Tom Shows were stage plays and musicals based on the 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. The novel depicts the harsh reality of slavery. Due to the weak copyright laws at the time, a number of plays based on the novel were staged.
Even though Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best-selling novel of the 19th century, far more Americans of that time saw the story in a stage play or musical than read the book. Some of these shows were essentially minstrel shows, which utilized caricatures and stereotypes of black people. "Tom shows" were popular in the United States from the 1850s through the early 1900s.
Read more about Tom Shows: The Shows, Productions, Diluting The Message of Stowe's Book, Influence
Famous quotes containing the words tom and/or shows:
“The man that hails you Tom or Jack,
And proves by thumps upon your back
How he esteems your merit,
Is such a friend, that one had need
Be very much his friend indeed
To pardon or to bear it.”
—William Cowper (1731–1800)
“The problem of culture is seldom grasped correctly. The goal of a culture is not the greatest possible happiness of a people, nor is it the unhindered development of all their talents; instead, culture shows itself in the correct proportion of these developments. Its aim points beyond earthly happiness: the production of great works is the aim of culture.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)