Po-ca-hon-tas, or The Gentle Savage (subtitled "An Original Aboriginal Erratic Operatic Semi-civilized and Demi-savage Extravaganza") is a two-act

Act (theater)

An act is a division or unit of a drama. The number of acts in a production can range from one to five or more, depending on how a writer structures the outline of the story...

 musical

Musical theatre

Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...

 burlesque by John Brougham

John Brougham

John Brougham was an Irish-American actor and dramatist.-Biography:He was born at Dublin. His father was an amateur painter, and died young. His mother was the daughter of a Huguenot, whom political adversity had forced into exile. John was the eldest of three children...

. It debuted in 1855 and became an instant hit. Po-ca-hon-tas remained a staple of theatre troupes and blackface

Blackface

Blackface is a form of theatrical makeup used in minstrel shows, and later vaudeville, in which performers create a stereotyped caricature of a black person. The practice gained popularity during the 19th century and contributed to the proliferation of stereotypes such as the "happy-go-lucky darky...

 minstrel

Minstrel show

The minstrel show, or minstrelsy, was an American entertainment consisting of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music, performed by white people in blackface or, especially after the Civil War, black people in blackface....

 companies for the next 30 years, typically as an afterpiece

Afterpiece

An afterpiece is a short, usually humorous one-act playlet or musical work following the main attraction, the full-length play, and concluding the theatrical evening. This short comedy, farce, opera or pantomime was a popular theatrical form in the 18th and 19th centuries...

.

The play parodies

Parody

A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...

 the Indian

Native Americans in the United States

Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...

 narratives that were popular at the time in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, particularly those featuring Indian heroines in the Noble Savage

Noble savage

The term noble savage , expresses the concept an idealized indigene, outsider , and refers to the literary stock character of the same...

 mould. The burlesque is usually credited with bringing the fad for Indian narratives to an end.

The plot very loosely follows events in the life of the historical Pocahontas

Pocahontas

Pocahontas was a Virginia Indian notable for her association with the colonial settlement at Jamestown, Virginia. She was the daughter of Chief Powhatan, the head of a network of tributary tribal nations in Tidewater Virginia...

. It begins with the arrival of white men led by John Smith

John Smith of Jamestown

Captain John Smith Admiral of New England was an English soldier, explorer, and author. He was knighted for his services to Sigismund Bathory, Prince of Transylvania and friend Mózes Székely...

, who says they are there to "ravage the land and steal gold". Smith and company raid the "Tuscarora Finishing School of Emancipated Maidens" and there meet Pocahontas. The remainder of the play revolves around the love triangle

Love triangle

A love triangle is usually a romantic relationship involving three people. While it can refer to two people independently romantically linked with a third, it usually implies that each of the three people has some kind of relationship to the other two...

 formed by Pocahontas, Smith, and John Rolfe

John Rolfe

John Rolfe was one of the early English settlers of North America. He is credited with the first successful cultivation of tobacco as an export crop in the Colony of Virginia and is known as the husband of Pocahontas, daughter of the chief of the Powhatan Confederacy.In 1961, the Jamestown...

, concluding with a card game between Smith and Rolfe for the hand of the Indian princess.

However, Brougham's narrative merely adds some action to what is otherwise a collection of gags

Joke

A joke is a phrase or a paragraph with a humorous twist. It can be in many different forms, such as a question or short story. To achieve this end, jokes may employ irony, sarcasm, word play and other devices...

 and pun

Pun

The pun, also called paronomasia, is a form of word play which suggests two or more meanings, by exploiting multiple meanings of words, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use and abuse of homophonic,...

s rapidly delivered in the form of rhymed couplet

Couplet

A couplet is a pair of lines of meter in poetry. It usually consists of two lines that rhyme and have the same meter.While traditionally couplets rhyme, not all do. A poem may use white space to mark out couplets if they do not rhyme. Couplets with a meter of iambic pentameter are called heroic...

s. For example:

Pocahontas rushing in heroineically distressed and dishevelled, followed by sailors.

POCAHONTAS

Husband! for thee I scream!

SMITH

Lemon or Vanilla?

POCAHONTAS

Oh! Fly with me, and quit those vile dominions!

SMITH

How can I fly, beloved, with these pinions?

Many of these jokes hinge upon the play's cavalier approach to historical accuracy. For example, in a scene where Smith attempts to win the affections of the Native American princess, she denies him with an appeal to historian George Bancroft

George Bancroft

George Bancroft was an American historian and statesman who was prominent in promoting secondary education both in his home state and at the national level. During his tenure as U.S. Secretary of the Navy, he established the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1845...

:

POCAHONTAS

Stop! One doubt within my heart arises!
A great historian before us stands,
Bancroft himself, you know, forbids the banns!

SMITH

Bancroft be banished from your memory's shelf,
for spite of fact, I'll marry you myself.

Even the stage directions are written for farce

Farce

In theatre, a farce is a comedy which aims at entertaining the audience by means of unlikely, extravagant, and improbable situations, disguise and mistaken identity, verbal humour of varying degrees of sophistication, which may include word play, and a fast-paced plot whose speed usually increases,...

. Upon one entrance of Pocahontas, "her overburdened soul bursts forth in melody." Other directions parody Italian opera

Italian opera

Italian opera is both the art of opera in Italy and opera in the Italian language. Opera was born in Italy around the year 1600 and Italian opera has continued to play a dominant role in the history of the form until the present day. Many famous operas in Italian were written by foreign composers,...

: "GRAND SCENA COMPLICATO, In the Anglo-Italiano Style".

Musical numbers to the tunes of popular songs punctuate the jokes. Some of these reiterate the play's theme

Theme (literature)

A theme is a broad, message, or moral of a story. The message may be about life, society, or human nature. Themes often explore timeless and universal ideas and are almost always implied rather than stated explicitly. Along with plot, character,...

 of the white man despoiling virgin America:

Grab away

While you may

In this game, luck is all

And the prize

Tempting lies

In the rich City Hall.

Grab away

While you may,

Every day there's a job.

It's a fact,

By contract

All intact you may rob.

Theatre companies and orchestra leaders took great liberties with the music, often substituting popular songs with little or no connection to the plot. For an 1860 staging in New Orleans, for example, Mrs. John Wood

Mrs. John Wood

Mrs. John Wood , born Matilda Charlotte Vining, was an English actress and theatre manager.-Biography:...

 performed "Dixie

Dixie (song)

Countless lyrical variants of "Dixie" exist, but the version attributed to Dan Emmett and its variations are the most popular. Emmett's lyrics as they were originally intended reflect the mood of the United States in the late 1850s toward growing abolitionist sentiment. The song presented the point...

" for a concluding scene featuring a Zouave

Zouave

Zouave was the title given to certain light infantry regiments in the French Army, normally serving in French North Africa between 1831 and 1962. The name was also adopted during the 19th century by units in other armies, especially volunteer regiments raised for service in the American Civil War...

march.