The America Play

The Foundling Father, a Black man who is dressed as Abraham Lincoln, digs a hole that is “an exact replica of the Great Hole of History” (159). He is accompanied by a bust and a cutout of Lincoln. The Foundling Father had been told that he strongly resembles Lincoln, whom he calls the “Great Man,” and subsequently began dressing like Lincoln, calling himself the “Lesser Known” (159). The Foundling Father collected hair from his barber to fashion into beards, asserting that the amount of work required to create and maintain the beards made them as much his as if he had grown them on his face. The Foundling Father comes from a long family line of gravediggers and has a reputation for his expedience and efficiency at digging.

The Foundling Father imagines a world in which he was alive during Lincoln’s assassination, envisioning Mary Todd Lincoln calling to him, crying, “Emergency oh, Emergency, please put the Great Man in the ground” (160). He quotes Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth. He also repeats the line uttered in the play Our American Cousin, “You sockdologizing old man-trap” (160), which Lincoln was laughing at when he was shot. The Foundling Father says sometimes while digging or eating dinner with his wife and son, he would slip away and listen for Mary Todd Lincoln’s call.