Theatre studies have come a long way since Aristotle. For centuries theatre was treated as literature on a stage. The idea of theatre as something performed, with or without literary pretensions, did not fully emerge until the twentieth century. Even today, theatre as performance in the absence of a written text is frequently relegated to the margins of scholarly attention and interest.
Studies of popular theatre and entertainment often adopt one of two general approaches. There are popular studies, which present an entertaining story with scant attention to the underlying scholarship; and there are scholarly monographs, which often squeeze all that is popular out of the telling of the story. Popular studies lack substance; scholarly studies lack interest and excitement. Frequently neither approach to popular theatre contextualizes the phenomenon within its broader historical and social framework.
The following treatment of the medicine show in America combines careful scholarship with a presentation that reflects the interest and excitement inherent in this popular entertainment. Because the medicine showmen appropriated elements from many of the contemporary popular entertainments, including the circus, wild west shows, minstrel shows, and even vaudeville, this book examines the medicine show within the broader context of popular theatre as well as social history. Medical practices, commerce, and advertising are explored in relation to the history of the rise and eventual demise of the medicine show in America.
Snake Oil, Hustlers and Hambones reminds us that the entertainment we watch every night on television is simply the hook for the offers during the intervals to cure our real and imagined aches and pains—the sweet spoonful that tricks us into drinking the medicine down.
Heinrich R. Falk
Santa Barbara, CA
May 2000