Superstition (play)

The Tragedy of Superstition; or, the Fanatic Father, is a straight play by James Nelson Barker set in a Puritan village in Colonial America, specifically in "New England, about the year 1675.

One of the characters, called "the Unknown" represents William Goffe, who was the regicide of Charles I, as well helping rally the people of this village against the Native Americans as they're about to be attacked.

[4] Although The Unknown is certainly not the main character of Superstition, he is central to the plot and represents American ideals.

Ravensworth expresses to Walford his distrust of Charles and of his mother, Isabella, who came to the town years ago.

The second act opens with a mysterious man called “the Unknown,” who lives in the forest away from civilization.

[1] Meanwhile, the colony is attacked by a tribe of Native Americans, but they are saved by the Unknown in a fictional depiction of Goffe’s leadership described above.

[2] According to John Crowley in “James Nelson Barker in Perspective,” the pastoral ideal is “a literary expression of a social locus between complex civilization and nature.

At the beginning of Act II, the parentheticals describe The Unknown as, "His dress is of Skins: his general appearance, wild—but his air and manner dignified."

[2] This depiction of The Unknown is in stark contrast to the English character, George Egerton, who in Act I Scene I says about America, "Why, what a heathen region we have come to."

The Unknown and the pastoral ideal are used by James Nelson Barker to exemplify a mature, enlightened America.

This is likely because James Nelson Barker, and like many of his contemporaries of the early 19th-century, viewed Native Americans as savages on a sub-human level.

The lack of any on-stage depictions of Native Americans in Superstition suggest that Barker categorized them as "ignoble," and therefore not worthy of representation.

[6] Much of the plot of Superstition is reminiscent of Arthur Miller's play The Crucible, which was written during the McCarthyist era of the Cold War.

The Crucible, like Superstition, uses the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony as a critique of the social and political climate at the time.