Staging Revolution in Melville'sBenito Cereno:Babo, Figaro, and the “Play of the Barber”

Abstract

In 1928, Harold H. Scudder first demonstrated that Herman Melville's story Benito Cereno had been closely based on chapter 18 of Amasa Delano's Narrative of Voyage and Travels in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres (1817). On the basis of the two texts' similarities, Scudder argued that Melville's story was mere reworking of Delano's account. Scudder's argument clearly overlooked Melville's ability to reframe the story in an ironic narration or to invest the details of Delano's plot with new meaning; nevertheless, readers of Delano's narrative might be amazed at how closely Melville's story follows that account. In addition to the basic sequence of events, some of the most artful and significant details of Benito Cereno seem to have taken their cues from the original story: Delano's offense at Cereno's incivility, his frustration that the valet stays constantly by Cereno's side, and his surprise that the Africans' unruly conduct is justified as the “sport of boys” are some of the materials Melville might well have found in the 1817 recollections.