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Title: First Theater in America: When Was the Drama First Introduced in
       America?
       An Inquiry

Author: Charles P. Daly

Release Date: March 26, 2022 [eBook #67716]

Language: English

Produced by: Charlene Taylor and the Online Distributed Proofreading
             Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FIRST THEATER IN AMERICA:
WHEN WAS THE DRAMA FIRST INTRODUCED IN AMERICA? ***





  This is one of an edition of two hundred and
  sixty copies printed from type for the Dunlap Society
  in the month of May, 1896.

  [Illustration: Theo. L. DeVinne]




FIRST THEATER IN AMERICA

[Illustration: _Charles P. Daly LL.D._

_Chief Judge of the New York Common Pleas._

_President of the American Geographical Society Vc._]




  FIRST THEATER IN AMERICA

  WHEN WAS THE DRAMA
  FIRST INTRODUCED IN AMERICA?

  An Inquiry

  BY
  HON. CHARLES P. DALY, LL. D.

  INCLUDING

  A CONSIDERATION OF THE OBJECTIONS THAT HAVE BEEN
  MADE TO THE STAGE

  [Illustration]

  NEW-YORK
  THE DUNLAP SOCIETY
  1896




Copyright, 1896, by Charles P. Daly.




INTRODUCTION.


_The paper here reprinted by the Dunlap Society was read before the
New York Historical Society more than thirty years ago. In looking
through the files of Colonial newspapers in the possession of that
institution for another purpose, my attention was called by the late
Thomas F. De Voe, who devoted his leisure largely to the examination of
Colonial newspapers, and especially those of Colonial New York, to an
advertisement showing that there was a theater in the City of New York
anterior to the arrival of the company that, as Dunlap expressed it,
“planted the drama in America.” I followed up Mr. De Voe’s discovery by
going over the Colonial newspapers of New York in the possession of the
Historical Society for further information, and embodied the result in
the paper read before that body. The paper was published at the time
in the “New York Evening Post,” and a limited number of copies of it
were printed by that journal in pamphlet form. In expressing a wish
to reprint it the Dunlap Society requested that I would augment the
information by an account of what has since been ascertained upon the
subject, a request with which I have complied by adding it at the end
as a supplement, preferring that the paper should remain as it appeared
originally._




[Illustration:

  FOUNDED IN
  NEW-YORK
  MDCCCLXXXV

  The
  DUNLAP SOCIETY]




First Theater in America.




WHEN WAS THE DRAMA FIRST INTRODUCED IN AMERICA?


Dunlap, the historian of the American Stage, informs us that the drama
was introduced in this country by William Hallam, the successor of
Garrick in Goodman’s Field Theatre, who formed a joint stock company
and sent them to America under the management of his brother Lewis
Hallam in the year 1752, and that the first play ever acted in America
was the “Merchant of Venice,” represented by this company on September
5, 1752, at Williamsburg, then the capital of Virginia, in an old
store-house which they converted into a theater within two months after
their arrival at Yorktown. Dunlap’s familiarity with the subject,
the fact that he derived his information from Lewis Hallam, Jr., who
came out a boy twelve years of age with this early company, and the
circumstance that Burke, in his “History of Virginia,” has the same
statement, have been deemed sufficiently satisfactory, and William
Hallam, whom Dunlap calls “the Father of the American stage,” has been
accepted as the person who first introduced the drama in America.[1]

[Decorative Illustration]


FOOTNOTES:

[1] This is a mistake. Dunlap gives a quotation from Burke’s “History
of Virginia” as follows: “Under the presidency of Thomas Lee, the
New York Company of Comedians obtained permission to erect a theatre
in Williamsburg, _i. e._, in the year 1750, when no New York company
existed, or any other on the continent.” The last sentence, “when no
New York company existed, or any other on the continent,” is not by
Burke, but by Dunlap, which led me to suppose that Burke agreed with
Dunlap that the drama was first introduced in America by Hallam. Burke
refers to Kean & Murray’s company, who played in New York from the 6th
of March to the 30th of April, 1750, and in the subsequent part of the
year may have gone to Williamsburg, Virginia, and obtained permission
to erect a theater there as stated by Burke.[2] Dunlap afterward
acknowledged his error in a manuscript note to his copy of his history,
now in the possession of Thomas J. McKee, Esq., of the city of New York.

[2] Burke’s “History of Virginia,” Vols. i and ii. Harpers, 1832.




THE FIRST THEATER IN NEW YORK.

But Dunlap and those upon whom he relied were mistaken, for there was a
theater in the city of New York in 1733, nineteen years before Hallam
arrived in this country. It is mentioned in Bradford’s “Gazette” of
that year, in the advertisement of a merchant who directs inquiries to
be made of him at his store “next door to the Play-House.”[3] This
reference is all that has been found respecting it; but in the month
of February, 1750, more than two years before the arrival of Hallam,
a regular company of actors, under the joint management of Thomas
Kean and of a Mr. Murray, came to this city from Philadelphia, and
applied to Admiral George Clinton, then the governor of the Province
of New York, for permission to act. Governor Clinton was a man of
rank, the son of an earl, and had previously held a distinguished
position as commander of the English fleet in the Mediterranean, while
his wife, Lady Clinton, was a woman of great personal attractions and
very agreeable manners, who had moved in the first circles of London
society. To these cultivated persons there was nothing objectionable in
the establishment of a theater, and permission was accordingly granted,
though, from the spirit afterward exhibited by the local magistrates in
this and other places, it would probably have been refused had the city
authorities been applied to. It was announced through the columns of
the “Weekly Post Boy” that the company intended to perform as long as
the season lasted, provided they met with suitable encouragement, and
upon obtaining the consent of the governor they hired a large room in
a building in Nassau street, belonging to the estate of Rip Van Dam,
formerly president of the Provincial Council, and converted it into
a theater; and here, on March 5, 1750, they produced Shakespeare’s
historical play of “Richard III.,” as altered by Colley Cibber, in
which the part of _Richard_ was performed by Mr. Kean. The performance
was announced to begin precisely at half-past seven o’clock, and the
public were informed that no person would be admitted behind the
scenes--an important reform, as it had been the practice in London from
Shakespeare’s time to allow the purchasers of box tickets free access
to the stage; a custom which led to many abuses and immoralities.

[Decorative Illustration]


FOOTNOTES:

[3] The advertisement is as follows: “To be Sold at reasonable Rates,
All Sorts of Household Goods, viz., Beds, Chairs, Tables, Chests of
Drawers, Looking Glasses, Andirons, and Pictures as also several sorts
of Druggs and Medicines, also a Negro Girl about 16 years of age, has
had the Small-pox and is fit for Town or Country. Enquire of _George
Talbot_, next Door to the Play-House.”--“New York Gazette,” October 15,
1733.




CAPACITY OF THE THEATER.


The room which had been converted into a theater must have been a
very capacious one, as it was arranged with pit and gallery, and
afterward boxes were added. The price of admission to the boxes was
eight shillings, to the pit five shillings, and to the gallery three
shillings. The exact capacity of this theater is known from the
following circumstances: Upon the occasion of Mr. Kean’s benefit,
who was the leading tragedian, he was honored by a crowded house in
his favorite part of _Richard III._, and great complaint having
been made that more tickets had been sold than the house could hold,
Kean published a card in the “Post Boy,” which was accompanied by a
certificate of Parker, the publisher, to the effect that he had printed
in all 161 pit tickets, 10 box, and 121 gallery tickets, declaring
that as great a number had been in the house before. Kean in his
card informs the public that it had been determined not to receive
any money at the door, but that it was impossible to carry out that
intention without giving great offense, and that the purchasers of
tickets who had come after the house was filled had had their money
returned. It may be inferred from this circumstance that the players
found “satisfactory encouragement.” “Richard III.” appears to have
been a favorite piece, and on March 12, 1750, it was announced that
it would be acted for the last time, together with the farce of “The
Beau in the Suds,” and that on the following Saturday Dryden’s play
of “The Spanish Friar” would be represented. They continued to play
on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday from the 5th of March to the 30th
of April, 1750, when the season closed, and that the experiment was
successful may be inferred from the fact that they opened the theater
again for another season on the 30th of December, 1750, and continued
to play three times a week until the 17th of June, 1751, closing with a
succession of benefits, when the company went to Virginia.

[Decorative Illustration]




CHANGE OF MANAGEMENT.


Before the close of the season, Kean, the joint manager, withdrew,
announcing in a formal card to the public that he had resolved to quit
the stage, by the advice of several gentlemen in town who were his
friends, and follow his employment of writing; that his co-manager,
Mr. Murray, had agreed to give him a night clear of all expenses for
his half of the clothes and scenery of the play-house, and that by
his Excellency the Governor’s permission he would, on the following
Monday evening, enact the part of _King Richard III._ for his benefit,
being the last time of his appearance upon the stage. On the Monday
following, April 29, 1751, the performance for his benefit was changed
to “The Busybody” and “The Virgin Unmasked,” and in announcing the
change he informs the public, as an additional attraction, that there
will be singing by Mr. Woodham, and particularly the celebrated ode
called “Britons’ Charter,” closing with this appeal: “As this will
positively be the last time of Mr. Kean’s appearing upon the stage, he
honestly hopes all gentlemen and ladies, and others who are his well
wishers, will be so kind as to favor him with their company.”

[Decorative Illustration]




PLAYS PRODUCED.


How this company were collected, or where they originally came from,
it is probably now no longer possible to ascertain. As they were
announced, upon their first appearance in New York, as a company
of comedians who had come from Philadelphia, it is highly probable
that they had played before in the Southern cities, and that they
came originally from the West Indies, where, especially in Jamaica,
theatrical companies from England had been in the habit of performing
for some years previously. During the two seasons of the company in
New York the following plays were given: “Richard III.”; Otway’s
“Orphan”; Dryden’s “Spanish Friar”; Farquhar’s “Sir Harry Wildair,”
being the sequel to the “Trip to the Jubilee”; “Recruiting Officer”
and “Beaux’ Stratagem”; “George Barnwell”; “The Beggar’s Opera”; “The
Distressed Mother”; Congreve’s “Love for Love” and the “Bold Stroke
for a Wife”; with the following farces: “The Beau in the Suds,” “The
Mock Doctor,” “The Devil to Pay,” “The Walking Statue,” “The Old Man
Taught Wisdom,” “Damon and Phillida,” “Hob in the Well,” and “Miss in
Her Teens.” The names of the _dramatis personæ_ were not printed in
the play-bills, for the reason, probably, that the same actor had to
play different parts in the same piece, but from references made to
individual performers, the following persons are known to have been
members of the company: Kean and Murray, the joint managers; Messrs.
Taylor, Woodham, Tremaine, Jago, Scott, Moore, Marks, and Master Dickey
Murray, the manager’s son; Miss Nancy George, Miss Osborne, Mrs.
Taylor, Mrs. Davis, and Mrs. Osborne. Kean, Tremaine, and Jago played
in tragic parts. Murray and Taylor were comedians. Miss Nancy George
and Miss Osborne were the chief ladies in comedy and tragedy. Woodham
and Mrs. Taylor were comedians and vocalists, and Kean, like his more
distinguished namesake, Edmund Kean, appears to have possessed some
musical talent, for on the occasion of his first benefit he announces
that he will sing “an oratorio.” Master Dickey Murray would seem to
have been a favorite of the public. The other actors performed in
subordinate parts.

[Decorative Illustration]




CURIOUS ANNOUNCEMENTS.


During the second season, which lasted for six months, they had
repeated the same plays many times, and probably having nothing new
or more attractive to offer for another season, they determined to
try their fortunes elsewhere. They closed with a series of benefits,
and some of the appeals made respecting them are sufficiently curious
to be noticed. Mrs. Davis announces that a benefit is given to her
to enable her to buy off her time, and she hopes that all ladies and
gentlemen who are charitably inclined will favor it, closing in legal
phraseology, “and their humble petitioner, as in duty bound, will ever
pray.” It was the constant practice at that time for masters of vessels
to bring out passengers to New York upon the condition that they should
be sold immediately upon their arrival as servants to any person who
would pay their passage-money. They were sold for a definite period of
time and were called Redemptioners, of which class Mrs. Davis, from
her earnest appeal, appears to have been one. Mr. Jago humbly begs
that all gentlemen and ladies will be so kind as to favor him with
their company, as he never had a benefit before, and _is just come out
of prison_; and Mrs. Osborne appropriately selects the play of “The
Distressed Mother,” with the announcement that it is the first time
this poor widow has had a benefit, and having met with divers late
hardships and misfortunes she appeals to the benevolent and _others_.

It is stated in Clapp’s “Records” that Otway’s “Orphan” was played
in Boston, in the Coffee House in State street, in the early part of
1750, by two young Englishmen, assisted by some volunteer comrades of
the town; and as this is about the period when Murray & Kean’s company
began to perform in New York, this may possibly have been an initiatory
attempt on the part of some of the members of that company to introduce
dramatic amusements among the people of New England. Whether it was so
or not, it was immediately followed by the passage of an act by the
General Court of Massachusetts, in March, 1750, prohibiting stage plays
and theatrical entertainments of any kind.




A NEW COMPANY IN 1751.


In the winter of 1751 another company came to New York, and opened the
theater in Nassau street on December 23, 1751, with “Othello” and the
farce of “Lethe.” The company was under the management of a Mr. Upton,
and in all probability came from Jamaica, in a vessel which had arrived
a short time before. The company were either inferior to the former, or
the public had become indifferent, for the manager, after performing
three weeks, announced that, to his great disappointment, he had not
met with encouragement enough to support the company for the season,
and that he would bring it to an end by giving a few benefits. Some
doubt of the merits of the new performers seems to have prevailed, as
he assured the public in a card that the company “were perfect, and
hope to perform to satisfaction.” It was the custom then for the actors
to wait upon all the principal inhabitants and solicit their patronage,
and fearing that he had been held accountable for some remissness of
duty in this particular, he begs the public to remember that “he is an
absolute stranger in the city, and if in his application he has omitted
any gentlemen or ladies’ house or lodging, he humbly hopes that they
will impute it to his want of information, and not to want of respect.”
But though he produced several pieces not yet played in New York, such
as “The Fair Penitent,” “Venice Preserved,” “The Provoked Husband,”
and “Othello,” it was of no avail. A few benefits were given, one for
a Mr. Leigh, another one for the poor widow Osborne, who, with Mr.
Tremaine of the former company, had become attached to this one; and on
March 27, 1752, the last performance took place for the benefit of the
manager’s wife, Mrs. Upton. Upton delivered a farewell epilogue, and a
few days after he left in a vessel for London.

[Decorative Illustration]




THE DRAMA IN VIRGINIA AND MARYLAND.


The prior company, after performing in Virginia, went to Annapolis,
the capital of Maryland, and erected a small theater there, which they
opened on June 22, 1752, with “The Beggar’s Opera,” and the farce of
“The Lying Valet.” Annapolis was at this period a place of considerable
trade and commerce, with a thriving population, including many wealthy
merchants, and being the capital of the province, was the residence
of the leading officials, and a general place of resort for opulent
planters and their families. There was among the people a great deal
of refinement and cultivation. They were much more disposed to enjoy
the recreation of the theater than the mixed English, French, and
Dutch population of New York, and consequently the theater there was
a permanent institution, and continued to be so for many years. The
company represented the same plays which they had before acted in New
York, with the addition of “Cato” and “The Busybody”; and after playing
for a season they gave representations in other parts of Maryland.
Some new names appear among the members, such as Eyrarson, Wynell,
and Herbert, while many of the old members had left, a circumstance
warranting the supposition that there was either another company then
performing in the South, or that these actors had returned to England
or to the West Indies. Among the remaining members were Murray, Scott,
and Miss Osborne; and Kean, despite his formal farewell in New York,
and declaration of his intention to resume his original occupation of a
writing-master, was again among them, representing principal parts.

All that has been here narrated occurred before Hallam came to this
country and gave his first representation at Williamsburg, Virginia, in
the autumn of 1752. He afterward went to Annapolis, and in the summer
of 1753 he came with his company to New York. Finding the old theater
in Nassau street inadequate to his purpose, he took the building down
and erected upon the same spot what the newspaper of the day, Parker’s
“Gazette,” describes “as a very fine, large, and commodious new
theater,” which he opened on September 17, 1753, with Steele’s comedy
of “The Conscious Lovers” and the farce of “Damon and Phillida.” Dunlap
says that it was erected on the spot afterward occupied by the old
Dutch Church (the present post-office). In this he was also mistaken,
for the church was on the place where the building now stands in 1729.
The theater which Hallam built, and the one before it, were on the east
side of Nassau street, between Maiden lane and John street.

[Decorative Illustration]




HALLAM’S THEATER IN NASSAU STREET.


Hallam’s company was far superior to any that preceded it. Mrs. Hallam
was not only a beautiful woman, but she was an actress of no ordinary
merit. Dunlap in his youth heard old ladies speak in raptures of her
beauty, grace, and pathos. Hallam was himself an excellent comedian,
and two other members of the company, Rigby and Malone, were actors
of established reputation upon the London boards. The arrival of a
complete company like this, who were not only practised in their art
but amply provided before their departure with dresses, and all that
was necessary for effective dramatic representation, was something too
formidable to contend against. They seem, therefore, to have entirely
supplanted the earlier pioneers, of whom nothing further is known
except that some of their number, Murray, Tremaine, Scott, and Miss
Osborne, played in Hallam’s original company afterward, when it was
under the management of Douglass.

After performing in New York for the winter, Hallam went with his
company to Philadelphia in April, 1754, and from there to the West
Indies, where he died. In 1758 the company returned to New York, under
the management of Douglass, who had married Hallam’s widow. During the
four years that they had been absent the theater remained unoccupied,
and a short time before their arrival a congregation of German
Calvinists had been formed, and being in want of a place of worship
they purchased the theater in Nassau street for $1250, and fitted it
up as a church, which they continued to occupy until 1765, when the
building, which had not been a very substantial one, becoming decayed,
they took it down and erected, upon the spot, another edifice, which
was standing fifteen years ago, and was familiarly known as Gosling’s
Eating House, Nos. 64 and 66 Nassau street.

Finding that the theater had been converted into a church, Douglass
built another one upon Cruger’s Wharf, a large pier, with houses upon
it, which at that time extended from Pearl street into the East River,
between Old and Coenties slips. In the following year, 1759, Douglass
went to Philadelphia, where he erected a small theater, and from there
to Annapolis, where he built a very fine one of brick, capable of
accommodating between five and six hundred people, which he opened
March 3, 1760.

[Decorative Illustration]




THE BEEKMAN STREET THEATER.


In 1761 Douglass returned to New York, and abandoning the theater upon
Cruger’s Wharf, erected one in Beekman street, a few doors below Nassau
street. This was torn down in a riot in 1764. Three years after, the
theater in John street, between Nassau street and Broadway, was built,
which continued to be the principal one until the erection of the old
Park Theater in 1797.[4]

[Decorative Illustration]


FOOTNOTES:

[4] It was in 1766 and not in 1764 that this theater in Beekman street,
or, as it was then called, Chapel street, was torn down in a riot
growing out of the Stamp Act. The bill for the performance that night
was “May 5, 1766, at the theatre in Chapel Street, a comedy called the
‘Twin Rivals,’ with a Song in praise of liberty and the King and the
Miller of Mansfield.

“N. B. As the packet is arrived and has been the messenger of good news
relative to the Repeal it is hoped the public has no objection to the
above performance”--a hope that was not fulfilled.

Gabriel Furman, in a manuscript history of the New York stage, says,
“about the year 1761 Phil Miller, well-known in the city for a
plodding, active, managing man, obtained permission of Governor Colden
to build a theatre and act plays, which he did in Beekman Street,
a little below Nassau Street. This was a wooden building, in poor
condition, with paper scenery and a wretched wardrobe. The whole was
destroyed by a mob, created by the Stamp Act. Phil Miller lost his
house and company. He was a jocose fellow and played Justice Gattle
with great humor.”




SUPPLEMENT.


Very early information respecting the drama in North America is found
in a letter by Chief Justice Samuel Sewall of Massachusetts, dated
March 2, 1714, in which he protests against the acting of a play in the
Council Chamber at Boston, affirming that even the Romans, fond as they
were of plays, were not “so far set upon them as to turn their Senate
House into a Play-House.” “Let not Christian Boston,” he continues,
“goe beyond Heathen Rome in the practice of Shamefull Vanities.”

Some account of this early opponent of the American drama may not be
out of place here, as he was an interesting character. He was born
in England and came to New England with his parents, who settled in
Newbury, Massachusetts. After graduating at Harvard College he entered
the ministry, which vocation he left after a short time and took charge
of the printing-press in Boston, which was under his management for
three years. He had also other public trusts. He was a member of the
Council, a judge of the Court of Probates, and afterward became Chief
Justice of Massachusetts. As a judge he took part in what is known as
the Salem Witchcraft Trials, and is said to have been the only one of
the judges who publicly confessed his error. In 1697, five years after
these trials, he prepared a written confession, which was read to
the congregation of the old South Church in Boston by the minister,
the judge, during the reading, standing up in his place, and during
the remaining thirty-one years of his life he spent one day annually
in fasting, meditation, and prayer, to keep in mind a sense of the
enormity of his offense. This public exhibition of remorse was what
might be expected on the part of a truly conscientious man, for the
drama to which he was so much opposed has not often been used for
the fictitious representation of scenes more harrowing than those he
witnessed and took part in in Salem; scenes that find their counterpart
to-day only among the superstitious savages of Western Africa.

The minister of the church in the village of Salem, who had had
a bitter strife with a portion of his congregation, got up this
accusation of witchcraft, as a means of vengeance in which he was
both accuser and witness, prompting the answers of other witnesses
and acting as recorder to the magistrates, in which he was supported
throughout by Cotton Mather. Within less than two months twenty persons
were tried, condemned, and hanged, among them five women of blameless
lives, all declaring their innocence. A minister was hanged as a witch
for declaring that there could be no such thing as witchcraft, “an
opinion,” says Bancroft, that “wounded the self-love of the judges,
for it made them the accusers and judicial murderers of the innocent.”
Fifty-five persons were tortured or terrified into confession. “With
accusations,” continues the historian, “confessions increased, and
with confessions new accusations.” The jails were full. No one that
confessed after condemnation was hanged, but those who retracted after
confession were. A minister of the gospel is recorded as saying: “There
hang eight firebrands of hell!” pointing to the bodies swinging on the
gallows,[5] and the writer of a production which exposed the whole
proceeding to ridicule, and was chiefly instrumental in putting an
end to it, was denounced as “a coal from hell” by Cotton Mather, who,
through religious vanity, credulity, self-righteousness, ambition, or
all combined, while he ceased subsequently to repeat the statements or
accusations, unlike Sewall, made no acknowledgment thereafter of his
error.

This striking example of judicial conscientiousness on the part of
Sewall was not a single characteristic of this Puritan chief justice,
for in addition to being an able man, he was also a benevolent one,
whose warmest sympathies were with the down-trodden and oppressed. In
1700 he published a tract entitled “The Selling of Joseph,” in which
he advocated the rights of the slaves in the Colonies, and to that
extent may be regarded as one of the pioneers in this country in the
long struggle for negro emancipation. He was the author of several
publications upon religious subjects, and of one upon the Kennebec
Indians, but at the present day is chiefly known for a diary published
by the Massachusetts Historical Society that he kept during the larger
part of his life, which, in addition to being entertaining, sheds much
light upon the manners, habits, and social state of New England at that
period.

It may fairly be assumed that what he protested against did not take
place, for if the play had been acted in the Council Chamber some
account of it or reference to it would, in all probability, have come
down to us.

While preparing my former paper I met with certain statements that
satisfied me that English actors had been in the West Indies by whom
plays had been performed there, but at how early a period, or whether
they or any of them had come to the North American colonies and had
been members of the companies referred to in the paper, I had not
been able to ascertain, but I afterwards found that it appears by a
Barbadoes newspaper of March 18, 1731, that in 1728 some gentlemen in
Barbadoes acted plays, the names of Mr. Vaughan and Mr. Rice being
given; the former of whom delivered a prologue and the latter an
epilogue; I was also disposed to think that in 1732 they had a theater
there, for it appeared by a newspaper of that year that on August 16,
1732, “The Royal Consort” was acted, that the prologue was spoken by a
Mr. John Snow, and the epilogue would appear by a Miss Whiten, who are
referred to as new comers to the island.[6]

Mr. Thomas J. McKee, of the city of New York, however, possesses a
small quarto volume, now extremely rare, published in the eighteenth
century by Anthony Aston, or, as he was generally known, Tony Aston,
who had been an actor in the West Indies and afterward came to
Virginia and New York, who, according to his own statement, acted in
the city of New York in 1702. He may have been one of those who were to
act the play referred to by Chief Justice Sewall in the Boston Council
Chamber in 1714, but it will not be necessary to dwell further here
upon this information or indulge in any conjectures respecting it, as
Mr. McKee has written a paper upon Aston and his career, which is to be
published by the Dunlap Society.

The first representation, in North America, of a play, as far as
known, occurred in 1718 in Williamsburg, then the capital of Virginia.
It is mentioned in a letter by Governor Spottiswood dated June
24, 1718. Spottiswood was governor of Virginia from 1710 to 1722,
and though popular with the people is described as “imperious and
contemptuous,” characteristics which, no doubt, led to what he details
in the letter in which he refers to this theatrical performance,
characteristics which may have been justified if, as he said in one of
his letters, “the people had elected to the House of Burgesses a set of
representatives whom Heaven has not generally endowed with the ordinary
qualifications requisite in legislators, and who placed at the head
of standing committees men who could neither spell English, nor write
common sense.”

In this letter of June 24, 1718, he refers to eight members of the
House of Assembly, who slighted an invitation to his house at an
entertainment that he gave. He could not prevail upon any one of them
to pay him “the common compliment of a visit, when,” he writes, “in
order to the solemnizing His Majesty’s birthday, I gave a public
entertainment at my house, and all gentlemen that would come were
admitted, these eight committeemen would neither come to my house nor
go _to the play which was acted on the occasion_,” but on the contrary,
he says, “these eight committeemen got together all the turbulent and
disappointed burghers to an entertainment of their own in the House
of Burgesses, and invited the mob, and plentifully supplied it with
liquor, to drink the same health as was drunk in the governor’s house,
taking no more notice of the governor than if there had been none in
the place.”[7]

What this play was or when it was performed does not appear, but where
it was acted may be conjectured, as will subsequently appear.

Graham in his “History of the United States of North America,”
published in London in 1736,[8] in describing Williamsburg, the capital
of Virginia, in the early part of the eighteenth century, says that “it
contained a theater for dramatic performances, _the first institution
of the kind in the British_ colonies.” He does not state from what
source he obtained this information, but as he quotes a passage from a
work entitled “The Present State of Virginia,” by Hugh Jones, published
in London in 1724, “the substance of which,” he states, “is embraced
in the second volume of Oldmixon’s British Colonies,” he probably knew
nothing respecting this theater except what he found in Oldmixon.
Rich, the bibliographer, says that Jones’s work is one of the rarest
books relating to Virginia that was published in the eighteenth
century. In 1865, the late bookseller Sabin, of New York, reprinted
a few copies of it in facsimile, and this reprint has supplied the
information that warrants Graham’s statement that this was the first
theater erected in North America.

Jones was a fellow of William and Mary College in Williamsburg,
Virginia, afterward a professor of mathematics in this college, and,
as appears from the title-page of his book, was also chaplain of the
House of Burgesses of Virginia and minister of the Episcopal church at
Jamestown, which was in close proximity to Williamsburg, the capital.

The work contains a chapter wholly devoted to that capital, in which,
after describing the situation and plan of the town, William and Mary
College, the State House, the church, which he says “is adorned as
the best church in London,” he continues as follows: “Next there is a
large octagon Tower which is the Magazine or Repository of Arms and
Ammunition, standing far from any house except Jamestown Court House,
for the town is half in Jamestown County and half in York County. Not
far from hence is a large area for a Market Place, near which is a
_Play House_ and good Bowling Green.”

The play-house, from the manner in which he refers to it, was evidently
regarded by him as one of the prominent things of the town, and as
such worthy of being enumerated with the other public structures,
such as the College, the State House, and the Governor’s House, which
Graham says was then “accounted the most magnificent structure in North
America.” But there is nothing further respecting the play-house,
except the fact that it was in existence in 1722, for Jones had been
but two years away from Virginia when he published his book in London
in 1724. That nothing more should be found respecting it is not
remarkable, for in that early colonial period local occurrences were
seldom mentioned in the small-sized journals that existed, for the
simple reason that they were generally known to all the inhabitants
of the town or place, and were not, therefore, news like intelligence
from London or Boston. There was, moreover, no newspaper in Virginia
until 1732, when the Virginia “Gazette,” which is described as a small
dingy sheet with few items of news was published.[9] In fact, there
was not at this time a printing-press in the colony, nor, until many
years thereafter, even a bookseller’s shop, although there were then in
Boston five printing-presses and many booksellers.[10]

Mr. Edward Eggleston, in an interesting paper, entitled “Social Life
in the Colonies,” contributed to “The Century Magazine” of July,
1883, says that mention is made of a play on the King’s birthday at
Williamsburg, in 1718, which I suppose refers to the one mentioned in
Governor Spottiswood’s letter.

Theodore L. Chase, in an article in one of the public journals, after
calling attention to Jones’s work of 1724, “The Present State of
Virginia,” says that he finds in the Virginia “Gazette” of September
10, 1736, a statement that the young gentlemen of William and Mary
College were to enact that evening the tragedy of “Cato,” and that
therefore, at the hour stated, the comedies of “The Busybody,” “The
Recruiting Officer,” and “The Beaux’ Stratagem” were to be enacted by
the _company_, from which he infers that the play-house mentioned by
Jones was still in existence, and that the “company” who were to enact
the comedies mentioned were not, as I understand him, the students
of the college, but an organized theatrical company, who were then
performing in Williamsburg, where a theater had been built.

It would be out of the ordinary course of things that a play-house
like this, close to the market-place, should have been erected for
occasional performances by amateurs. A hall in the college would have
sufficed for such a purpose, as the halls in old mansions and other
structures in England were used for such incidental occasions. It
is more probable that it was an ordinary theater, where plays were
performed by professional actors.

There are many circumstances that lead to that conclusion. The
Virginians were a very different people from the Puritans of New
England, and had none of the repugnance to stage plays that prevailed
among the latter. They had not, like the Puritans, fled to the wilds
of America that they might enjoy unmolested their religious beliefs,
and carry out their own ideas of religion and civil government, but
persons who had gone to Virginia simply to better their condition.
As Bancroft has described them, they were “a continuation of English
society, who were attached to the monarchy, with a deep reverence for
the English church, and a love for England and English institutions.”
Upon the overthrow of Charles I., the loyalists in considerable numbers
emigrated to Virginia, many of whom, as the same writer says, brought
to the colony the culture and education that belonged to the English
gentry of that day.

The descendants of these cavalier emigrants were, at the time to
which this inquiry relates,--the early portion of the eighteenth
century,--the dominant class, politically and socially, in the colony.
They lived upon large plantations, isolated from each other, sparsely
spread over a wide territory, so that each plantation might have
the advantage of close proximity to water for the transportation of
tobacco, which was the chief product raised by them for export. In this
respect the province was particularly well adapted for settlement in
this way, as it was traversed not only by long rivers, but had flowing
into their main arteries innumerable creeks and short streams, which
were navigable for vessels of moderate draught, so that they had not to
leave their plantations to ship or dispose of their produce, but could
load it at the doors of their own warehouses.[11]

The facilities which the physical features of the country afforded
for easy transportation by water, rendered it unnecessary, as in New
England, to settle largely in towns or villages, for the plantations,
being large and well peopled, especially after slaves had been
introduced from Africa to cultivate them, a plantation had the ordinary
facilities of a village or town; and as the proprietor and his family
were not required to labor, there was much intercourse among the
planters, with the enjoyment of sports and amusements, for which they
had alike the leisure and the disposition. It was a state of things
that in time brought about a landed aristocracy, that divided society
into two classes, the landowners or gentry, and their dependants or
servants.

It was customary then, especially in London, for men as well as women
who had lost reputation to emigrate to Virginia, where, by a life of
industry, they might retrieve their character and improve their worldly
condition, as a life of industry there brought with it no reproach,
which was not the case in London, where, at that time, to labor for
subsistence involved the loss of caste. Others were transported thither
as a punishment for crime, a class described by Jones as “the poorest,
idlest, worst of mankind,” but insignificant in number when compared
with the shoal of slaves from Africa, by whom the hardest amount of the
labor was performed.

Jones, describing the white population of the Colony at this period
says: “They were, for the most part, comely, handsome persons, of good
features and fine complexions, wearing the best of clothes according
to their stations and sometimes beyond their circumstances.” He
further describes them as “bright and of excellent sense, speaking
good English, without any idiom, sharp in trade, conversing with
ease upon common subjects, and though of excellent natural capacity
diverted by business or inclination from profound study or prying
into the depth of things; more inclined to read men by business and
conversation than to dive into books; desirous only of learning what
was absolutely necessary and in the shortest way; who, through their
quick apprehension, had, though it was superficial, a sufficiency of
knowledge and fluency of tongue.”

He describes the planters generally as “indolent and hospitable,
leading easy lives, and not much admiring labor or any manly exercise
except horse racing, nor any diversion except cock fighting.” Finally,
he says: “The habits of life, customs, etc., of the inhabitants were
much the same as about London, which they esteem their home, with a
contempt for every other part of Great Britain.”

After long struggles and many serious trials Virginia was then in
a very flourishing condition. “This country,” says Jones in the
introduction to his book, “has altered wonderfully, and far more
advanced and improved in all respects in late years than in the
whole century before,” and this prosperity was especially felt in
Williamsburg, which, though small in respect to resident population,
was the only town, for Richmond and Petersburgh were not laid out until
1733, and was the capital of a widely extended province; it was where
the Governor resided, where the twelve Councillors or upper house and
the House of Burgesses assembled for legislative purposes, where
the Law Courts were held, and where what might be called the gentry
went, as Jones states, for pleasure. He says that “they had balls and
assemblies at the Governor’s House, with as fine an entertainment as
he had seen anywhere;” that the public buildings, the chief of which
was the College, were excelled by few of their kind in England; that
the stores in the town were stocked with all sorts of rich goods; that
they had a number of artificers and convenient ordinaries or inns for
the accommodation of strangers; that the dwelling-houses, some of
which were of brick, but chiefly of wood, were large and commodious,
lasting and dry, so that they were warm in winter and cool in summer;
that the town was laid out in square lots, each one large enough for
a house and garden, so that they had not to build their houses close
together as in other towns, thus affording a free circulation of air
and diminishing in case of fire the danger of destruction. Several of
what he calls good families resided permanently in the capital, and
others during what he calls the “public time.” They live, he says, “in
the same neat manner, dress after the same modes, and behave themselves
exactly as the gentry of London; most families of any note having
their coach, chariot, Berlin or chaise, and dwelling,” as he finally
says, “comfortably, genteelly, pleasantly, and plentifully in this
delightful, healthful, and (I hope) thriving city of Williamsburg.”

Cooke, in his “History of the People of Virginia,” describes
Williamsburg at about the middle of the last century in the winter
as the scene of much that was brilliant and attractive in Virginia
society. “It was,” he says, “the habit of the planters to go there with
their families at this season, to enjoy the pleasures of the Capital,
and one of the highways, Gloucester, was an animated spectacle of
coaches and four, containing the nabobs and their dames; of maidens
in silk and lace, with high heeled-shoes and clocked stockings. All
these people were engaged in attending the assemblies at the palace,
in dancing at the Apollo, in snatching the pleasures of the moment and
enjoying life under a régime that seemed mad for enjoyment.”... The
violins seemed to be ever playing for the diversion of the youths and
maidens; cocks were fighting, horsemen riding, students mingled in the
throng in their academic dress, and his Serene Excellency went to open
the House of Burgesses in his coach, drawn by six milk-white horses. It
was a scene full of gaiety and abandon, and Williamsburg was never more
brilliant than at this period.[12]

I have been thus particular in describing the place and its inhabitants
to show that it was just the kind of capital that had alike the taste
and the means to erect and support a theater, if not regularly,
at least for a certain period of the year, or what, in theatrical
parlance, is called a “season.” Although, according to another writer,
it had only about eighty houses and consequently but a small resident
population, there must have been a considerable influx of visitors for
business or pleasure, and this is the class upon which a theater is
chiefly dependent for support. Mr. Gaisford, in his historical sketch
of “The Drama in New Orleans,” after remarking that perhaps in no city
of the world of such a limited population were there so many edifices
for dramatic purposes as in New Orleans,--not temporary structures,
but for the most part solid, substantial buildings,--accounts for this
circumstance by the fact that in the winter months the Crescent City
was a great rendezvous for strangers, young men attracted there by the
prospect of commercial employment; skilful mechanics who were largely
remunerated; and an immense number of transient persons with ample
means and good incomes who, being without acquaintances or at least
without friends, could not enjoy themselves in so rational a manner
as in a well conducted theater, who, he says, “could always be relied
upon and were the main support of such establishments.”[13] Something
of this kind would then, necessarily, exist in Williamsburg, as the
social, political, and business center of Virginia. The people had, as
Jones remarks, the habits and tastes of the British metropolis, and in
London, at that time, no taste was more general or widely diffused than
a taste for the drama. Some of the most renowned of English players
were then upon the stage, such as Colley Cibber, Wilks, Barton Booth,
Johnson, Bullock, Quin, Macklin, Mrs. Porter, and Mrs. Oldfield,
and Betterton; Doggett, Mrs. Barry, and Mrs. Bracegirdle had but
recently left it. The licentiousness that had prevailed alike in the
composition and representation of plays was rapidly passing away and a
better class of persons went to the theater. Addison, writing at this
period, says: “I cannot be of the opinion of the reformers of manners
in their severity toward plays; but must allow that a good play, acted
before a well-bred audience, must raise very proper incitement to good
behaviour, and be the most quick and the most prevailing method of
giving young people a turn of sense and breeding.

“When,” he continues, “the character drawn by a judicious poet is
presented by the person, the manner, the look, and the motion of an
accomplished player, what may not be brought to pass by seeing generous
things performed before our eyes? The stage is the best mirror of
human life; let me therefore recommend the oft use of a theatre as the
most agreeable and easy method of making a polite and moral gentry,
which would end in rendering the rest of the people regular in their
behaviour and ambitious of laudable undertakings.”[14]

The stage was then approximating to what Addison would have it. In
the reign of Queen Anne an act was passed forbidding anything to be
represented upon it that was derogatory to religion under the penalty
of being deprived of the right to act, and at no period, before or
since, did the stage exercise so much influence over all classes
of society in London. It was the standard or model for dress and
manners, for dress and manners were matters of much more importance
socially then than they are now; and these social habits and tastes
were transported across the Atlantic, at least to Virginia, as appears
from the account which Jones gives of the people of Williamsburg, and
we know from other sources that among the better classes, not only in
Virginia but in many of the other colonies, great attention was paid to
dress, to the cultivation of manners, and to the art of conversation.

A comparatively small expenditure was all that was necessary for
erecting a suitable theater, or converting a warehouse or other
building into one. Theaters in English towns were then, as they are at
the present day in the small towns in Germany, humble and inexpensive
structures. The compensation of actors, save in exceptionable
instances, was then very small. It supplied little more than a
subsistence, and even that was precarious. It was small even in London.
Betterton, who has been called the greatest actor, except Garrick, the
English stage has ever known,--who, Colley Cibber says, “was, as an
actor, what Shakespeare was as an author, without a competitor,”--never
received more than four pounds a week, and though a man of economical
habits and exemplary life, died, after a career upon the stage of
half a century, in limited circumstances. Yet, notwithstanding the
smallness of their pecuniary reward, players were never wanting; the
stage has such a fascination for those who have an aptitude for it and
occasionally for those who have but little, that a life of laborious
diligence and pecuniary struggle is willingly undergone for the nightly
pleasure of appearing before the footlights and sharing in the mimic
scene.

It may not unreasonably be supposed, then, that at an early period
members of this ill-requited profession made their way to Virginia,
like others with whom the world had gone hard, and found among a people
of London habits and London tastes sufficient inducement to get a
company together, and open a theater in a capital that then contained
the most aristocratic and cultivated society in the colonies.

I stated in the paper here reprinted that it appeared by an
advertisement in Bradford’s “Gazette,” in 1733, that a play-house
existed in New York in that year, and that this reference was all that
I had found respecting it. Some years afterward Mr. T. F. De Voe, to
whom I have before referred, and who is more generally known as the
author of the “Market Book,” informed me by letter that he had found in
the “New England and Boston Gazette” of January 1, 1733, under the head
of New York News of December 11, 1732, the following account of the
opening of this theater in 1732.

“On the 6th instant, the _New Theatre_ in the building of the Hon. Rip
Van Dam, Esq., was opened with the comedy of the _Recruiting Officer_,
the part of Worthy acted by the ingenious Mr. Thos. Heady, Barber and
Peruque maker to his Honor.”

That it is referred to in this paragraph as the New Theater would
seem to imply that there had been a previous one, or some building or
place where dramatic performances were given. Governor Burnet, who
had been the governor of the Colony from 1720 to 1728, was a highly
cultivated man. He is described by Smith, the first historian of New
York, as “a man of sense and of polite breeding, a well-read scholar,
sprightly, and of a social disposition. Being devoted to his books, he
abstained from all those excesses into which his pleasurable relish
would have otherwise plunged him. He studied the art of recommending
himself to the people, had nothing of the moroseness of a scholar,
was gay and condescending, affected no pomp, visited every family
of reputation, and often diverted himself in open converse with the
ladies, by whom he was very much admired;” to which he adds that he was
very fond of New York, his marriage there having connected him with
a numerous family besides an unusual acquaintance, and that he left
it with reluctance.[15] By such a man the drama might be looked upon
as favorably as it was at that period by Addison, and it may be that
during the eight years of his administration dramatic performances were
given in the city, which was the capital of the province. Rip Van Dam,
who was the owner of the building in which the New Theater was opened,
was the acting governor from the time of Burnet’s departure until the
arrival of Governor Cosby in 1732, a few months before the New Theater
was opened, and was obviously the personage denominated “his honor,” to
whom “the ingenious Mr. Thomas Heady,” who acted the part of Worthy,
stood in the important relation, in his own eyes, of barber and peruque
maker.

The New Theater, as stated in the advertisement, was in the building
belonging to Rip Van Dam, and as Kean & Murray’s Company, who came
to New York eighteen months afterward,--that is, in February,
1750,--hired, as stated in my former paper, “a large room in the
building on Nassau street, belonging to the estate of Rip Van Dam,
the two theaters, that of 1732 and 1750, were probably in the same
building, now generally referred to as the Nassau Street Theater.

The comedy with which the New Theater was opened in 1732, “The
Recruiting Officer,” is the earliest play known to have been acted in
North America, for though, as has been stated, there was a play-house
in Williamsburg ten years before, it is not known what plays were
acted there until 1736, when four are referred to, and “The Recruiting
Officer” was one of them, which had the attraction for Virginia that
the Colony was referred to in it. It was a popular play in the early
part of the last century, and continued to be acted frequently for
nearly a century and a half. Much of its wit and sprightliness is in
language that would not be tolerated now on any stage, as also some of
the minor incidents of the plot; but its raciness in this respect was
no doubt, at that time, a part of its attraction, and then its leading
parts have been enacted by great players. It was written by George
Farquhar, one of four dramatists--Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and
himself--who are generally referred to as the leading comic dramatists
of the Restoration; and of the four, this production of Farquhar
was the one that continued the longest upon the stage. Leigh Hunt,
a very competent critic, considered “The Recruiting Officer” one of
the very best of Farquhar’s plays. Every character, he says, of any
importance, is a genuine transcript from nature; that there is a charm
of gaiety and good humor throughout it, and the fresh, clear air of
a ruddy-making remote English town neighborhooded by ample elegance.
It was performed in New York in 1843, and was revived February 8,
1885, in the same city, by Mr. Augustin Daly, who has done so much to
enable the present generation to see what these witty and sprightly
old comedies are when represented on the stage, so far as it can be
done, by detaching from them what would be objectionable in the present
age, and which, in the revival of “The Recruiting Officer,” he did by
reducing its five acts to three. It will not, I think, be out of place
to show what was the result by inserting two clever criticisms that
appeared in two of the New York journals on the morning after this
revival, by writers who were not only excellent dramatic critics, but
also evidently thoroughly well acquainted with the dramatic literature
of the period when “The Recruiting Officer” was written, and the
correctness of whose account of the performance on that evening I am
able to corroborate, having been myself one of the audience on that
occasion. There is a freshness and vividness moreover in an account of
the performance of a play written immediately after seeing it, which
can rarely be imparted afterwards.

This is one of the articles:


“THE RECRUITING OFFICER.

  _Captain Plume_                     Mr. DREW
  _Captain Brazen_                  Mr. PARKES
  _Justice Balance_                 Mr. FISHER
  _Sergeant Kite_                    Mr. LEWIS
  _Mr. Worthy_                     Mr. SKINNER
  _Bullock_                        Mr. GILBERT
  _Appletree_                         Mr. BOND
  _Pearman_                          Mr. WILKS
  _Balance’s Steward_              Mr. BEEKMAN
  _Mistress Melinda_      Miss VIRGINIA DREHER
  _Rose_                     Miss MAY FIELDING
  _Lucy_                        Miss MAY IRWIN
  _Sylvia_                      Miss ADA REHAN

“I am called Captain, sir, by all the drawers and groom-porters in
London,” said Miss Ada Rehan at Daly’s Theater last night. And bravely
she wore her red coat and sword, the martial twist in her cravat, the
fierce knot in her periwig, the cane upon her button, and the dice in
her pocket. The audience were in ecstasies.

It was a revival of “The Recruiting Officer,” by George Farquhar.
The manners of Queen Anne’s day were reproduced on Mr. Daly’s stage.
_Captain Plume_ and _Sergeant Kite_ were enlisting the country lads and
paying court to the country lasses. _Justice Balance_ was keeping watch
over the morals of his daughter _Sylvia_. Sprightly _Mistress Melinda_
was intriguing for the hand of young _Worthy_. _Brazen_ was bragging of
his service in Flanders against the French and in Hungary against the
Turks. The atmosphere was charged with love, and the stage resounded
with the tap of the drum.

The audience was in a curious and observant mood. The doings on the
stage were of a wholly unfamiliar kind. The language sounded strangely
fantastic to modern ears. Ladies held their breath at the bygone
sentiment of the play. Men met in groups between the acts and wondered
what was the secret of its original success. Its secret was tolerably
simple. It was written at the time of Marlborough’s earlier victories.
Blenheim had just been won. A military fever possessed the country.
Rustics went marching round the fields with ribbons in their caps. The
recruiting officer was seen in every town. The popular song of the hour
was:

  Over the hills and over the main
  To Flanders, Portugal and Spain:
  The Queen commands and we’ll obey;
  Over the hills and far away.

Moreover, there was a steady flow of indecency in the comedy. The town
had been growing dull. Congreve had retired into the intimacy of the
Duchess of Marlborough. Wycherley was writing feeble poems under the
tutorship of that rising young man, Alexander Pope. Vanbrugh was giving
his attention to architecture. Jeremy Collier and his moral tractate
had exorcised the merry devils off the stage, and the pit mourned their
departure. So “The Recruiting Officer,” with its broad jests, was
particularly welcome. _Captain Plume_, with his amorous devices, became
the ideal of the army, and pretty _Rose_, with her chickens, furnished
laughter for the mess-room and coffee-houses.

Human nature has not much changed. Mr. Daly’s audience last night was
as fashionable an audience as could be gathered in the city. Yet the
few suggestive lines which he has left in the piece excited the loudest
laugh. Americans are not squeamish with these old plays. They know that
the comedies of the Restoration were not models of propriety. They know
that George Farquhar, the rollicking Irish captain, was not a preacher
of morality. And if the piece hung fire at times, if it seemed a trifle
heavy and monotonous, it was because the spectators had been credited
with a prudery which they did not seem to possess.

The company was a little out of its element. Mr. Drew, in particular,
should have been livelier and airier, conducting his love affairs with
as light a touch as Charles Mathews might have conducted them in other
days, or Mr. Wallack to-day. Mr. Fisher, too, pressed with too heavy a
hand on such niceties of character as have been discovered in _Justice
Balance_; and Mr. James Lewis, though discreet and refined in his
humor, extracted none of the exuberant fun from _Sergeant Kite_ with
which critics of the past have supposed that unscrupulous personage
to overflow. Mr. Skinner was a dignified young lover, and Mr. Parkes
amused as _Brazen_. But the honors of the evening rested with Miss
Virginia Dreher, who looked radiantly beautiful in a web of lace and
gold, and with Miss Ada Rehan, who had the bold step, the rakish toss
and the impudent air of your true military gallant. She was not Peg
Woffington, perhaps, but she was a charming woman in disguise, and the
town will be curious to see her.

       *       *       *       *       *

This is the other:


“THE RECRUITING OFFICER.”

Another “first night” in Mr. Daly’s comfortable theater, and the same
assemblage of well-dressed people, with faces one knows by sight on
every side, and pleasurable expectancy the predominating sensation.
“Love on Crutches” has ambled gracefully out of sight, and instead of
the fresh daintiness of the modern play there were to come rollicking
humor, the buoyant spirits, the intrigue and broad wit of old English
comedy. No longer the New York fine lady, Miss Rehan was to depict
the healthy English maiden of nearly two centuries ago, and to
masquerade as well in the character of _Jack Wilful_; Mr. Drew, who
had so cleverly portrayed the young New Yorker of the last quarter
of the nineteenth century, was to assume the becoming uniform, the
rakish air, and the frolicsome manners of a British officer in the
first quarter of the eighteenth; instead of a meek and virtuous family
physician, Mr. Lewis was to be seen as a rattling and reprehensible
recruiting sergeant. In other words, George Farquhar’s bright and witty
comedy, “The Recruiting Officer,” was to be revealed to a generation of
playgoers who scarcely remembered even its title, so long had it been
left upon the shelf. Pleasurable expectations of the production were
in many respects realized. The comedy was tastefully mounted, though
without extravagance, the costumes were handsome and appropriate to the
time represented, and consequently the stage pictures revealed were
both handsome and quaint. That the old-time flavor was fully preserved
in the action it would be folly to say. An intelligent performance of
Farquhar’s comedy was given, however, with much of the original text,
and everybody present interested in the history and literature of the
English stage found abundant entertainment. Mr. Daly has compressed the
five acts of Farquhar into three, slightly altering the sequence of
some of the scenes, expunging lines of dubious meaning, and many not
at all dubious, and quickening the dénouement. While “The Recruiting
Officer,” is not so ingeniously constructed as “The Beaux’ Stratagem,”
its dialogue bristles with repartee, every character is clearly
defined, and the plot is clever though slight. The scene is laid at
Shrewsbury, and the personages are simple townsfolk and military men.
There is a quartet of lovers, a wise father, a noisy braggart, the
_Sergeant_, who fills the position of intriguing valet to the hero, a
designing lady’s maid, a knowing market girl, and a trio of bumpkins.
The heroine, being sent away by her father to avoid her lover, returns
in male attire to test the hero’s affections, and after some strange
experiences weds him. The play, of course, has famous associations. Peg
Woffington played _Sylvia_ when the veteran Quin was _Justice Balance_;
Elliston played _Captain Plume_, and in later years this was one of
Charles Kemble’s favorite parts; Munden and Knight were the original
representatives of the two recruits, _Pearmain_ and _Appletree_,[16]
and Irish Johnstone was _Sergeant Kite_. In that cast Ann Oldfield
was _Sylvia_, Cibber _Brazen_ and Wilks, Farquhar’s nearest friend,
_Captain Plume_. It was a fancy of Farquhar’s friends that _Plume_
was a portrait of himself. He had been a dashing officer during his
brief and eventful career, as well as actor and dramatist. Farquhar’s
life was a sad one, in spite of the legacy of merriment he left to the
world in his works. He left college to go upon the stage, which, after
accidentally wounding a brother actor in a fencing combat, he abandoned
for the army. He died at the age of thirty, leaving no fortune for
his family, although within a decade he had written seven successful
comedies, “Love and a Bottle,” “The Constant Couple,” “The Inconstant;
or, Wine Works Wonders,” “The Stage Coach,” “The Recruiting Officer,”
and “The Beaux’ Stratagem,” during the run of which he expired, in the
Spring of 1707. Farquhar was a man of genius, a keen observer, and,
like most of his kind, a stanch foe to all pretense. His low-comedy
characters were true to nature in their conceits and frailties, as
well as in their manner of speech; his high-bred dames were not
always circumspect in their behavior, while his young gentlemen were
devil-may-care fellows, glib of tongue, affable, generous, but not
exactly proper. He belonged to his age, and, compared with the work
of some of his contemporaries and immediate predecessors, his writings
were purity itself. With the exception of “The Inconstant” we do not
remember that any of his comedies had been performed here in recent
years, until “The Recruiting Officer” was seen last evening. They
demand of actors dashing manners, freedom and breadth of style, which
few performers of the present day possess. The charm of last evening’s
representation lay in the portrayal of _Sylvia_ by Miss Rehan. Indeed
this was the only individual piece of work that could be said to have
any charm, and although _Sylvia_ is the heroine the part is scarcely
more important than at least two of the others. Miss Rehan was not
only successful in catching the spirit of the piece, and transmitting
it to the audience, so far as her own part was concerned, but she
invested the character with womanly tenderness and delicacy, and put
more meaning into a few important lines of the text than appears on
the surface. As _Sylvia_ herself, she was the affectionate and dutiful
daughter, who felt more sorrow for her brother’s death, doubtless, than
the author intended; as _Master Jack Wilful_, and his _alter ego_,
_Captain Pinch_, who took snuff with a pinch, and in short, could do
anything at a pinch, her imitation of the foppish manners and languid
nonchalance of the London buck was deliciously droll and seemed not a
bit incongruous, though it is not likely that it was so pronounced as
Mistress Ann Oldfield’s treatment of the same passages. Miss Rehan,
in short, was thoroughly at home in the old comedy. If her work was
not strictly in keeping with traditions, it was still delightful and
artistic. She interpreted Farquhar in her own way, but without missing
his meaning, except where his meaning would not be tasteful to a modern
audience. Her treatment of the scenes with _Rose_, for instance, was
admirable; and the tact and refinement of the actress were needed in
these in spite of careful “editing” and expunging. It is needless to
say that Miss Rehan presented a handsome picture in the fine raiment of
_Master Wilful_, and the well-setting uniform of the gay _Captain_. Mr.
Charles Fisher handled the character of old _Balance_ in his accustomed
manner; the mode of old comedy is familiar to this veteran, for he was
educated to it, and was a rising actor when Farquhar’s comedy was last
given at the old “Park,” forty-two years ago. Miss Dreher spoke the
lines of languid _Miss Melinda_ in the right spirit, and was a fine
lady to the life, but the part is of little interest. Mr. Drew bore
himself well in his uniform, and his acting was extremely good at some
points, notably, in the combat with _Brazen_. But he lacks the joyous,
rattling style essential to the proper rendering of such a character.
No one, for instance, would ever take _Captain Plume_, as played by
Mr. Drew, for a portrait of George Farquhar. Mr. Lewis, as _Kite_,
was Mr. Lewis; Mr. Skinner, as _Worthy_, was Guy Roverly dressed for
a masquerade; _Brazen_, in the hands of Mr. Parkes, should be renamed
Wooden; _Bullock_ was made by Mr. Gilbert, an ill-fed fellow, dry
instead of unctuous, and the two recruits were colorless sketches. Miss
Fielding was pretty and interesting as the chicken girl, and Miss Irwin
amusing as _Melinda’s_ maid. At times the performance dragged when Miss
Rehan was off the stage, but Mr. Daly is to be thanked for the revival
all the same, which, as we have intimated, is well worth seeing.

Which ends this second writer’s notice of the revival.

       *       *       *       *       *

The first representation of the play was at Drury Lane in 1706. The
original Sylvia was Mrs. Oldfield, a tall, beautiful, finely formed
woman, with an exquisite, clear, and powerful voice, that made her as
impressive in tragedy as she was fascinating in comedy. Fielding, the
novelist, says that her “ravishing perfection made her the admiration
of every eye and every ear”; and Colley Cibber and other contemporaries
unite in giving her the most unstinted praise. Such an actress, in
such a part as Sylvia, the most interesting character in the play,
must have been very attractive, especially in that portion of it where
Sylvia appears in male attire, dressed as a young officer. It was to
her that Pope referred, according to Warton, in the well-known lines,
descriptive of a feminine wish at the closing moment of life:

  “Odious! in woollen! ’twould a saint provoke”
  (Were the last words that poor Narcissa spoke).
  “No, let a charming chintz and Brussels lace
  Wrap my cold limbs and shade my lifeless face.
  One would not, sure, be frightful when one’s dead
  And--Betty--give this cheek a little Red.”

The original Captain Plume, the recruiting officer, was Wilks, the
most distinguished actor at that time on the English stage, and this
part continued for a long time thereafter to be a favorite one with
actors who had the advantages of a handsome face, a fine person, and
the temperament to impart to it that vivacity and airiness that the
character requires. The original Kite, the recruiting sergeant, a
part that affords great scope for the powers of a low comedian, was
Estcourt, a famous mimic, of whom Colley Cibber says: “This man was
so amazing and extraordinary a mimic that no man or woman from the
coquette to the privy councillor ever moved or spoke before him but he
could carry their voice, look, mien, and motion instantly into another
company,” and he adds, “even to the manner of thinking of an eminent
pleader of the bar with every, the least article and singularity
of his utterance so perfectly imitated that he was the very _alter
ipse_, scarcely to be distinguished from his original.”[17] Farquhar,
the author of the comedy, schooled him for this particular part, his
performance of which has been highly praised. “Witness” says Dowse,
“his Sergeant Kite; he is not only excellent in it, but a superlative
mimic.” “Mr. Estcourt,” says Chetwood, “the original Sergeant Kite,
every night of performance entertained the audience with a variety of
little catches and flights of humor that pleased all but his critics.”

This allusion to his critics refers to Cibber and some others who,
whilst admitting his great powers as a mimic, declared that he was
but an indifferent actor, an opinion in which others who were equally
competent to judge did not concur, and which on Cibber’s part was
attributed to his desire to play leading parts, to which he could not
succeed during Estcourt’s life. Estcourt may by his imitations of their
acting or peculiarities have offended actors and others, who, however
much they might enjoy such a representation of others, may have looked
very differently upon a like representation of themselves, a good
illustration of which is found in an anecdote of Estcourt and Sir
Godfrey Kneller, the celebrated portrait painter of that period.

Secretary Craggs, when a young man, in company with some of his
friends, went with Estcourt to Sir Godfrey Kneller’s, and whispered to
him that a gentleman present was able to give such a representation of
many among his most principal patrons as would occasion the greatest
surprise. Estcourt accordingly, at the artist’s earnest desire,
mimicked Lords Somers, Halifax, Godolphin, and others so exactly that
Kneller was delighted and laughed heartily at the imitation. Craggs
gave a signal as previously concerted, and Estcourt immediately
imitated Kneller himself, who cried out in a transport of ungovernable
conviction, “Nay, there you are out, man. By G----, that’s not me!”

In the colonial society, or “people of figure,” as they were then
called in New York, where so much depended upon manners, well-arranged
apparel and a flowing wig, a peruke maker was, at least in his own
estimation, a person of consequence, as appears from the manner in
which Mr. Heady is referred to in the paragraph that has been quoted,
and also from an announcement that appeared in the “New York Weekly
Post Boy” of March 5, 1750, about three weeks after the opening of the
Nassau Street Theater by Kean & Murray’s company, as mentioned in my
former paper, which announcement is as follows:

 “This is to acquaint the public that there is lately arrived from
 London the _Wonder_ of the _World, an honest Barber and Peruke
 Maker_, who might have worked for the King if his Majesty would have
 employed him; it was not for the want of money that he came here,
 for he had enough of that at Home; nor for the want of Business that
 he advertises himself; but to acquaint the gentlemen and ladies that
 such a _Person is now in Town_ living near _Rosemary Lane_, where
 Gentlemen and Ladies may be supplied with Goods as follows, viz.:
 Tyes, Full Bottoms, Myers, Spencers, Fox-Tails, Ramilies, Tucks, Cut
 kinds of head coverings and adornments, and bob Perukes; also Ladies’
 Talemalongues and Towers, after the Manner that is now wore at Court.
 By their humble and obedient Servant,

  “JOHN STILL.”


The hibernicism that he did not put in the advertisement for the want
of business, nor to make money, of which he had plenty, but merely
to apprise the ladies and gentlemen that _such a person_ was then in
town, was, if genuine, an exhibition of enormous self-importance, or it
was what is more probable, a comic effort to attract attention to his
calling by one who was something of an adept in that way, who may have
been a member of the theatrical company that were then performing, and
who followed the three pursuits of a barber, a peruke maker, and an
actor.

It would appear that there was a second opening of a theater in New
York seven years afterwards. All that I know respecting it is that
there is a manuscript volume in the possession of Mr. William Nelson,
of Paterson, New Jersey, handsomely engrossed with ornamental
lettering, entitled:

  POEMS

  ON

  SEVERAL OCCASIONS

  BY

  ARCHIBALD HOME, ESQ.,

  Late Secretary and One of His Majesties Council
  for the province of New Jersey North America,

which was purchased by Mr. Nelson from a London dealer in 1890, and
that one of these poems is entitled

  PROLOGUE,

  INTENDED FOR THE SECOND OPENING OF THE
  THEATRE AT NEW YORK, ANNO 1739,

which is as follows:

      Encourag’d by th’ Indulgence you have shown,
  Again we strive to entertain the Town,
    This gen’rous Town which nurs’d our infant Stage
    And cast a Shelter o’er its tender Age,
  It’s young Attempts beyond their Merits prais’d
  Fond of the little Bantling she had rais’d
    Go on to cherish to a Stronger Size
    This Spur to Virtue, this keen Scourge to Vice!
  Ye Faultless Fair, lend all your influence here!
  O Patronize the Child, you cannot Fear.

      Oft when the Serious Admonition Fails
  O’er the lov’d Fault the Comick Mask prevails;
    Safe From the Bar, the Pulpit, and the Throne,
    Vice blushing yields to ridicule alone.
  This ancient Greece this the Great Romans knew,
  They held th’ instructive Mirrour Fair to view;
    That each his own Deformities might trace
    And smooth his features by the Faithful Glass.

      When Arts and Sciences began to Smile,
  And shed their Lustre on our Parent Isle,
    Attendant on their Steps the Drama came,
    Like theirs th’ Improvement of Mankind her Aim;
  Intent on this with them she journeys West,
  To our New World, a wish’d, a welcome Guest;
    Here pleas’d she sees her Stage erect its head,
    Her Children honour’d, & her Servants Fed;
  Prophetick views in you her second Rome
  And swells her Breast with Empire yet to come.[18]

The researches of the writer of an article in “The New-York Times”
of December the 15th, 1895, has brought to light some information
hitherto unknown of these early American theaters. He has examined the
newspaper files of the Library Society in Charleston, South Carolina,
from 1732, and finds, on the 24th of January, 1735, that a play was
acted in Charles Town, as the name was then written, and he gives this
advertisement of it in the “South Carolina Gazette,” dated, as was then
customary, from Jan. 18, 1734-35:

 On Friday, the 24th inst., in the Court Room, will be attempted a
 tragedy called “The Orphan, or The Unhappy Marriage.”

 Tickets will be delivered out on Tuesday next, at Mr. Shepheard’s, at
 40s. each.

Forty shillings would seem to be a high price at that time to pay for
a ticket to a dramatic entertainment. But what the value of a shilling
was then in South Carolina compared to the value of a pound sterling,
I do not know. The price of a box ticket at Kean & Murray’s theater
in Nassau street fifteen years afterwards was five shillings New York
currency, which was about the value of two dollars at the present
day, and if the value of the South Carolina currency at that day was
anything near that of New York, this high price for admission would
imply either that the Court House where the performance of Otway’s
Orphan took place did not afford room for many spectators or that the
number of persons who were expected to patronize the entertainment was
small, so that a high price of admission was necessary to meet the
expenses and afford some remuneration to the players, who, I infer,
were a regular theatrical company, as a charge was made for admission,
and the performances were continued once a week, from the 24th of
January to March 23, 1735-36, during which tragedies, comedies,
farces, and other entertainments were given.

The writer in the “Times” says that the play announced in the
advertisement, Otway’s “Orphan,” was performed, though the next
“Gazette” took no notice of it, the “local” being of the briefest
character; but the number of the “Gazette” of February, 1736, published
the Prologue spoken on the opening night, which has at least the merit
of easy versification and of being appropriate to such an occasion: He
gives it as follows:


PROLOGUE.

  When first Columbus touch’d this distant shore,
  And vainly hoped his Fears and Dangers o’er,
  One boundless Wilderness in view appear’d
  No Champain Plains or rising Cities cheer’d
  His wearied Eye.
  Monsters unknown travers’d the hideous Waste,
  And men more savage than the Beasts they chased.
  But mark! How soon these gloomy Prospects clear,
  And the new World’s late Horrors disappear.
  The Soil obedient to the industrious swains,
  What happy Harvests crown their honest Pains,
  And Peace and Plenty triumph o’er the Plains.
  What various products float on every Tide?
  What numerous Navies in our Harbors ride?
  Tillage and Trade conjoin their friendly Aid,
  T’ enrich, the thriving Boy and lovely Maid,
  Hispania, ’tis true, her precious mines engross’d,
  And bore her shining Entrails to its Coast.
  Britannia more humane supplies her wants,
  The British sense and British beauty plants.
  The aged Sire beholds with sweet surprise
  In foreign climes a numerous offspring rise,
  Sense, Virtue, Worth, and Honour stand confest
  In each brave male, his prosperous hands have blessed,
  While the admiring Eye improved may trace,
  The Mother’s Charms in each chaste Virgin’s Face.
  Hence we presume to usher in those Arts
  Which oft have warm’d the best and bravest Hearts.
  Faint our Endeavours, wide are our Essays,
  We strive to please, but can’t pretend to Praise;
  Forgiving Smiles o’er pay the grateful task,
  Those all we hope and all we humbly ask.

The further information that this interesting article contains it will
be more satisfactory to give in the author’s own words:

 “The Orphan” was repeated January 28, and again February 4, with the
 addition of “a new Pantomime Entertainment in Grotesque Characters,
 called, ‘The Adventures of Harlequin and Scaramouch, with the
 Burgo-Master Trick’d.’”

 After this run of three nights it was necessary to change the
 programme, and so the “Gazette” for February 18, 1734-35, announces
 “‘The Opera of Flora; or, Hob in the Well,’ with the Dance of the
 two Pierrots and a new Pantomime Entertainment, etc., to begin at 6
 o’clock precisely.”

 On Tuesday, March 25, they played the comedy called “The Spanish
 Fryar; or, The Double Discovery,” and on Thursday of the same week the
 play was repeated “for the benefit of Monimia.” Who was Monimia?

This benefit seems to have closed the season, but the people must have
been pleased, for on May 3 the following advertisement appears:

 Any gentlemen that are disposed to encourage the exhibition of plays
 next Winter, may have the sight of the proposals for a subscription
 at Mr. Shepheard’s in Broad Street. And any persons that are desirous
 of having a share in the performance thereof, upon application to Mr.
 Shepheard shall receive a satisfactory answer. N. B.--The subscription
 will be closed the last day of this month.

There is not another word in “The Gazette” concerning theatrical
affairs until January 24, 1735-36, when the proposals appear to have
borne fruit, for it is announced that--

 On Thursday, the 12th of February, will be opened the new theatre
 in Dock Street, in which will be performed the comedy called “The
 Recruiting Officer.”

 Tickets for the pitt and boxes will be delivered at Mr. Charles
 Shepheard’s, on Thursday, the 5th of February. Boxes, 30s; pitt, 20s;
 and tickets for the gallery, 15s, which will be delivered at the
 theatre the day of playing.

 N. B.--The doors will be opened all the afternoon. The subscribers are
 desired to send to the stage door in the forenoon to bespeak places,
 otherwise it will be too late.

Dunlap evidently had never heard of the “new theatre in Dock Street,”
for he says that “in 1773 the first theater was built in Charleston,
S. C., David Douglass having gained permission from the magistrates,
and being invited by the inhabitants. In September he went thither and
the company followed him. They played fifty-one nights in that city,
closing the campaign in June, 1774. On October 24, 1774, the first
Congress agreed to discountenance gaming, cock fighting, exhibition of
shows, plays, and other expensive diversions and entertainments.”

The Charles Town “Gazette” does not notice so important an event as
the opening of the first theater in the South, and probably on this
continent, in its news columns, but the advertisements announce that
on February 23 Otway’s “Orphan” was played, and the next “Gazette”
announces:

 By desire of the officers of the Troop and Foot Companies, at the new
 theatre, Queen street, will be acted on Tuesday next, a comedy called
 the “Recruiting Officer,” with several entertainments as will be
 expressed in the great bills.

 Tickets to be had at Mr. Charles Shepheard’s and at the theatre.

Charles Town was at that time a rapidly growing town, and plebeian
“Dock” street, as shown by the advertisements, had been changed to
“Queen” street, as it is still known.

Once a week seems to have been the rule for the plays, but the next
piece, George Lillo’s famous “The London Merchant, or the History of
George Barnwell,” was not put upon the boards until March 9. Seven
days later it was repeated “for the last time,” with the addition of
a farce, “The Devil to Pay, or the Wives Metamorphosed.” This was
Coffey’s celebrated work, whose “female character Nell * * * made the
fortunes of several actresses.”

The season seems to have closed with the perennial “Orphan” and the
above-named farce, which were played March 23, 1735-36. This is all
that can be gleaned from the “Gazette” as to the plays and theater, but
the new venture seems to have very soon come to grief. The “Gazette”
for May 22-29 contains this epigram:


ON THE SALE OF THE THEATRE.

  How cruel Fortune, and how fickle, too,
  To crop the Method made for making you!
  Changes tho’ common, yet when great they prove,
  Make men distrust the care of Mighty Jove;
  Half made in thought (though not in fact) we find
  You bought and sold, but left poor H. behind.
  P. S.--Since so it is ne’er mind the silly trick,
  The pair will please, when Pierrot makes you sick.

Who sold and who bought is a mystery, but the transaction did not
change the theater to other uses, for the “Gazette” announces: “A ball
at the play-house in Queen street on February 3 next. To begin at 6
o’clock.” In the paper for January 8-15, 1737, and in May of the same
year: “At the request of the Ancient and Honorable Society of Free and
Accepted Masons, at the theatre in Queen Street, on Thursday next,
the 26th instant, will be performed a comedy, called ‘The Recruiting
Officer,’ with a prologue, epilogue and song suitable to the occasion,
to which will be added a new dance called ‘Harlequin,’ and the clown
and the song, ‘Mad Tom’ in proper habiliments, by a person that has
never yet appeared upon the stage.”

This performance seems to have been a great success, for the next
“Gazette” accords it this most extended notice:

  CHARLESTOWN, May 28.

 On Thursday night last “The Recruiting Officer” was acted for the
 entertainment of the ancient and honorable society of Free and
 Accepted Masons, who came to the Play House about 7 o’clock, in the
 usual manner, and made a very decent and solemn appearance; there
 was a fuller house on this occasion than ever had been known in this
 place, and the entered apprentice and masters songs, sung upon the
 stage, which were joined in chorus by the Masons in the pitt to the
 satisfaction and entertainment of the whole audience.

 After the play the Masons returned to the lodge at Mr. Shepheard’s, in
 the same order observed in coming to the Play House.

Mad Tom’s song must have been taken from “King Lear,” and, if so, is
the first recorded instance of the production of any of Shakespeare’s
works on this continent.

The most careful search has failed to find any mention of plays for
some years, but a map of Charlestown dated 1738 marks the site of the
theater on the south side of Queen, a little west of Church street, on
the lot of land now occupied by the rear portion of the old Planters’
Hotel, within less than a hundred yards of the Huguenot and St.
Philip’s Churches, and in October, 1743, a ball is advertised to take
place at the theater in Queen street.

A similar notice appears in the paper for November 19, 1774, and the
next link is an advertisement in the “Gazette,” October 3, 1748, of a
school “over against the Play House,” and the following extract from
“an exhortation to the inhabitants of South Carolina,” written by a
Quakeress, Sophia Hume, in 1748, and published in London in 1752.

The good lady, after setting forth the sins of the people of the
province, says: “You have no masquerades nor music gardens to entertain
you, neither are theatrical entertainments frequent among you,” which
implies that they took place sometimes.

May her shade grant pardon for the use of her book in an article on the
play-house.

But Sophia Hume exhorted in vain, for the “Gazette,” in its issue for
October 3, 1754, contains this rather contradictory advertisement:

“At the New Theatre on Monday next, (by a company of comedians from
London,) a tragedy called the ‘Fair Penitent.’ Tickets to be had of Mr.
John Remington and at the printer’s. Price, stage box 50s.; front and
side boxes, 40s.; pitt, 30s., and gallery, 20s.”

The “Gazette” dramatic reporter says of the play: “Last Monday
evening the New Theatre in this town was opened, when a company of
comedians performed the tragedy called the ‘Fair Penitent,’ much to the
satisfaction of the audience.”

The theatrical history of Charleston from this time on, however, is
familiar.[19]

In the paucity of information about the drama in America at this early
period, it may be admissible to refer to what fiction has attempted
respecting it in a novel by John Esten Cooke, entitled “The Virginia
Comedians,” in which he describes the Williamsburg theater, and the
representation in it of a play of Shakespeare’s. As Shakespeare
expressed it, “imagination bodies forth the form of things unknown,”
and men of genius, like Sir Walter Scott and the elder Dumas, could,
in the exercise of this faculty, represent scenes and incidents of the
past more vividly and apparently as truthfully as can be derived from
the scant material usually left for the historian--an illustration of
which will be found in Dumas’s account of the trial and execution of
Charles I., in his sequel to “The Three Musketeers,” “Twenty Years
After”; and in Scott’s novels there are many like illustrations. “This
history,” says Fielding, in the preface to his celebrated novel which
he calls “The History of Tom Jones,” “differs from other histories in
this, that in other histories nothing is true but the names, whilst in
this everything is true but the names”; and the author of “The Virginia
Comedians,” though not ranking with the great masters of fiction that
have been referred to, appears to have been well informed respecting
Colonial Virginia, and may be accepted as having given what is probably
a fair picture of a night in the Williamsburg theater during the
Colonial period.[20]

One of the principal characters in the novel is a young Virginian, Mr.
Effingham, who, after a visit and some stay at Oxford and in London,
has returned to the paternal home, Effingham Hall, in Virginia, and
whilst riding on horseback to visit a manorial estate on a plantation
known as Riverhead, of a gentleman called Lee, the father of two very
attractive daughters, draws up suddenly in the road, seeing a young
lady on horseback in the center of it apparently awaiting his approach,
who is thus described:

 The lady was mounted on a tall white horse, which stood perfectly
 quiet in the middle of the road, and seemed to be docility itself,
 though the fiery eyes contradicted the first impression. Rather would
 one acquainted with the singular character of horses have said that
 this animal was subdued by the gentle hand of the rider, and so laid
 aside, from pure affection, all his waywardness.

 The rider was a young girl about eighteen, and of rare and
 extraordinary beauty. Her hair--so much of it as was visible beneath
 her hood--seemed to be dark chestnut, and her complexion was dazzling.
 The eyes were large, full, and dark--instinct with fire and softness,
 feminine modesty and collected firmness, the firmness, however,
 predominating. But the lips were different. They were the lips of a
 child--soft, guileless, tender, and confiding; they were purity and
 innocence itself, and seemed to say that however much the brain might
 become hard and worldly, the heart of this young woman never could be
 other than the tender and delicately sensitive heart of a child.

 She was clad in a riding-dress of pearl color, and from the uniformity
 of this tint, it seemed to be a favorite with her. The hood was of
 silk, and the delicately gloved hand held a little ivory-handled
 riding-whip, which now dangled at her side. The other gloved hand
 supported her cheek; and in this position the unknown lady calmly
 awaited Mr. Effingham’s approach still nearer, though he was already
 near touching her.

 Mr. Effingham took off his hat and bowed with elegant courtesy. The
 lady returned the inclination by a graceful movement of the head.

 “Would you be kind enough to point out the road to the town of
 Williamsburg, sir?” she said, in a calm and clear voice.

 “With great pleasure, madam,” replied Mr. Effingham. “You have lost
 your way?”

 “Yes, sir, and very strangely; and as evening drew on I was afraid of
 being benighted.”

 “You have but to follow the road until you reach Effingham Hall,
 madam,” he said,--“the house in the distance yonder; then turn to the
 left, and you are in the highway to town.”

 “Thanks, sir,” the young girl said, with another calm inclination of
 her head, and she touched her horse with the whip.

 “But cannot I accompany you?” asked Mr. Effingham, whose curiosity was
 greatly aroused, and found his eyes, he knew not why, riveted to the
 rare beauty of his companion’s face; “do you not need me as a guide?”

 “Indeed, I think not, sir,” she said, with the same calmness. “Your
 direction is very plain, and I am accustomed to ride by myself.”

 “But, really,” began Mr. Effingham, somewhat piqued, “I know it is
 intrusive--I know I have not the honor--”

 She interrupted him with her immovable calmness.

 “You would say you do not know me, and that your offer is intrusive. I
 believe, sir, I do not consider it so--it is very kind; but I am not a
 fearful girl, and need not trouble you at all.”

 And so bowed.

 “One moment, madam,” said Mr. Effingham; “I am really dying with
 curiosity to know you. ’Tis very rude to say so, of course--but I am
 acquainted with every lady in the neighborhood, and I do not recall
 any former occasion upon which I had the pleasure--”

 “It is very easily explained, sir,” the young girl said.

 “Madam!”

 “I do not live in the neighborhood.”

 “Ah! no?”

 “And I am not a lady, sir. Does not that explain it?”

 Mr. Effingham scarcely believed his ears. These astounding words were
 uttered with such perfect calmness that there was no possible room to
 suppose that they were meant for a jest.

 “You are surprised, sir,” the young girl said quite simply and gravely.

 “Upon my word, madam,--never have I,--really--”

 “Your surprise will not last long, sir.”

 “How, madam?”

 “Do you ever visit the town of Williamsburg?”

 “Frequently.”

 “Well, sir, I think you will see me again. Now I must continue my way,
 having returned my sincere thanks for your kindness.”

 With which words, uttered in that wondrous voice of immovable
 calmness, the young girl again inclined her head, touched her white
 horse with the whip, and slowly rode out of sight.

 The young man continued his journey to Riverhead; arrived there, and
 after an animated conversation with the two attractive young ladies,
 he encountered the father, a fine, portly old gentleman, who met him.

 “Good morning, glad to see you.”

 Effingham bowed and said:

 “The morning was so fine that I thought I could not spend it more
 agreeably than in a ride to Riverhead, sir.”

 “Delightful! These August days are excellent for the corn; what news?”

 “Nothing, sir. I have not seen the ‘Gazette.’”

 “Oh, the ‘Gazette’ never contains any intelligence; sometimes, it is
 true, we hear what is going on in Parliament, but it never condescends
 to afford us any news from Virginia. The tobacco on the south side
 may be all gone to the devil for anything you read in the ‘Gazette.’
 Here it is--an abominable sheet! Ah, I see we are to have a theatrical
 performance in Williamsburg next week,” added the old gentleman, on
 glancing over the paper. “Mr. Hallam and his Virginia company of
 comedians--very politic that addition of Virginia--are to perform ‘The
 Merchant of Venice,’ by permission of his worship, the Mayor, at the
 _old_ theater near the capital, he announces. Truly we are improving,
 really becoming civilized, in this barbarous _terra incognita_.”

 Mr. Effingham winced; he had more than once expressed a similar
 opinion of Virginia in good faith, not ironically, and the good old
 gentleman’s words seemed directed to himself. A moment’s reflection,
 however, persuaded him that this could not be the case; He had not
 visited Riverhead a dozen times since his arrival from Oxford and
 London, and on these occasions he never touched upon the subject of
 Virginia and its dreadful deficiencies.

 “A play,” he said; “that is really good news; but the ‘Merchant of
 Venice,’ that is not one of my acquaintances.”

 “Ah! you young men are wrong in giving up Will. Shakespeare for the
 Steeles, Addisons, and Vanbrughs. Mr. Addison’s essays are very
 pleasant and entertaining reading, and surely there never was a finer
 gentleman than Sir Roger; but in the drama Will. Shakespeare distances
 him all to nothing.”

 “Let us go to the play,” said Henrietta.

 “Oh, yes,” said Clara.

 The old gentleman tenderly smoothed the bright golden hair.

 “Certainly, if you wish it,” he said.

 “And may I request permission to accompany the party, ladies,” said
 Mr. Effingham, languidly.

 “How modest,” said Henrietta, laughing; “certainly you may go, sir.
 You will tell us when to hiss or applaud, you know, as you are just
 from London.”

 “What a quick tongue she has,” said Mr. Lee, fondly; well, we will all
 go, and see what the Virginia company of comedians is like; not much I
 fear.”

At the appointed day the young man appears at Mr. Lee’s mansion and
the young ladies come down to meet him, the elder, Henrietta, being
described as “radiant in a dress of surpassing elegance--flowered
satin, yellow lace, jewels, powdered hair, with pendants and rich
furbelows,--the bright beauty of her laughing face assorting well with
her flashing and glittering costume,” while the costume of the younger
sister was more subdued, as her manner was more quiet.

A lively conversation follows, the subject of which ends with an
inquiry on the part of the young man to the elder sister.

 “Do you anticipate much pleasure?” referring to the play, to which the
 other replies:

 “Oh, it will be delightful.” Then to the younger, “And you, Cousin
 Clara, do you think that these Virginia Comedians, as they call
 themselves, will afford you a very pleasant entertainment?”

 “Oh, yes--I am sure I shall be pleased--you know I have never seen a
 play.”

 “But read a plenty?”

 “Oh, yes; and I like the ‘Merchant of Venice.’ The character of Portia
 is so delicate and noble.”

 “Quite true; an excellent criticism; better than anything in Congreve
 I think, though I should hesitate to advance such an opinion in
 London.”

 “Who will act Portia?”

 “I don’t know, but can tell you without much difficulty. Here is a
 play-bill that I sent to town for yesterday.”

 And Mr. Effingham drew daintily from his coat pocket a small, roughly
 printed hand-bill, which he spread out before the eyes of Clara.

 “‘Virginia Company of Comedians,’” he read, “‘by permission of
 his worship the Mayor--in the old theatre near the capitol, on
 Thursday evening--a tragedy called ‘The Merchant of Venice,’ by Mr.
 William Shakespeare, boxes seven shillings sixpence’--‘Vivat Rex
 et Regina’--here it is, ‘Shylock, Mr. Rigby; Portia, Miss Beatrice
 Hallam.’ The part of Portia is to be performed by Miss Beatrice
 Hallam--I have never seen or heard of her.”

 “Which means,” said Henrietta, laughing, “that Miss Beatrice cannot
 be very well worth seeing, as Mr. Champ Effingham, just from London,
 and conversant with all the celebrities there, has never heard of her
 existence.”

 “My dear Cousin Henrietta,” said Mr. Effingham, languidly, “you really
 seem to sit in judgment on my wearisome conversation. I do not profess
 to know anything about celebrities. True, I very frequently lounged
 into the theater in London, but I assure you took very little interest
 in the plays or performers. Life itself is enough of a comedy for me,
 and I want nothing more. I know nothing of Miss Hallam. She may be a
 witch of Endor, or as beautiful as Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, for all
 that I know. That I have not heard of her proves nothing. The best
 actors and actresses are often treated with neglect and indifference.”

 “Well,” said Clara, smiling, “we soon shall see for ourselves, for
 there is papa coming, all ready dressed to go, and I hear the wheels
 of the chariot.”

Upon which they go to the play-house, which the novelist thus describes:

 The “old theatre near the capitol,” discoursed of in the manifesto
 issued by Mr. Manager Hallam, was so far old that the walls were well
 browned by time, and the shutters to the windows of a pleasant neutral
 tint between rust and dust color. The building had, no doubt, been
 used for the present purpose in bygone times, before the days of the
 “Virginia Gazette,” which is our authority for many of the facts here
 stated, and in relation to the “Virginia Company of Comedians”--but of
 the former companies of “players,” as my Lord Hamlet calls them, and
 their successes and misfortunes, printed words tell us nothing, as far
 as the researches of the present “Chronicle” extend. That there had
 been such companies before, however, we repeat, there is some reason
 to believe; else why that addition “old” applied to the “theatre near
 the capitol.”

 Within, the play-house presented a somewhat more attractive
 appearance. There was “box,” “pit,” and “gallery,” as in our own
 day; and the relative prices were arranged in much the same manner.
 The common mortals--gentlemen and ladies--were forced to occupy the
 boxes raised slightly above the level of the stage and hemmed in by
 velvet-cushioned railings--in front a flower-decorated panel extending
 all around the house--and for this position they were moreover
 compelled to pay an admission fee of seven shillings and sixpence. The
 demigods--so to speak--occupied a more eligible portion in the “pit,”
 from which they could procure a highly excellent view of the actors’
 feet and ankles, just on a level with their noses; to conciliate the
 demigods this superior advantage had been offered, and the price for
 them was further still reduced to five shillings. But “the gods,” in
 truth, were the real favorites of the manager. To attract them he
 arranged the high upper “gallery” and left it untouched, unencumbered
 by railing, velvet cushions, or any other device; all was free space
 and liberal as the air; there were no troublesome seats for “the
 gods,” and three shillings and ninepence all that the manager would
 demand. The honor of their presence was enough.

 From the boxes a stairway led down to the stage, and some rude scenes,
 visible at the edges of the curtain, completed the outfit.

 When Mr. Lee and his daughters entered the box, which had been
 reserved for them next to the stage, the house was nearly full, and
 the neatness of the edifice was lost sight of in the sea of brilliant
 ladies’ faces and showy forms of cavaliers which extended, like a sea
 of glittering foam, around the semicircle of the boxes. The pit was
 occupied by well-dressed men of the lower class, as the times had it,
 and from the gallery proceeded hoarse murmurs and the unforgotten
 slang of London.

 Many smiles and bows were interchanged between the parties in the
 different boxes and the young gallants, following the fashion of
 the day, gathered at each end of the stage, and often walked across,
 to exchange some polite speech with the smiling dames in the boxes
 nearest.

 Mr. Champ Effingham was, upon the whole, much the most notable fop
 present, and his elegant _petit maître_ air as he strutted across
 the stage attracted many remarks, not invariably favorable. It
 was observed, however, that when the Virginia-bred youths, with
 honest plainness, called him “ridiculous,” the young ladies, their
 companions, took Mr. Effingham’s part, and defended him with great
 enthusiasm; but when they returned home he was more unmercifully
 criticized than he would otherwise have been.

 A little bell rang, and the orchestra, represented by three or four
 foreign-looking gentlemen, bearded and moustached, entered with
 trumpet and violins. The trumpet made the roof shake indifferently
 in honor of the _Prince of Morocco_, or _King Richard_, or any other
 worthy whose entrance was marked in the play-book “with a flourish.”
 But before the orchestra ravished the ears of every one, the manager
 came forward in the costume of _Bassanio_, and made a low bow.
 Mr. Hallam was a fat little man, of fifty or fifty-five, with a
 rubicund and somewhat sensual face, and he expressed extraordinary
 delight at meeting so many of the “noble aristocracy of the great
 and noble colony of Virginia” assembled to witness his very humble
 representation. “It would be the chief and sole ambition of his
 life,” he said, “to please the gentry who so kindly patronized their
 servants--himself and his associates”--and then the smiling worthy
 concluded by bowing lower than before. Much applause from the pit and
 gallery and murmurs of approbation from the well-bred boxes greeted
 the address, and the orchestra having struck up, the curtain slowly
 rolled aloft, the young gallants scattered to the corner of the stage,
 seating themselves on stools or chairs or standing, and the “Merchant
 of Venice” commenced. _Bassanio_, having assumed a dignified and lofty
 part, embraced _Gratiano_ with courteous and lordly art, his friend
 _Antonio_ offered him his fortune with grand magnanimity in a loud,
 singing voice, worthy the utmost commendation, and the first act
 proceeded on its way in triumph.

 The first act ends, the scene between _Portia_ and _Nerissa_ being
 omitted, the audience being highly pleased, and the actors receiving
 a “grateful guerdon of applause.” What transpires between the inmates
 of the box occupied by Effingham’s father and the Squire, as he is
 called, is manifest, consisting mainly of the conversation between the
 Squire and the local parson that the Squire had invited to witness
 the play, who sits on the front seat beside the Squire with solemn
 gravity and rubicund nose, surveying from his respectable position the
 agitated pit.

 “Not so bad as you predicted, eh, parson?” says the Squire. “I don’t
 think that fellow _Antonio_ acts so badly.”

 “Very well--very well,” is the latter’s response.

 “The audience seems delighted. Look at the scamp of a son of mine,
 strutting up to friend Lee’s box and smoothing those enormous ruffles
 like a turkey cock.”

 Effingham leaves the companions with whom he had been seated on the
 stage, interchanging remarks during the performance to the great
 disgust of the pit, and approaching Miss Clara, who sits nearest the
 stage, looking very beautiful and radiant with pleasure, asks:

 “And how does my fair cousin relish the performance?”

 “Oh, I was never more pleased with anything. And how do you like it?”

 “Tolerably. But I never had a great relish for these things.”

 “Because, to wit, life itself is a comedy,” said Henrietta, laughing.

 “Yes,” replied Effingham, “and a very brilliant one it would be if all
 the world were Miss Henriettas. I hope, my dear cousin, the compliment
 is sufficiently broad.”

 “Thank you, sir. I know how to take your fine speeches. Don’t think
 they deceive me.”

 “I’m rather a poor hand at compliments,” replied Effingham; “but,
 really, it is hard to do you the injustice, my fair cousin, of
 withholding them. Come, no reply, for I see my Cousin Clara is going
 to say something more flattering than what you are about to utter.”

 “Oh, no,” says Clara, slightly blushing; “I was only going to say that
 _Shylock_ really frightened me.”

 “It was very well done; much like Shuter at Castle Garden. How did
 you like it, Cousin Henrietta? Come, your criticism.”

 “Oh, what could you expect from a country girl like me?” and broke off
 the conversation by announcing the approach of a fox-hunter, who was
 an admirer.

 “How I envy them,” he says to Clara, applying to his nostrils, with a
 listless air, a delicate kind of snuff, “they are so gay.”

 Then after some conversation with Clara preparatory to making her the
 proffer of his hand, he describes his condition as “out of sorts,” as
 “rusting.”

 “Yes, more than rusting--I take interest in scarcely anything; I am
 wearied to death--with everything. What is life worth? Here are some
 hundreds of persons and they all seem delighted with the play, which
 tires me to death. I take no interest in it. _Shylock_ and _Antonio_
 strut and spout without amusing me. I am already weary and everybody
 else seems to be impatient for the reappearance of the wonders. Why
 are they so much amused? For my part I am sick of all this and only
 stay because you stay. The nearest approach to happiness I make is in
 your presence,” at which, of course, the young lady blushes, and after
 this near approach he follows it up by declaring “how beautiful she
 is,” that he really thinks that she could charm away his melancholy if
 she desired, upon which she asks:

 “How, pray?”

 “By smiling at me.”

 Clara smiled and said:

 “Be merry then; indeed, Cousin, you could become so again if you
 chose. Do not determine to find fault with everything and think
 everything means you. Seek novelty; you say that all here seem to take
 pleasure in the play while you do not. They are pleased because it is
 new to them. I have never seen a play, and I am highly pleased. If
 you have been often to the theater there is nothing strange in your
 thinking this poor one excellent, though it seems beautiful to me. But
 you will find usually an interest in other things. Try it, and see if
 my philosophy is not true.”

 His response is that he knew but one means.

 “What is that?”

 “To have a companion.”

 The meaning suddenly flashed upon her, and she turned away.

 “Clara, dearest Clara, if you take such an interest in my welfare
 why--”

 Sh-h-h-h came in a loud murmur from the audience, the curtain having
 risen, which Effingham recognizes, and ejaculates:

 “How ridiculous, here in the theater.” Upon which his eye suddenly
 fell upon one of the actresses, and he almost uttered an exclamation.
 It was the unknown lady of the wood.

The novelist continues:

 The unknown lady was no gentle Virginia maiden, no “lady,” as she had
 said with perfect calmness at their meeting--only one of the company
 of comedians. Her singular expression when she uttered the words,

 “I think you will see me again,” occurred to the young man, and he
 wondered that this easy solution of the riddle had not occurred to him
 at once.

 “What was her name?” Mr. Effingham drew forth his bill and saw
 opposite the name of _Portia_, Miss Beatrice Hallam.

 “Ah, yes,” he said, carelessly, “the same we were speculating upon
 this morning. Let us see how _Portia_ looks, and what change the
 footlights work in her face.”

 He sat down in the corner of the stage upon a wicker chair and scanned
 _Portia_ critically. Her costume was faultless. It consisted of a
 gown and underskirt of fawn-colored silk trimmed with silver, and a
 single band of gold encircled each wrist, clearly relieved against
 the white, finely-rounded arm. Her hair, which was a beautiful
 chestnut, had been carried back from the temples and powdered after
 the fashion of the time, and around her beautiful, swan-like neck
 the young woman wore a necklace of pearls of rare brilliancy. Thus
 the costume of the character defied criticism, and Mr. Effingham
 passed on to the face and figure. These we have already described.
 The countenance of Beatrice Hallam wore the same simple, yet firm and
 collected expression, which Mr. Effingham had observed in their first
 interview, and her figure had the same indefinable grace and beauty.
 Every movement which she made might have suited a royal palace, and
 in her large, brilliant eyes Mr. Effingham sought the least trace
 of confusion. She surveyed the audience, whilst the _Prince of
 Morocco_ was uttering his speech, with perfect simplicity, but her
 eyes not for a single moment rested on the young men collected at the
 corner of the stage. For her they seemed to have no existence, and
 she turned to the _Prince_ again. That gentleman having uttered his
 prescribed number of lines, _Portia_ advanced graciously towards him
 and addressed him. Her carelessness was gone. She no longer betrayed
 either indifference or coldness; she was the actress, with her rôle to
 sustain. She commenced in a voice of noble and queen-like courtesy, a
 voice of pure music and clear utterance, so to speak, such as few lips
 possess the power of giving forth. Every word rang and told; there was
 no hurry, no slurring, no hesitation. It was not an actress delivering
 a set speech, but the noble _Portia_, doing the honors of her
 beautiful palace at Belmont. The scene ended with great applause--the
 young woman had evidently produced a most favorable impression on the
 audience. But she seemed wholly unconscious of this compliment, and
 made her exit quite calmly.

 A buzz ran through the theater; the audience were discussing the
 merits of _Portia_. On the stage, too, she was the subject of many
 comments, and this continued until _Lancelot_ made his appearance and
 went through his speech; then _Portia_ reappeared with the _Prince_,
 and was greeted with great applause.

 Mr. Effingham leaned forward and touched the young woman’s sleeve.

 “Come,” he said with easy carelessness, and scarcely moderating his
 voice; “come, fair _Portia_, while that tiresome fellow is making his
 speech, and talk to me a little. We are old acquaintances, and you are
 indebted to me for directing you home.”

 “Yes, sir,” said Beatrice, turning her head slightly; “but pardon
 me--I have my part to attend to.”

 “I don’t care.”

 “Excuse me, sir; but I do.”

 “Really, madame, you are very stiff for an actress. Is it so very
 unusual a thing to ask a moment’s conversation?”

 “I know that it is the fashion in London and elsewhere, sir, but I
 dislike it. It destroys my conception of the character,” she said,
 calmly.

 Mr. Effingham laughed. “Come here again, and talk to me,” he said.
 “Did you not say we should meet again?”

 “Yes, sir; and I also said I was not a lady.”

 “Well, what is the meaning of that addition?”

 “It means, sir, that being an actress I am not at liberty to amuse
 myself here as I might were I a lady in a drawing room. Pardon me,
 sir,” she added, calmly, “I am neglecting what I have engaged to
 do--play _Portia_.”

 And the young woman, quietly disengaging her sleeve from Mr.
 Effingham’s fingers, moved away to another part of the stage.

 “Here is a pretty affair,” said Mr. Effingham to himself, as he fell
 back languidly into the chair from which, however, he had not deigned
 to rise wholly when addressing the young actress. “What are things
 coming to when an actress treats a gentleman in this manner. I really
 believe the girl thinks I am not good enough for her. ‘Pardon me,
 sir,’ was there ever such insufferable prudery and affectation. No
 doubt she wishes to catch me, and commences with this piquant piece
 of acting, or, perhaps,” added the elegant young gentleman, smoothing
 his frill, “she fell in love with me the other day when we met and is
 afraid she will betray herself. Not talk when I desire to talk with
 her, indeed, and yonder all of these people have seen her careless
 treatment of me and are laughing at me. Fortunately I am proof against
 these jeers. Come, come, let us see if Miss Portia will treat me as
 badly next time.”

 _Portia_ entered next with the _Prince of Arragon_, and while that
 gentleman was addressing the caskets, Mr. Effingham again applied
 himself to the task of forcing the young woman to converse with him.

 “Why did you treat me so just now?” he said, with abrupt carelessness.

 “How, sir.”

 “You refused to talk to me.”

 “I had my part to perform.”

 “That is no excuse.”

 “Besides, sir,” added the young woman, surveying Mr. Effingham with an
 indifferent glance, “I know you only very slightly.”

 “Know me only slightly!” said Mr. Effingham affecting surprise.

 “A chance meeting is very slight acquaintance, sir; but I offer this
 as no apology for refusing to do what I am now doing, converse with
 you on the stage.”

 “Really, one would say you were a queen speaking to a subject instead
 of an actress--”

 “Honored with the attentions of a gentleman, you would add, sir,” she
 interrupted, quite calmly.

 “As you please.”

 “Pray speak to me no more, sir. I forget my part, and the audience are
 looking at you.”

 “Let them.”

 “I see some angry faces,” said the young woman; “they do not
 understand the fashions of London, sir.”

 “What care I.”

 “Please release my sleeve, sir--that is my line.”

 The gallery uttered a prolonged hiss as _Portia_ disengaged her arm.
 Mr. Effingham turned around and looked up to the gallery from which
 the hiss came; this glance of haughty defiance might have provoked
 another exhibition of the same sort, but _Portia_ at that moment
 commenced her speech.

 Thereafter the young woman came no more near Mr. Effingham, and
 treated that gentleman’s moody glances with supreme disregard. What
 was going on in Mr. Effingham’s mind, and why did he lose some of his
 careless listlessness, when, clasping her beautiful hands, the lovely
 girl, raising her eyes to heaven like one of the old Italian pictures,
 uttered that sublime discourse on the “quality of mercy”; and how did
 it happen that she sobbed, almost, in that tender, magical voice:

  But mercy is above this sceptered sway;
  It is enthroned in the hearts of kings;
  It is an attribute of God himself.

 How did it chance that Mr. Effingham led the enthusiastic applause and
 absolutely arose erect in the excess of his enthusiasm?

 As she passed him in going out he made her a low bow and said,
 “Pardon me! You are a great actress.”

 The play proceeded and ended amid universal applause. Mr. Hallam led
 out _Portia_ in response to uproarious calls, and thanked the audience
 for their kindness to his daughter. Beatrice received the applause
 with her habitual calmness, inclining her head slightly as she
 disappeared, and the audience separated, rolling well pleased to their
 homes.[21]

In 1886 a large quarto volume was published entitled “A History of the
American Theatre before the Revolution,” by George O. Seilhamer. There
appeared to be no occasion for a special history of this particular
period of twenty-nine years, that is from 1749 to the Revolution, as
Dunlap’s history extended from 1752 to about 1817, and what was known
at the time of Mr. Seilhamer’s publication respecting the theater in
North America before 1752 had already been published in Ireland’s
“History of the New York Stage,” and in the paper here reprinted,
except one item to be referred to hereafter.

There were some further corrections to be made to Dunlap’s history,
but they were not very important or numerous, and some additional
information to be added respecting theatrical performances in Maryland
and Pennsylvania that was new and interesting. This was included in
this special history, which, in addition to what had been previously
published, was largely made up of the full casts, as they are called
in theatrical parlance, of plays given at particular dates during the
Colonial period; that is, the name of the performer of each part, taken
from the small play-bills that are printed for the use of the audience.
As it is the custom in theaters for the prompter to keep a file of
these bills each season, and the habit of some persons to keep the
play-bill of any performance they have seen, considerable collections
of these small play-bills have been preserved, and exist in private
collections or in institutions or clubs, of which Mr. Seilhamer has
made copious use, and has also inserted in this volume long lists of
the performances given at particular dates and tabulated statements
of the leading parts of actors and actresses, and the statements of
performances, culled from the Colonial newspapers, by all of which
insertions the volume is augmented to the magnitude of a large quarto.

Dunlap, while stating that play-bills and theatrical advertisements are
of assistance, or, as he expressed it, “throw light” (that is, they may
assist the historian in the construction of his narrative), evidently
thought that this minute information, or detail, of this kind was not,
save in exceptional instances, to be inserted bodily in a history, for
he apologizes to his readers for inserting three full casts of plays
that were performed in the years 1752, 53, and 54, in these words:
“Particularity of this kind would be unnecessary in regard to events of
more recent date and _out of place in a history of a theatre_, but in
this early stage of the work before us, we think a play-bill a valuable
source of information and gladly insert it,”[22] and in this respect we
incline to the opinion of Dunlap.

But Seilhamer does not. In this age of many books, the aim of able
historical writers is condensation with clearness, but with him it
appears to have been expansion with plenty of material; for while
Dunlap, in a history extending over sixty-five years, inserts but
three full casts of plays, Seilhamer, in one extending over only
twenty-nine, years, inserts 253, and adds also one-fifth of that number
of theatrical advertisements and numerous lists of performances at
different dates, and tables of prominent performers’ leading parts,
which are all incorporated with the text, and form a part of the
narrative. I apprehend that it was the chief material that he had; that
he meant to supplant Dunlap as the future historian of the American
Theater, and that the amount of other information that was new, that
is, that had not previously been published, would have been for such a
purpose so insufficient that it was necessary to swell the book out to
the dimension of a large quarto with material of this kind, connected
together by a slight thread of narrative; material of which there was
an abundant supply, for he followed up this publication by two more of
the same kind in the years 1889 and 1891, each, however, distinguished
from the other by a different title, the whole ending in 1797.

To his manifest desire to supplant Dunlap there could be no objection,
if he had the ability to produce a better and more interesting book.
On the contrary, a history of the American Stage from the earliest
knowledge we have of it to the time of publication, by a writer who had
the leisure to make the necessary research, and the art so to arrange
his material as to make the work reliable and readable, would be a
contribution to literature. Seilhamer’s opinion of what he could do,
and had done, is subsequently shown by his constant abuse of Dunlap
throughout these three volumes, for Dunlap’s name rarely, if ever,
occurs without his applying to it some derogatory, contemptuous, or
other abusive epithet. Such as the “marvelous chronicler,” “the quality
of blundering for which he was remarkable,” or some like term or phrase
to belittle him. He says in respect to his history, that “never
was a book written to throw light upon a subject that so completely
confused it.” “His dates are always wrong.” “He presents to the world
the remarkable example of a man who wrote the annals of the American
Stage from some scattered memoranda, and out of his own head,” and
refers to the “readiness of assumption he was apt to resort to in the
absence of facts,” “the consequences of which are” he says, “that the
stream of American theatrical history was poisoned at its source”;
that “his inaccuracies are so many and so unreasonable that it is
impossible not to wonder at the mental equipment of a man that could be
guilty of them.” “His statements of facts are” declared to be “always
misstatements in whole or in part.” He finds him “inexcusable for not
knowing the date of the first appearance of a certain actress and
for his want of knowledge of an early American play.” He is declared
to have been a failure in everything; as an historian, a novelist,
an artist, a theatrical manager, and as a dramatist. A drama of his
is a failure for the want of skill in the management of the plot,
and the insufficiency of the characters and the incidents; another
is disposed of as a “turgid melodrama without action”; all his plays
and adaptations of plays are condemned as having passed into deserved
oblivion; but as regards the history something had to be conceded,
and it is therefore said that, “full of mistakes as it is--mistakes
for which it is impossible to forgive him,” it has some features that
commend it; such as the account he was able to give from personal
knowledge of the players that were on the American stage in the first
quarter of the century after the Revolution, which it is conceded “the
world could ill afford to lose,” and might well be conceded, as it
is more interesting than anything in Seilhamer’s three volumes. But
even this is qualified by his saying, in respect to the Dunlap Society
being named after him, that “there probably never was a writer less
deserving of such an honor than Dunlap,” that his plays were “without
merit, either for stage representation or as literary productions,” and
that his history was “at once dull and inaccurate,” with the further
observation that he “might have been looked upon as an interesting
character, had he not been at once jealous and abusive of every one
outside of his circle of friends, ignoring the efforts of others not
inferior to his own.”

It may be said of this array of accusations against Dunlap that, except
in some matters of little importance, they are merely Seilhamer’s own
conclusions or assumptions, and derive no additional weight from any
facts stated in his volumes. It is a literary mistake for an historical
writer to indulge in such continued abuse as this of a previous
writer on the same subject. If the first historian has made errors or
mistakes, it is sufficient quietly to correct them; but to constantly
abuse and belittle him is objectionable and offensive on the part of
the second, for it is continually reiterating his own superiority and
importance as an historian.

It is especially so in this writer, for he is as prone to indulge in
conjectures or assumptions that afterward prove to be unfounded, as
he asserts Dunlap is, and in matters quite as important; with this
difference, that, when he refers to anything of this kind on the part
of Dunlap, it is stigmatized as “the blunder of an ignorant historian,”
one example of which will suffice. When Dunlap stated that it was the
Hallam Company that first introduced the drama in America, he also
stated that this was communicated to him by one of that company, Lewis
Hallam, Jr., and which he might reasonably suppose to be true, coming,
as it did, from one of that company; but when Seilhamer states that
“the history of the drama in this country may be said to begin with
the production of Addison’s ‘Cato’ in Philadelphia in August, 1749,”
he does so upon the authority only of the item before referred to,
which is an entry in a manuscript journal kept by one John Smith of
Philadelphia, of the date of August 12, 1749, recording that Smith had
been at a friend’s house whose daughter was going, as one of a company,
to hear the tragedy of “Cato,” which at that time was the earliest
reference known to the performance of a play in the American Colonies,
and which Seilhamer assumed to have been the commencement of the drama
in this country. Now it had been previously shown in the paper here
reprinted, that there was a play-house in New York in 1733, sixteen
years before. This interfered with such a conclusion, and as he could
not avoid referring to this fact, he did so very boldly, declaring
that “as an attempt to transplant the drama to the Colonies, it had no
effect upon the development of the American stage,” giving this opinion
respecting a period of which he knew nothing, for we now know that many
years before this performance of “Cato” in Philadelphia, there were
play-houses in New York, Virginia, and South Carolina; that a play was
acted in the Colonies in 1718, and that plays may have been performed
there as early as 1702.

It appears from “Watson’s Annals of Philadelphia” that there were
theatrical performances in Philadelphia in January, 1749, seven months
before this performance of “Cato” mentioned in Smith’s journal, and
Dunlap also refers to theatrical performances there in 1749; and Watson
and Dunlap were of opinion that these were performances by amateurs,
for which Seilhamer takes Dunlap to account for, as he calls it, “a
snap judgment” and “asserting what he knew nothing about”; “who,”
he proceeds to say, “had made up his mind that the drama in America
should begin with the Hallam Company, and so contemptuously ignored all
previous theatrical efforts”; whilst he, Seilhamer, on the contrary was
of the opinion that this performance of “Cato,” in August, 1749, was
by Kean & Murray’s Company, who, it is known, came from Philadelphia
to New York a year and a half afterwards; which may have been the
fact, but there is no certainty about it, and for all that appears to
the contrary, Dunlap and Watson may have been right; but Seilhamer
evidently determined to dethrone Dunlap, and he therefore not only
assumed this, but went much further, by stating that it was “certain”
that Thomas Kean was the first actor to attempt _Richard III._ on the
American stage. As Colley Cibber’s alteration of “Richard III.” was
produced at Drury Lane in 1700, more than half a century before Thomas
Kean played the character in New York, and as Cibber’s “Richard III.”
was from the beginning and for more than a century afterwards one of
the most popular plays that was during that period produced upon the
English stage, it is as likely to have been played at Williamsburg
or Charlestown or in New York in 1733 as any other; a period when we
know that they had theaters at these places, but have very little
information as to what plays were performed in them. And in both these
erroneous assertions, that is, that the history of the American theater
began in 1749, and that Kean was the first to play _Richard III._ in
the Colonies, Seilhamer appears to have been unconscious that he was
doing the very thing for which he so severely censured Dunlap, that is,
giving a “snap judgment by asserting what he knew nothing about.”

Dunlap was, it is true, not remarkable as a dramatist or otherwise as
a writer, but he was quite equal to the average literary man in this
country at that time. It was a period that gave rise to the query in
the “Edinburgh Review,” “Who reads an American book?” Cooper, to whom
Dunlap dedicated his history, had not yet appeared, nor Halleck, Drake,
or Bryant as poets; and in what might be called American dramatic
literature, such as it was, Dunlap was then the most prominent and the
most industrious. He wrote, including adaptations from Kotzebue and
others, no less than eighty-seven plays. The writer of the article
in the “New-York Times,” from which I have quoted, respecting the
theater in Charleston in 1736, mentions Dunlap as the “first and most
painstaking of the historians of the American stage”; which is true,
for if it had not been for exertions of this nature on his part, a
large portion of the early history of the American theater which is
interesting would have been lost. He was also the historian of the arts
of design in this country, which embraced an account of our painters,
from William Watson in 1715 to William Page in 1832, which is full
of material not elsewhere found, and which no one was so competent
to gather as himself. He wrote a history of the State of New York,
which, in the continuation of the narrative to the time of publication,
supplied a want that it still continues to supply; and while, as a
portrait painter, he was neither a Stuart nor a Jarvis, he was at least
a respectable limner, and the statement of Seilhamer that “he painted
numerous portraits with sketches of his theatrical contemporaries, most
of them wretched caricatures,” is but an exhibition of the writer’s
ignorance or of his malevolence.

The Dunlap Society was formed for the printing of papers connected with
the history of the American theater, or reprinting what had become
scarce upon that subject and was worth preserving. Societies of a like
general nature have been formed in England and in this country, which
have usually been named after some individual who at an early period
was prominently identified with the subject matter in which the society
is interested; and when what has been here stated respecting Dunlap
is considered, with the fact that he was the first historian of the
American theater, and the purpose for which the Dunlap Society was
formed, it appears to me that the choice of his name for it was as
appropriate, if not more so, than that of any other American of that
period.

The concluding illustration is a facsimile of the oldest American
play-bill as far as known, the original of which is in the possession
of Mr. Thomas J. McKee of New York. It is thought worthy of insertion
as a curiosity, and not as approving Mr. Seilhamer’s extensive use of
such material, which, he says, is “introduced as a part of the record
which it is the aim of this work to preserve with as much completeness
as possible,” and again, that “the monument of the actors is the record
of their work in the newspapers,” and it is due in justice to him to
state that in the two later volumes, and especially in the third, there
is much information that is new and interesting, the result, evidently,
of a very thorough examination of the Colonial and other newspapers
until within a few years of the commencement of the present century.


[Illustration: New-York, November 12, 1753.

By a Company of COMEDIANS,

At the New-Theatre, in _Nassau-Street_,

This Evening, being the 12th of _November_, will be presented,

_(By particular Desire)_

An _Historical Play_, call’d,

King RICHARD III.

CONTAINING

 The Distresses and Death of King _Henry_ the VIth; the artful
 Acquisition of the Crown by _Crook-back’d Richard_; the Murder of
 the two young Princes in the Tower; and the memorable Battle of
 _Bosworth-Field_, being the last that was fought between the Houses of
 _York_ and _Lancaster_.

  _Richard_,            by   Mr. _Rigby_.
  King _Henry_,         by   Mr. _Hallam_.
  Prince _Edward_,      by   Master _L. Hallam_.
  Duke of _York_,       by   Master _A. Hallam_.
  Earl of _Richmond_,   by   Mr. _Clarkson_.
  Duke of _Buckingham_, by   Mr. _Malone_.
  Duke of _Norfolk_,    by   Mr. _Miller_.
  Lord _Stanley_,       by   Mr. _Singleton_.
  _Lieutenant_,         by   Mr. _Bell_.
  _Catesby_,            by   Mr. _Adcock_.
  Queen _Elizabeth_,    by   Mrs. _Hallam_.
  Lady _Anne_,          by   Mrs. _Adcock_.
  Duchess of _York_,    by   Mrs. _Rigby_.

To which will be added,

A Ballad FARCE call’d,

The _DEVIL TO PAY_.

  Sir _John Loverule_,  by   Mr. _Adcock_.
  _Jobson_,             by   Mr. _Malone_.
  _Butler_,             by   Mr. _Miller_.
  _Footman_,            by   Mr. _Singleton_.
  _Cook_,               by   Mr. _Bell_.
  _Coachman_,           by   Mr. _Rigby_.
  _Conjurer_,           by   Mr. _Clarkson_.
  Lady _Loverule_,      by   Mrs. _Adcock_.
  _Nell_,               by   Mrs. _Becceley_.
  _Lettice_,            by   Mrs. _Clarkson_.
  _Lucy_,               by   Miss _Love_.

_PRICES_: BOX, 6_s._ PIT, 4_s._ GALLERY, 2_s._

No Persons whatever to be admitted behind the Scenes.

_N. B. Gentlemen and Ladies that chuse Tickets, may have them at Mr._
Parker’_s and Mr._ Gaine’_s Printing-Offices._

Money will be taken at the DOOR.

To begin at 6 o’Clock.]


FOOTNOTES:

[5] 3 Bancroft’s “History,” n. s., chap. 19.

[6] “Caribbeana,” Vol. i, p. 380. London, 1741.

[7] Spottiswood’s Letters, collections of the Virginia Historical
Society, Vol. ii, p. 284.

[8] “History of the United States of North America,” Vol. iii, p. 146,
147: London, 1836.

[9] Cookes “History of the People of Virginia,” Boston, 1890.

[10] Graham’s “History of the United States of North America,” Vol. i,
p. 145, and note 1: London, 1836.

[11] Graham, p. 146.

[12] Part III, ch. 6.

[13] “The Drama in New Orleans,” by John Gaisford, etc., pp. 7, 8. New
Orleans, 1849.

[14] Davies, “Dramatic Miscellanies,” Vol. iii, ch. 17.

[15] Smith’s “History of New York” with a continuation, pp. 239, 240,
271: Albany, 1814.

[16] This is an error in the writer, they were Norris and Fairbank, and
the original _Sergeant Kite_ was Estcourt.

[17] Life of Cibber, by Bell, Chambers ed., 105, 106.

[18] A MS. volume, small 4°, Pp. (xvii), I-CXXX; Appendix, pp. XVI.
Handsomely engrossed, with ornamental or fancy lettering for the title,
the whole apparently the work of a professional clerk. Bound in old
mottled calf, with gilt border, stamped back once gilt and lettered.

POEMS BY A. H. ESQR MS.

Bought from a London dealer in 1890, by William Nelson, of Paterson,
New Jersey.

[19] “New-York Times,” Sunday, December 15, 1895.

[20] Dunlap, p. 16.

[21] Dunlap gives the full cast of the “Merchant of Venice,” the
first play enacted by the Hallam Company in America, at Williamsburg,
September 5, 1752, as he received it from Lewis Hallam, Jr., by which
it appears that Mrs. Hallam, the manager’s wife, was the _Portia_,
that Miss Hallam represented _Jessica_, “her first appearance on any
stage,” and an actor named Malone played _Shylock_. The author of the
novel states that his wish was simply to depict some Virginia scenes
and personages ten years before the Revolution, or the Virginia of
1765, and trusts that his picture is at least truthful as far as it
goes, which it probably is, with the anachronism of the appearance,
in the year 1765, of Miss Hallam, a young girl of about eighteen, as
_Portia_, thirteen years after she had made her first appearance on the
stage in the same play as _Jessica_. But liberties of this kind are
pardonable in a novelist. They are taken by great authors. Scott, in
his novel of Kenilworth, the scene of which romance is laid in the year
1575, represents Lord Leicester, in passing through the court-rooms,
stopping to compliment Shakespeare on the success of his recent poem of
Venus and Adonis, Shakespeare being then eleven years of age. The poem
was printed in 1593, eighteen years after the event described by the
novelist, or when Shakespeare was twenty-nine years of age.

[22] 2 Dunlap, 24, 48: London ed.




A CONSIDERATION OF THE OBJECTIONS MADE TO THE STAGE.


This supplement began with the statement that among the earliest
information that we possess respecting the drama in America, is a
passage in a letter objecting to the performance of a play, and it
may be appropriately closed by a brief enumeration of the objections
generally made to the theater, and the conclusion that seems to follow
from a review of them.

It is a characteristic of those who object to the theater altogether
that they rarely, if ever, give any consideration to the origin of the
drama, to its long continuance, or appreciate that it will continue as
long as civilization continues, and this applies as well to those who
have written elaborate treatises against it, like Jeremy Collier, as
to those who object to it generally. The briefest form of stating this
consideration is that the theater has its origin in human nature. In
the researches made as to its origin it is found that it has sprung up
spontaneously among different peoples, and has not been transmitted by
one people more advanced in civilization to another that was less so.
Thus the rise of the drama, such as it is, in India and in China has in
no way been influenced by the Greeks, who carried the cultivation of
it to a higher degree than any other people of antiquity. The oldest
civilization with which we are acquainted is that of Egypt. Whether it
existed among the Egyptians, whether they had what we call a theater,
the extensive researches that have been made within the present
century so far as I have been able to ascertain do not indicate,[23]
but that it existed at a very early period in China, in Persia, and in
India we have ample evidence, and in China and India it has from its
beginning been a recreation greatly enjoyed by the people; to which may
be added as a general observation that certain races have more aptitude
for the enjoyment of it than others, and greater natural capacity
either as a gift from nature or for acquiring what is requisite in the
actor or dramatist. That some men are endowed by nature in a higher
degree than others with the qualities that make a man eminent as a
dramatist or an actor is sufficiently indicated in the one case by
Shakespeare, and in the other by Garrick, of the latter of whom it may
be said, in the language of Mr. Baker, the historian of the London
stage, that “without any previous apprenticeship, preparation, or
drudgery, at a remote end of the town that had hitherto been as unknown
to fashion as the wilds of Africa, without preliminary puffing of any
kind, he took the whole play-going public by storm, made men old in
prejudice forget the idols of their youth and like Pope confess that
he never had his equal. * * * From “Richard III.” to “Abel Drugger,”
from “King Lear” to “Don Felix,” from “Macbeth” to “Bayes,” his tragic
force, his keen sense of humor, his marvelous genius carried everything
before it;” and this combination of equal excellence, and in the
highest degree, in both tragedy and comedy is the more remarkable, for
the two great Roman actors, Roscius in comedy and Æsopus in tragedy,
never crossed the limits of their respective branches, and both reached
the preëminence they attained by the most careful and assiduous study.
It is said of Roscius that, in the very height of his reputation, he
did not even venture upon a gesture that he did not carefully consider
and practise in private, and yet, notwithstanding this elaborate study,
there was no mannerism or affectation in his acting, but everything he
did seemed natural to the character he represented; and having referred
to these two great Roman actors, it may be mentioned, as an example of
being endowed like Garrick with qualities that enable him who possesses
them to soar easily and at once to the highest reach of his art,
that Terence, the most elegant, subtle, and felicitous in expression
of the Roman comic dramatists, is supposed, his biography being but
imperfectly known, to have been born a slave, who at the age of
twenty-seven offered his first play, the “Andria,” to the conductors of
the theatrical exhibitions, who referred him to an eminent playwright
of Rome for its examination, where, unknown and meanly clad, he
read, seated upon a low stool, his opening scene, afterwards declared
by Cicero to be a model of narrative, and his genius was at once
recognized.[24]

Cæsar called him a half Menander, who was the Greeks’ ideal of a
perfect comic dramatist, regarding him in comedy, as they did Sophocles
in tragedy, as the most complete and finished; whose judgment we
accept, as no play of Menander, though he is said to have written
about a hundred comedies, has come down to us, but only fragments.
And Plautus, the other distinguished Roman dramatist, should also be
mentioned as a further illustration, for he left the humble employment
of turning a mill to become a writer of plays, and surpassed Terence
in native comic force, his gift in that direction being as great as
Shakespeare’s or Molière’s.

There is one pervading feature of the drama to which those who have
written against it seldom refer, and some of the most prominent not
at all, that the stage is, what the age is, or, as Shakespeare has
succinctly expressed it in _Hamlet’s_ speech to the players, “that the
purpose of playing, both at the first and now, was and is, as ’twere,
to hold the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn
her own image, and the _very age_ and body of the time his form and
_pressure_,” and to _Polonius_, in respect to the players, that “they
are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time.”

If a people are alike brave and greatly cultivated, as the Athenians
were when the drama reached to its highest attainment among them,
they witness with pleasure the reproduction of noble deeds, and
listen with delight to the inculcation of noble sentiments from such
masters of the dramatic art as Euripides and Sophocles, and realize
with great enjoyment the power that lies in ridicule as a means of
reforming public abuses and correcting deformities in the character of
individuals when it comes from such a satirist and wit as Aristophanes.
But when a nation is sinking into decay or deteriorating, the stage
deteriorates with it; or when a people find their highest enjoyment in
amusements that are coarse or brutal, like the Romans, who thronged
the amphitheater to witness the sanguinary combat of gladiators, the
“maddening excitement of the circus”;[25] or found pleasure in such a
spectacle as beholding the arena filled with wild beasts, tearing each
other to pieces--the performances of the theater, though of a different
kind, became, in time, of the like degraded character, and stirred
up against the drama its greatest, longest, and most unrelenting
enemy--the Christian Church. A warfare against it, at that time, on
the part of the Church, that was necessary for the preservation of
society; for in the period which Gibbon, in his great contribution to
English literature, distinguishes as the Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire, the stage sank lower than it ever was before, or has ever been
since.

St. Augustine, writing in the beginning of the fourth century, in an
article of great severity against the theater, with whose abuses he was
no doubt thoroughly familiar in his wild youth, says: “The theaters,
those cages of uncleanliness and public schools of debauchery, are
tumbling almost everywhere,” which was the fact, as stationary places
of amusement in cities or towns. And Tertullian, who wrote at the end
of the second century, says even the very magistrates who abet the
stage discountenance the players, stigmatize their character, and cramp
their freedom. “The whole tribe of them,” he says, “is thrown out of
all power and privilege. They are neither suffered to be lords or
gentlemen, to come within the Senate, or to harangue the people.”[26]
And yet the Church, with all its efforts and all the power the law
gave it, could not suppress the players, for so deeply implanted is
the love for the dramatic art, alike in those whose vocation it is
to represent it and those who find enjoyment in seeing it, that it
continued thereafter, in some form or other, under the names of mimes,
masques, drolls, and other titles, to be exhibited throughout the
different countries of Europe by a strolling class of itinerants,
under the various names of gleemen, minstrels, joculators, and other
titles, on the village green, in the hall or courtyard of the castle,
in the city street,--a movable stage for the players being all that
was necessary,--and especially at the fairs, those gatherings of the
Middle Ages for commercial purposes, when amusement was one of the
attractions, whether it was a local fair in a town, or one of those
gatherings of people from many countries as at Beaucaire, in France.

But while the Church did not and could not suppress the practitioner,
as he was then called, of the “gay science,” it made him, for more than
a thousand years, a wanderer and a vagabond. The consolation which
religion affords to support us in our trials, cares, and troubles in
this life was denied him, except so far as he could find it solely
within himself; for he could participate in none of those rites or
acts of religious observance which the Church administers, and the
believer relies on, for securing a happy life hereafter. Upon his
death-bed no mark was made upon his forehead as the Church’s signet of
his repentance and hope of redemption, nor could he lie in consecrated
ground. If a woman who had been baptized married a player, she was
excommunicated; and so were any of the laity who went to any such
performances on a Sunday or a holiday, these being the only days when
the working classes, after doing their duty by attending mass, had
leisure for recreation.

After several centuries the Church, with a sagacity it has frequently
shown, finding that it could not suppress the players--that in all
countries they had the countenance and support of the common people,
who, unable to acquire knowledge by reading, except in very rare
instances, quickly comprehended a dramatic representation, and that
it made a great impression upon them,--determined to make use of the
very thing it had continued to denounce for centuries,--a play, as an
instrument in the hands of the Church for spreading and more deeply
impressing religion upon the unlettered classes, who then constituted
the great bulk of the community, by a representation, through its
instrumentality, of the miracles that had been wrought for the faith.
This afterwards was extended to the representation of the passion of
Christ and religious subjects generally, not only what appertained to
the history of the Church but to what was theological, under the titles
of miracle plays, mysteries, and moralities, to which a recent writer
has felicitously given the general name of the monastic drama.[27] This
resort to plays as a means of religious teaching was especially the
case from the tenth to the twelfth century. Monasteries and convents,
where the name of a play had been previously an abomination, now became
active centers in the production, preparation, and representation of
these mysteries and moralities on the part of monks and nuns. They were
written and acted by ecclesiastics, and when they were given--as they
frequently were--in churches, a bishop presided at the performance,
with his miter on and pastoral staff in hand. Even nuns wrote plays,
the Benedictine nun Hrotsvith, of Saxony, in the tenth century, being
celebrated for her plays, which were distinguishable for their purity
in respect to religion and morals, her knowledge of human nature, and
the dramatic interest she could impart to a scene. As the object was
to attract the common people as much as possible, and to do this it
was necessary to amuse and interest as well as to instruct them, these
representations were not limited to the serious or solemn, but were
freely interspersed with what was comic or amusing. When the devil,
and his attendant, named Vice, two characters that were frequently
represented in the action of the play, were confounded by some witty
retort, made ridiculous by a happy thrust of humor, or were outwitted
in their design by some clever trick, it may be assumed that the sleek
friar and the kindly nun laughed as heartily as any of the audience.
In the tenth century a miracle play called “The Deluge” was performed,
in which Noah’s wife refuses to go into the ark,--being represented,
as it would appear, as regarding it only as a shower,--and boxes her
husband’s ears when he attempts to compel her to; this display of
feminine pertinacity being what in theatrical parlance is regarded
as a hit. And in the twelfth century the Merchant Drapers’ Company
of London represented in a miracle play the Creation, and, that the
representation might be exact, our first parents appeared on the stage
without any covering whatever, which the Drapers’ Company, I suppose,
regarded as appropriately illustrating the necessity for that which
the merchant draper supplies; for I remember that at the celebration
in 1825 in New York of the completion of the Erie Canal the tailors
marched in that great procession with a huge banner, in which Adam and
Eve were represented in a like condition, with the words beneath, “Ye
were naked and we clothed you.”

The first theater in modern times, by which I mean a permanent
structure for such a purpose, in a fixed place, was erected in Paris
about the year 1400, by a body known as the Confraire de la Passion
de N. S., for the representation of the Scriptural mysteries. But
solemn as was the name given by the founders and their purpose in
building this theater, it would appear that in the course of time it
had to yield to the comic and the amusing, as much, and probably more
than the miracle plays, mysteries and moralities that had been long
established, for in the middle of the next century, that is in 1547,
it was suppressed by the Parliament for the scandal it created by what
Hallam calls “this devout buffoonery.”

These religious plays, however limited, extended, or different they may
have been, it appears to be conceded, gave rise to the modern drama,
and I think it very possible that the existence of the comic and the
tragic in the same play, which we find so marked in Shakespeare, and
which is so much nearer to what takes place in life than the French
classical drama of Corneille and Racine, may have been suggested to
Shakespeare by these early religious plays in which both were combined,
which he may frequently have witnessed, and probably did, as a boy.

But although this use of the drama was an aid to the Church, that
circumstance in no way affected or lessened the Church’s attitude
toward the players who acted profane plays, farces, interludes, or gave
any kind of dramatic entertainment of that description. It was right
to employ it on behalf of the Church, but to make any other use of it
was sinful and unlawful. So the player, or common player, as he was
called, to distinguish him from the histrionic assistant of the Church,
remained as he was before. So late even as the thirty-ninth year of
Elizabeth’s reign, a statute was passed declaring that common players
should be taken and adjudged to be rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy
beggars, etc., etc., and be subject to the penalties therein provided,
which Jeremy Collier declares were “infamous to the last degree, and
capital, too, unless they give over,” that is, were punishable with
death. But a reservation was made in favor of players that belonged to
a baron or other personage of high degree, who were authorized to play
under his signature and seal, by which an opening was left for the rise
and development of the great era in the dramatic history of England
that followed.

Notwithstanding, however, the persecution, penalties, hardships,
and sufferings to which the common players were subject, they clung
to their vocation with a tenacity that showed how strong was their
affection for it; that it was not only a means of livelihood, but the
one of all others they preferred, for to impart pleasure is as much of
an enjoyment as to receive it. But persistent as was this degradation
of the players, the Church and the law had to yield at last to the
inevitable. But how long this was in coming about, or how long the
effect of it prevented the player from being recognized as on the
same level with the rest of his fellow-men, may be illustrated by the
well-known anecdote of Garrick, when a chimney-sweep called out to his
fellow, “There goes Garrick the player,” and his companion responded,
“Hush, you don’t know what you may come to yourself.”

When we examine those treatises that have been written against the
stage, the material upon which they rely is almost invariably derived
from its abuse, without considering that that abuse is not due to
the theater as an institution, but to the state of society that
gives rise to it. Some writers are broad-minded enough to make this
discrimination; but the bulk of them do not, which this contrast will
sufficiently illustrate. Tertullian, writing about the beginning of the
third century, writes thus of the stage: “What, though the performance
may be in some measure pretty and entertaining--what, though innocence,
yes, and virtue, too, shines through some part of it! It is not the
custom to prepare poison unpalatable, nor make up ratsbane with rhubarb
and senna. No, to have the mischief speed, they must oblige the senses
and make the dose pleasant. Thus, the devil throws in a cordial drop
to make the draught go down, and steals some ingredients from the
dispensary of heaven. In short, look upon all the engaging sentences of
the stage--their flights of fortitude and philosophy, the loftiness of
their style, the music of the cadence, and the fineness of the conduct!
Look upon it only, I say, as honey dropping from the bowels of a toad,
or the bag of a spider.”[28] And fourteen hundred years afterward a
discrimination was made in a sermon by Archbishop Tillotson, one of
the most eminent of English divines, denouncing the licentiousness of
the English stage as it then existed, and the plays that were acted,
as a reproach to the nation, which was true; but in which he says that
to denounce the stage in general would not be just or reasonable; for,
he continues, “it is very possible that they” (the plays) “might be
so framed, and governed by such rules as not only to be innocently
diverting, but instructing and useful; to put some vices and follies
out of countenance, which cannot, perhaps, be so decently reproved nor
so effectually exposed and corrected in any other way.” But examples
like Tillotson’s, at least in England, have been rare. Even the great
Bossuet, as he has been called, one of, if not the most distinguished
of, French pulpit orators, and a prominent theological writer, was an
example of the opposite. An actor having some scruples of conscience
respecting his continuing in his profession, consulted a priest named
Caffaro, who, by his reasoning, appears not only to have removed the
actor’s scruples, but wrote a defense of the stage, which, not being
desirous of being known as the author, he published anonymously; and
when it was ascertained that he was the writer of it, the Archbishop of
Paris threatened to suspend him; and Bossuet wrote a pastoral letter
exhorting him to repent his mistake, and rescind his mischievous
opinions, which the priest accordingly did.[29]

While the stage may and does much to maintain a healthy moral feeling
in society, in the powerful effect that is produced by the dramatic
representation of virtuous deeds and of guilty actions, and the
consequences that attend the latter, as an institution the theater
does not retard society in its downward course, but may be said
rather to accelerate it. The players depend for their support upon
public patronage, and therefore court public favor, as when a nation
through luxury, or those causes that bring about national decay and
the consequences that follow it, or where a reaction takes place, as
it did in England from the reign of puritanism to the restoration
of the monarchy under Charles II., and from the example set by the
restored monarch, society, or rather what is called high society, as
a class, becomes corrupt and licentious, the theater caters to the
taste of those who are its chief patrons, as the theaters did then
by the production and representation mainly of comedies in which,
as Dr. Johnson expressed it, “the plot was an intrigue, and the wit
indecency,” and, as respects some of these comedies, indecency might be
extended to the word filth.

That great epoch that is distinguished as the Elizabethan drama,
which includes some of the highest efforts of the human intellect, is
embraced within the narrow limits of fifty-five years--or from Marlowe
to Shirley--that is, from the first representation of Marlowe’s
“Tamerlane,” in 1587, to the year 1642, when the act of Parliament was
passed forbidding the acting of plays in any part of England, upon
which Shirley ceased to write. It would seem to have begun to decline
in Ben Jonson’s life, for in the dedication to his play of “The Fox”
he says at that date, 1607, respecting the theater, “that nothing but
ribaldry, profanation, and blasphemy was practised,” and in respect to
himself, that he could with a clear conscience affirm that he “loathed
the use of such foul and unwashed bawdry as is now made the food of the
scene.”[30]

However this may have been, the condition of the stage had become
such as to arouse the opposition of the puritans, and in 1633 William
Prynne, a puritan barrister of Lincoln’s Inn, published a large volume
which he called “Histrio-Mastix. The Players’ Scourge, or the Actors’
Tragedy, in two books, in which it is largely evidenced by divers
arguments that popular stage plays are sinful, heathenish, lewd, and
ungodly spectacles,” a book more remarkable for the extensive erudition
of the author, or rather for his industry in bringing such a mass of
materials together, than for his arguments, which I shall not pause
now to enumerate, as they can be considered hereafter with those of
subsequent writers in the concrete, being all of the same general
character, and founded almost exclusively upon the abuses of the stage.

He was persecuted by the government for the publication of this work
and heavily punished, not so much, it was said, for what he had written
against the stage, as for passages in it that it was assumed were
intended to reflect upon Charles I. and his queen, Henrietta Maria. The
queen and her ladies had taken part in the performance of a play, and a
passage in the book reflecting upon actresses in general was construed
as an aspersion upon her, and a reference to Nero and other tyrants who
had failed to suppress the plays was supposed to have been aimed at the
king. He was tried in the Star Chamber and sentenced to be put in the
pillory, to have his ears cut off and be branded on the cheek with the
letters S. L. (signifying Seditious Libeller), expelled from Lincoln’s
Inn, deprived of his degree in the University of Oxford, and his book
was ordered to be burned by the common hangman, to all of which was
added a fine of £5,000, a large sum at that day, and be imprisoned for
life, all of which was vigorously carried out as far as it could be.
Upon the overthrow of Charles I. he was released by Parliament, the
sentence against him was declared to have been illegal, a sum of money
was voted to him by way of restitution, and, being a great favorite
with the people, alike from his sufferings and his writings, he was
elected a member of Parliament, where, strangely enough, he became a
strong antagonist of Cromwell and was in turn imprisoned by his own
party, became an advocate for the monarchy, was rewarded after the
Restoration by the office of Keeper of the Records of the Tower, and
dedicated one of his works to Charles II.

He is said to have written more than two hundred books, a remarkable
instance of fecundity, though many were, as I suppose, mere tracts or
pamphlets. And this curious incident in the history of literature in
respect to one of them, his work against the stage, “Histrio-Mastix,”
may be mentioned: that sixteen years after it was published, that is
in 1649, the year in which Charles I. was executed, an unknown writer,
with a view of depriving it of whatever influence it may have had,
published a book entitled “William Prynne, His Defence of Stage Plays,
a Retraction of a former work of his called Histrio-Mastix.” It would,
indeed, have been curious if a man who had written so bitterly as he
had against the stage, and had accumulated and printed such a mass of
learning to support the attack upon it, should have retracted all he
had said and come out as the author of a work in defense of the stage.
But it was a forgery; Prynne published afterwards what is called a
broadside, entitled “Mr. Prynne’s Vindication of himself from being the
author of The Defence of Stage Plays.”

It will not be necessary in a brief review like this to refer to what
many eminent men have said in favor of the stage, as my purpose has
been to consider the objections made against it, and it is the less
necessary as it has already been admirably done by John W. Calcraft,
manager of the Theater Royal of Dublin, in a volume entitled “A Defence
of the Stage,” published in that city in 1839. Calcraft was not only
a manager of a theater, but a man with a large amount of information
respecting the history of the drama, and a good classical scholar, who
was able to consult the authorities when requisite in the original.
He prefixes at the beginning of the book a list of those he cites or
quotes in it in favor of the stage, which, independent of literary
men and other writers, contains four cardinals, nine archbishops,
fourteen bishops, and forty-six divines, and among them are some of
the most eminent names in the church, as St. Thomas Aquinas, called
the Angelic Doctor, Albertus Magnus, St. Antoninus, Archbishop of
Florence, Melanchthon, and Martin Luther, the latter of whom writes:
“of all amusements the theater is the most profitable”; and it further
appears, on the authority of Baker’s Biographia Dramatica, that more
than one hundred clergymen in England have written plays. Calcraft also
gives a remarkable illustration of an attempt to carry out what writers
against the stage have earnestly advocated, the entire suppression
of the theater, as if all mankind were made like themselves, or were
capable of being made so. Charles Borromeo, Archbishop of Milan, in his
zeal for the security of the public morals, “shut up the play-house
and expelled the players, strollers, and minstrels as debauchers and
corrupters of mankind, but soon had reason to alter his opinion, for
he found that the people ran into all manner of excesses, and that,
wanting something to amuse them, they committed the most horrid crimes
by way of pastime. On this account he repented of his edict, recalled
the banished players, and granted them a free use and liberty of the
stage.”

The licentiousness of the theater after the Restoration had become such
as to call for some leading mind to appeal to the body of the English
people, who were then, as they have always been, a strong race to
bestir themselves in the cause of public morality, and such a one was
found in the Rev. Jeremy Collier, a man of learning and ability, who,
in 1698, published what he called “A Short View of the Immorality and
Profanity of the English Stage, together with the Sense of Antiquity
upon this Argument,” which brought about a reformation as rapid as
it was thorough. About one half the book was devoted to the English
stage as it then existed, and its contrast with that of antiquity,
very much to the discredit of the former, and to those who were then
thought so highly of as comic dramatists. Collier was a fine classical
scholar, and so familiar with the Greek dramatists and with Terence
and Plautus among the Romans, as well as with all the leading comedies
produced after the Restoration, that he was able to compare these
comedies, passage by passage, with the Latin and Greek dramatists, and
thereby furnish unanswerable proof, not only of their inferiority, but
of the degraded character of the plays then produced on the English
stage, when compared with the productions of the Greek and Roman
dramatists. He showed in respect to the stage, in different chapters,
its immodesty, its profaneness, its ridicule of the clergy, and its
encouragement of immorality so completely that there was no replying to
it. Dryden, who was a leading playwright at the time, yielded at once,
not attempting to defend himself; on the contrary, he even thanked
Collier for his treatment of him, complaining only of his roughness.
Congreve undertook to reply, but it was a failure, and that he felt
that Collier was right appears in the fact that in a subsequent
edition of his plays he left out many offensive passages.

Collier’s strength lay in the truth of what he said about the condition
of the English stage at that time, and in the fact that he was a
learned man, which, in itself, inspired respect, and enabled him to
cope with any general scholar who should attempt to answer him. The
result was, that his book aroused the people, and the nation went with
him in effecting a reform that has lasted ever since.

But he did not confine himself to the immorality and profanity of the
English stage, but extended his attack to the stage in general. He
devoted the latter part of his book to copious quotations from pagan
writers, from the fathers of the church, and from the laws that had to
be passed respecting plays, to show, as he expressed it, that they “had
generally been looked upon as the nurseries of vice, the corrupters
of youth, and the grievance of the country where they are suffered.”
It was my impression at first that a man so thoroughly well informed
respecting the history of the theater in antiquity could discriminate
between its use and its abuse as its condition was then in England, and
that he made his assault upon it general that it might have more effect
than if he admitted any qualification whatever, in the expectation that
its chief patrons, who were then what are called the higher classes,
would cease to attend the representation of these comedies whose
immorality and profaneness he had so unanswerably shown, and that in
time by this means the theater would gradually correct itself. But a
more careful perusal of the book, and a consideration of the labor he
bestowed in getting together whatever he could find from any source
against it as an institution, show that his aim was the impossible--to
abolish the theater altogether--that he was in full accord with the
pithy St. Augustine that sinners “fancy the world goes wonderfully well
when people make a figure; when a man is a prince in his fortune and a
beggar in his virtue; has a great many fine things about him, but not
so much as one good quality to deserve them; when the play-house goes
up and religion goes down; when prodigality is admired and charity is
laughed at; when the players can revel with a rich man’s purse and the
poor man has scarcely enough to keep soul and body together”; and with
St. Hierom in his caution to ladies to have “nothing to do with the
play-house, because it sets all humors at work, caresses the fancy, and
makes pleasure a conveyance to destruction.”

Collier divides this portion of his subject into three parts: the
opinion of philosophers, orators, poets, and historians of antiquity;
the opinion of the church; and that of the state as shown in the laws
enacted against theaters. In making these quotations he frequently does
what some advocates do, quotes so much as supports his argument and
omits what qualifies or limits it. Thus, when he quotes from Plutarch
that plays are dangerous to corrupt young people, and when they grow
bawdy or licentious they should be checked, he omits the further
observation of the great biographer, that he thought plays useful to
polish the manners and instil the principles of virtue,[31] and, while
giving what Cicero says of licentious plays as an authority against the
institution of the theater, makes no mention of the fact that Roscius
was an intimate friend of Cicero, and that it is to Cicero we are
chiefly indebted for our knowledge of the greatness of the Roman actor
and of the purity of his private life.

In considering the objections that have been made to the stage, it will
not be necessary to particularize them, as they are founded almost
entirely upon its abuses, in respect to which it is sufficient to say
that nearly all things have their abuses; and, as Calcraft put it, to
insist that the stage should be abolished and its _use_ denied because
of its _abuse_ would be about as reasonable as to denounce the pulpit
because there have been rebellious and heterodoxical preachers; to
proscribe the bench because there have been corrupt and unjust judges,
and periods of the venal administration of the judiciary; or dispense
with the art of printing because by its means immoral books have been
circulated. This will dispense with the necessity of enumerating the
objections made by subsequent writers, such as the Rev. Arthur Bedford,
Bossuet, Witherspoon, Law, and a few others, the first of whom,
Bedford, published, in 1719, what he called “A Serious Remonstrance in
behalf of the Christian Religion against the horrid blasphemies, and
impurities, which are still used in the English Play-houses, being a
new edition of the Evil of Stage Plays,” in which he is said to have
cited seven thousand lewd and criminal passages out of plays of the
then current century, displaying, in my opinion, rather a prurient
curiosity than a labor on behalf of public morality, on the part of a
clergyman who might have been better employed; and as respects what has
been advanced by other writers against the theater as an institution,
that is concisely, energetically, and fully expressed in Collier’s
final conclusion, the whole of which I shall not give in detail, but
sufficient to state what it was.

“My conclusion,” he says, “is let nobody go to the Infamous _Play
House_, A place of such staring contradiction to the Strictness and
Sobriety of Religion A Place hated by God and haunted by the Devil.
Let no man I say learn to relish any thing that’s said there; For ’tis
all but poison handsomely prepared.” He objects to plays as “dilating
so much on the passion of love, which is a cunning way of stealing on
the blind side and practising upon the weakness of human nature,” that
“people love to see their passions painted no less than their persons,
that recommends the business of amours and engages inclination. It
forms passions where it does not find them. Love has a parley within,
and when the wax is prepared the impression is easily made, and when
these passions are born they thrive extremely in that nursery. They
grow strong, and when the passions are up in arms there is a mighty
contest between duty and inclination.” He further objects to plays as
encouraging the passion of revenge as nothing is more common in their
action than duels or quarrels among the leading characters. “Practices”
he says, “that are infamous in reason, capital in law, and damnable
in religion, are to the credit of the stage, and Rage and Resentment,
Blood and Barbarity are deified.” “What must we say,” he continues,
“of the more foul representations, of all the impudence in language
and gesture, can this stuff be the inclination of ladies? Is vice
so entertaining, and do they love to see the stews depicted before
them. One would think the dishonor of their own Sex the Discovery of
so much lewdness, and the treating of Human Nature so very coarsely
could have little satisfaction in it.”... “Call you this Diversion?
Can Profaneness be such an irresistible Delight?... Is the Scorn of
Christianity the Entertainment of Christians? Is it such a pleasure
to hear the Scriptures burlesqued? Is Ribaldry so very obliging and
Atheism so charming a Quality? Are we indeed willing to quit the
Privilege of our Nature; to Surrender our Charter of Immortality and
throw up the Pretenses to another Life?” And he winds up his conclusion
in these words: “In short: Nothing can be more disserviceable to
Probity and religion than the management of the _stage_. It cherishes
those Passions, and rewards those Vices which ’tis the business of
Reason to discountenance. It strikes at the Root of Principle draws
off the Inclinations from Virtue and spoils good Education, ’tis the
most effectual means to baffle the Force of Discipline, to emasculate
people’s Spirits and Debauch their Manners.”

It is sufficient to say in answer to all this, that an examination
of the history of the English and American stage for the two hundred
years that have elapsed since these words were written, shows that
it has had no such effect, that it has been a rational source of
amusement that has been beneficial and not injurious to society. It is
the most attractive of all amusements, and that this attraction, as an
amusement, has continued to increase, or, at least, has not diminished,
would seem to appear from the number of theaters there is now in
London, in New York, in Paris, and in other cities of Europe.

It is notable that plays which combine enjoyment with a healthy
moral effect are now very much liked, such as Denman Thompson’s “Old
Homestead,” Mr. Heme’s “Shore Acres,” and Mr. John Hare’s “Pair of
Spectacles,” and plays of a like character that have within the present
period been produced in the city of New York by these three managers,
Messrs. Augustin Daly, Dan’l Frohman, and A. M. Palmer; and that a
taste in this country has been widely diffused for what is exalted in
the drama, is found in the fact that crowded audiences, for a hundred
nights consecutively, went to see Edwin Booth perform the principal
part in a tragedy of so high a character as Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.”

Another feature in this history of the last two centuries, and
especially since the days of John Kemble, and his distinguished sister,
Mrs. Siddons, is that the player is no longer a wandering vagabond, or
one looked down upon because his sole vocation in life is to minister
to our pleasures, but one who is as much respected as any other member
of the community, unless he does something individually to forfeit that
respect. No player at the present day has, in respect to his vocation,
to exclaim against fortune as Shakespeare did in his 99th sonnet:

  The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
  That did not better for my life provide,
  Than public means which public manners breeds,
  Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
  And almost thence my nature is subdued,
  To what it works in like the dyer’s hand.

All this is now completely changed, as is shown conclusively by the
circumstance that Sir Henry Irving has been honored by being raised
to the dignity of a knight for his eminence as an actor. We are, in
this respect, where Greece was when the drama had reached its highest
perfection:--when Æschylus, who was an actor as well as dramatist,
commanded as an officer on the field of Marathon, where his exploits
and those of his brother were so remarkable that they were commemorated
by a descriptive painting in the theater of Athens; when Neoptolemus,
a celebrated tragic actor, was sent as one of the ambassadors to
conclude a treaty of peace with Philip; when Aristodemus, another great
tragic actor, was prominent in the political affairs of his time, was
also employed upon an embassy, and, on the proposal of Demosthenes,
was honored with a golden crown for his public services;[32] and when
Æschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles produced those plays that have ever
since been the admiration of mankind.

Dr. Franklin wished that he could, after a hundred years, return again
to this earth to see what science in the meanwhile had accomplished,
and could Collier return after the histrionic experience of the last
two centuries, it would be to see how unfounded were his conclusions
respecting the theater as an institution, and will ever be among any
people while the nation remains in a healthy condition.

In conclusion, we may say of the drama, that with the four other arts
of poetry, music, sculpture, and painting, it has been the natural
outcome of civilization; that as things that are general have always
their exceptions, there may have been races, as the Egyptians appear
to have been, who, in the development of their civilization, showed
no aptitude or desire for it; that its peculiar attraction is, as
Lord Bacon says: “That it brings the past before us as if it were the
present;” and as respects the present, that it is what Shakespeare and
Addison declared it to be, the mirror of human nature.


FOOTNOTES:

[23] I consulted Dr. Dickerman, the most eminent Egyptologist in this
country, upon this subject, and his observation was this: The state
of mind and the condition of society of the ancient Egyptians were
not such as would incline them to theatrical representations. They
had athletic sports, games, such as draughts or checkers, and games
of chance, but not such a disposition as brought people together to
witness anything. None of the buildings whose ruins have been studied
indicate that any were constructed with reference to the assembling
of people, except the processions, with priests, in the temples, and
that the Labyrinth, moreover, in the twelfth dynasty, contemporary with
Abraham, had meetings of the delegates from the different nomes, or
provinces, to discuss the political affairs of the kingdom.

[24] Smith’s Dictionary, Vol. iii, p. 997.

[25] Gibbon says the Roman people considered the circus as their
home, their temple, and the seat of the republic. The impatient crowd
rushed at the dawn of day to secure their places; and there were many
who passed sleepless and anxious nights in the adjacent porticos.
From the morning to the evening, careless of the sun or of the rain,
the spectators, who sometimes amounted to the number of four hundred
thousand, remained in eager attention; their eyes fixed on the horses
and charioteers, their minds agitated with hope and fear, for the
success of the colors which they espoused and the happiness of Rome
appeared to hang on the event of a race. “Gibbon’s Decline and Fall,”
Vol. iv. pp. 87, 88. London edition of 1848.

[26] Collier, 256, 1st. ed.

[27] Prof. A. W. Ward.

[28] Jeremy Collier’s “View of the English Stage,” 1st ed., p. 258.

[29] Bossuet’s Works, Vol. xxxii. Calcraft’s “Defence of the Stage,” p.
12.

[30] Gifford’s “Jonson,” Vol. iii., pp. 162, 163.

[31] Calcraft, p. 61.

[32] Smith’s “Dictionary,” Vol. i, p. 42; Calcraft, 67.




Transcriber’s Notes

A few minor errors in punctuation have been fixed.

Page 14: “had ben formed” changed to “had been formed”

Page 29: “high healed-shoes” changed to “high heeled-shoes” “at the
Appolo” changed to “at the Apollo”

Page 39: “who looked radidiantly” changed to “who looked radiantly”

Page 50: “a tradgedy” changed to “a tragedy”

Page 65: “not heard her” changed to “not heard of her”

Page 80: “with pledty of material” changed to “with plenty of material”

Page 83: “either for stage represention” changed to “either for stage
representation”

Page 93: The spelling of Euripides was fixed.

The author appears to have made a few errors while transcribing
sections of other works. These have been left as in the original.

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