY's VorcE. Heigh, Stephen I Mr. Stephen Foster! Bring
me that stovewood !
STEPHEN. (After a moment-mumbling) All right, Lievy,
all right.
(The light fades away from STEPHEN attd comes up at the
Right front, revealing the little side porch of the Foster
home. The rest of the h01~e is off-scene. A window boz at
the Right is aflame with red geraniutru, and moming-glory
vines climb ttp the porch posts. A sort of street or road
runs in front of the house. LIEVY PrsE, a capable light-
* In
the Kentucky outdoor production a visible chorus was used.
17
18
THE STEPHEN FOSTER STORY
Acr 1
skintted Negro woman of some thirty-five or f orty, is busy
sweeping the porch. She is dressed in neat but plain clothes
with a freshly laundered gingham apro1l. She begins singing as she sweeps, the theatre music accompawying.)
LIEVY.
(In a clear soprano voice)
Nelly Bly, Nelly Bly,
Bring the broom alongWe'll sweep the kitchen clean, my dear,
And have a little song.
Poke the wood, my lady love,
And make the fire burn
And while I take the banjo down
Just give the mush a turn.
Heigh ! Nelly ! Ho, Nelly!-
(She begins sweeping the steps on down itt to the yard, continuing her song.)
Listen, love to me-1'11 sing for you, play for you,
A dulcem melody !
(She prouotmces the words of the song in straight English and
not in dialect. STEPHEN comes in with a small armful of
wood. His unjointed flute and notebook are crammed it1 his
trousers pocket. LIEVY has her back to him as he enters,
and he goes up to her at1d begins singing joshingly with her
i11 a11 easy baritone voice. )
STEPHEN AND LIEVY.
(In two-part harmo11y and he in dia-
lect)
Heigh, Nelly! Ho, Nelly!
Listen, lub (love), to me.
I'll sing for you, play for you
A dulcem melody!
(She glances down at him and smiles, attd at his leading they
repeat the two chorus lines. STEPHEN, now that we see him
better, is a rather handsome you11g fellow in his early
twenties, of medit'm height, slender a11d well-proportioned,
q"ick and athletic in his movemmts, with regular features,
a frank, open boyish face, ft'll smsitive lips, thick dark
hair and deep browtl eyes. He is dressed in ordinary clothes
of the times, and is in his shirtsleeves. He is a creature of
many moods and contrasts. For the moment he is gay-
ACT 1
THE STEPHEN FOSTER STORY
19
spirited. He hands the wood up to L IEvY with a 'ourtly
bow.)
STEPHI!:N. (His eyes twinkling) Hyar's yo' wood, my lady
lub.
LIEVY. Well, thankee, Mister Steve, anyhow. It took you a
long time to get it. (Echoittg.) Mr. Steve! (Shaking her head.)
I can't get used to calling you Mister, and me seeing you grow
up around here from knee-high to nothing to a stropping strong
young man.
STEPHEN. (Smiling at her and tipping the point of her chin
with his forefinger and thumb) Well, don't call me Mister. It
don't seem right to me, either, Lievy. Call me Steve or Stevie
the way you always did.
LIEVY. (Firmly) No, 'tain't right to do that. Whether folks
want to be grown up or not, they finally got to be sometime.
(She hurries into the house with the wood and is heard rattling
the stove lid as she puts the firewood in- and singing.)
Heigh, Nelly! Ho, Nelly!(STEPHEN tuntS abot't the yard, snapping his fingers-doing a
bit of a cakewalk i1t time to the piece and hummittg to himself.
LIEVY comes out again.)
-a dulcem melody.
I can't get that fool song out'n my head. (She goes back to her
sweeping. STEPllEN gri1ls at her and sings.)
STEPHEN.
Nelly Bly hab a heart
Warm as a cup ob tea.
And bigger dan de sweet potato
Down in-er- Tennessee.
Heigh, Nelly! Ho, Nelly!That's a new verse I made up. You like that?
LIEVY. 'Course I like it. I like all the songs you write. That
"Lou'siana Belle" and that poor "Old Uncle Ned." Still makes
me cry when I sing 'bout that old darky.
STEPHEN. Yeh, that's a good one. And that W. C. Peters man
down in Louisville says he'll publish both of 'em-won't pay
me any money though-but'll give me some copies. (Humming
and thett half-singing to himself, as he stares off.)
He had no wool on de top ob his head,
De place whar de wool ought to grow.
Den lay down de shubble and de hoe-You ought to hear Black Joe over at Dr. McDowell's sing that
with his bass voice.
LIEVY. Ain't I heard him and he over here-near 'bout every
night.
STEPHEN. Yeh, he's got a sweet eye for you. (LIEvv tosses
20
THE STEPHEN FOSTER STORY
Acr x
her head. STEPHEN imitates JOE.) Den lay down de shubble and
de hoe-hoe-hoe-hoe- (He goes on down until he splt~t­
ters for lack of breath.)
LIEVY. But why you put all them outlandish words to your
songs, I ask you- hab, lub, am, den and de and that messwhar and hyar and shubble? We colored folks don't all talk like
that-( S pittingly.) lak datI
STEPHEN. That s just a-er--convention of Ethiopian Songs
-the way they do it in the minstrel shows. It is all in fun,
Lievy. (With sudden jubilancy.) They say if you can get your
songs sung by the minstrels, you can make some real money.
H enry Kleber knows E . P. Christy the Minstrel King, and he
sent him some of my pieces. Wait'll I hear from him and I'll buy
you a new dress. (He s"ddenly takes her by the waist and
prances her about the yard.)
L IEVY. (Pushing away from him) La I La!
STEPHEN. That's what I want to do, Lievy-write songs,
make music, help others to make music-write about it all, write
about the way I feel, about the friends I love and the places( Flit~gi11g his arms around.) about the woods there and the people in the town-home and mother and father and about you
and Joe-(!" childlike babbling. ) and tell how the flowers come
out there on the hill in the spring, and the snow in the winter,
and the fires of the autumn sunsets with the trees standing up
lonesome and cold against it-write about it all-all!
LIEVY. ( Looki1tg at him) Lord, if words were copper brownies you'd be loaded with gold! (Sternly.) But tell me, who's
gonna feed and house you whilst you're doing all this songwriting? Your bankrupt daddy can't do it.
STEPHEN. (Fingering his notebook and walkittg abo"t the
yard) This morning down there by the river I passed a group
of slaves had come up on a boat with their overseer from Kentucky bringing tobacco- (Stopping and looking at her.)
Kentucky! That's the place, Lievy ! A wonderful land, a magic
land. I've been thinking about it and about Bardstown and old
Federal Hill where Mama took me when I was a boy-and the
red roses climbing up all over the garden wall there. You know
young John Rowan was in love with sister Charlotte before she
died. Some day I'm going to live in Kentucky. Yessiree! (He
dances a little jig in the yard.)
L IEVY. My granddaddy done told me plenty 'bout that old
Kentucky country and how they worked his eyeballs out in the
fields 'fore he bought his freedom. And you can sink the whole
of it with its mansions and race horses and liquor-sink it all
in the Gulf of Mexico far as I'm concerned. (She begins sweeping busily about the steps.)
STEPHEN. And I've been making up a song about it-seeing
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