WHEN THE TRAGIC HERO SURVIVES;
OR, THE CASE OF PONTIAC IN ROBERT ROGERS’S PONTEACH (1766)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12795/REN.2023.i27.9Keywords:
Pontiac, Robert Rogers, indian uprising of 1763Abstract
ABSTRACT: PONTEACH: or, The Savages of America: A Tragedy (1766) is the first substantially interesting play ever written by an English-speaking American. Major Robert Rogers probably wrote it together with his secretary Nathaniel Potter (a defrocked Massachusetts minister), while they stayed in London in 1765. The printed version did not meet London expectations, and the play was never performed. My aim in this analysis is to show how the convention-breaking survival of the tragic hero Ponteach inside the play prepares a future cooperation outside the play by Rogers himself with the historical Ottawa chief Pontiac, whom he knew personally and on whom the “savage” hero Ponteach is modelled. Rogers intended to present himself to the English colonial rulers in London as an expert on the American West and to advance his own chances of profiting from the future Indian trade in the First British Empire’s growing American West.
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Accepted 2023-12-06
Published 2023-12-20
