The Lost Museum Archive
Ten Nights in a Bar Room
Like The Drunkard, Ten Nights in a Barroom (by Timothy Shay Arthur) was a popular temperance melodrama during the 1850s. Other plays centering on temperance reform during that decade included The Bottle, Aunt Dinah's Pledge, The Drunkard's Warning, and The Fruits of the Wine Cup.These reform melodramas traced a character's journey from respectability to the degradation of drink (and sometimes back to respectability), giving audiences a vicarious glimpse of alcohol-induced wickedness. This illustration depicts the unruly interior of a saloon.
