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:
“Come dame or maid, be not afraid,
Poor Tom will injure nothing.”
—Unknown. Tom o’ Bedlam’s Song (l. 11–12)
“Some think to avoid the influence of metaphysical errors, by paying no attention to metaphysics; but experience shows that these men beyond all others are held in an iron vice of metaphysical theory, because by theories that they have never called in question.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)