Article "Spirit of the Times" featuring a letter from Agnes Robertson about receiving death threats for the performance as Zoe

Article "Spirit of the Times" featuring a letter from Agnes Robertson about receiving death threats for the performance as Zoe

Almost as soon as "The Octoroon" opened in New York, both Boucicault and Robertson claimed that Robertson had received death threats for appearing on stage as Zoe and, as a result, decided to withdraw from their contract at the Winter Garden Theatre. In a letter published in the Spirit of the Times, Robertson alleged she had "received letters from many families in this city urging the withdrawal or alteration of the play," and she had been "intimidated by letters threatening us with violence." In portraying Zoe, Robertson claimed that she had been "unconsciously made the instrument to wound the feelings of one part of the public to gratify the other." Robertson avowed that she did not want "to make money out of a political excitement--especially on any subject such as slavery, and at such a moment as this. The Octoroon was not intended to succeed on such merits." Apparently it was Robertson's sympathetic portrayal of an enslaved mixed-race woman that inflamed audiences. The threat of actual violence against a racialized and gendered figure on stage, portraying one on the auctionplatform, was a material fact in both the plot and production history of The Octoroon.