THE FIRST AMERICAN THEATRE

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THE FIRST AMERICAN THEATRE

[size=-2]This document was written by Arthur Hornblow and originally published in A History of the Theatre in America, Vol. 1. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1919. pp. 21-40.

The history of the theatre in America begins early in the Eighteenth Century, about the time the first rumblings were heard of the storm which was to break the ties still holding the Colonies to the mother country.
William Dunlap, the earliest historian of the American stage, tells us that the drama was first introduced in this country by the Hallams in the year 1752 when they brought over a company from London and presented The Merchant of Venice at Williamsburg, then the capital of Virginia, in a building arranged for that purpose. \"This,\" says Dunlap, \"was the first theatre opened in America by a company of regular comedians.\" This singularly misleading statement is perhaps the most conspicuous of a number of similar erroneous assertions which mar an otherwise valuable and interesting work. [1] Dunlap ignored or was uninformed of a number of well authenticated dramatic performances which had been given in different parts of the Colonies many years before the arrival of the Hallams. Apparently, he knew nothing of the theatre built in Williamsburg, VA., in 1716. He had no knowledge of the theatre opened in New York in 1732. He makes no mention of the opening of the Playhouse in Dock Street, Charleston, S.C., in 1736. [2] He had never heard of Thomas Kean who acted Richard III at the First Nassau Street Theatre, New York, March 5, 1750.
Even so careful an historian as Joseph N. Ireland falls into the error of taking it for granted that no earlier records existed because he had not happened to stumble upon them. In his Records of the New York Stage, [3] referring to an advertisement in Bradford's Gazette of October, 1733, which mentions George Talbot's store as being \"next door to the Playhouse,\" he says, \"No other reference has been found respecting it (the Playhouse) and any conjecture as to its proprietors, its performers, or the plays presented therein would be vain and fruitless.\"
How little \"vain and fruitless\" may be judged from that fact that today we not only know what play was performed in this New York theatre of 1732, but also who some of the players were.
Virginia has some claim to be considered the cradle of the native American theatre, but 1752 was not the date of the drama's birth in this country. There were theatrical performances in Williamsburg and acting in New York by professional players many years earlier than that. We know that a regular theatre was built in Williamsburg and performances given as early as 1716. We also know that Murray and Kean's troupe of professional players acted Richard III iin Williamsburg some time before the Hallams arrived and presented The Merchant of Venice. In fact, the Hallams used the same theatre that the Murray-Kean company had recently occupied.
In view of the more than scant information regarding plays and players in the pre-Revolutionary newspapers and chronicles of the time, it would be an impossible task to attempt to ascertain when or where the first theatrical performance took place on the North American continent. It is likely that there were scattered dramatic performances of a sort in all the Colonies many years before we have any records of them, particularly in the South where the prejudice against the stage was less violent than in the North, but singularly enough it is in the Puritanical New England provinces that we find the first actual records of public theatricals, and in Quaker Philadelphia that the drama first found a permanent home.
That so little should be known of the early beginnings of the acted drama in America is not surprising when one considers the intolerance of the age against the theatre and the player. In face of the almost general condemnation of the playhouse the journals of the day were not encouraged to give much, if any, space in their slender columns to the doings of player-folk. It was also the custom at that time for the actors themselves to distribute handbills at the houses of prospective theatre goers, and thus stir up interest in the coming performance, instead of depending solely on newspaper advertising as is the modern practice. These reasons, perhaps, sufficiently explain the almost total absence of theatrical news in the pre-Revolutionary newspapers, a fact which has rendered exceedingly difficult the researches of the historian.
In the South the Colonists had imported a taste for the drama together with their other English customs, but in the North the playhouse was still considered the highway to hell and was everywhere fiercely condemned if not actually forbidden under the severest penalties. In 1750 the General Court of Massachusetts passed an act prohibiting stage plays and theatrical entertainments of any kind. On May 31, 1759, the House of Representatives in the Colony of Pennsylvania passed a law forbidding the showing and acting of plays under a penalty of