Many of William Shakespeare's plays were parodied on the American stage. Richard III was spoofed in a parody titled Bad Dicky. In a parody of the dagger scene in Macbeth, Macbeth put off his wife by asking, "Or is that dagger but a false Daguerreotype?" Other parodies went by take-off titles: Julius Sneezer, Hamlet and Egglet, and Much Ado about a Merchant of Venice. In one Hamlet parody, minstrel influence was particularly apparent, as in the following speech:
Oh! Tis consummation
Devoutly to be wished,
To end your heartache by a sleep;
When likely to be dished,
Shuffle off your mortal coil,
Do just so,
Wheel about and turn about
And jump Jim Crow.
These parodies built on a common knowledge of a range of Shakespeare's plays; audiences familiar with Hamlet's speech would recognize and appreciate lampoons of it. The overlap between Shakespeare's plays and...