Black Horse Tavern, Salem, Massachusetts.
One intelligent chronicler relates:—
“The taverns of Boston were the original business Exchanges; they combined the Counting House, the Exchange-office, the Reading-room, and the Bank: each represented a locality. To the Lamb Tavern, called by the sailors ‘sheep’s baby,’ people went ‘to see a man from Dedham’—it was the resort of all from Norfolk County. The old Eastern Stage House in Ann Street was frequented by ‘down Easters,’ captains of vessels, formerly from the Penobscot and Kennebec; there were to be seen groups of sturdy men seated round an enormous fire-place, chalking down the price of bark and lumber, and shippers bringing in a vagrant tarpaulin to ‘sign the articles.’ To the Exchange Coffee-House resorted the nabobs of Essex County; here those aristocratic eastern towns, Newburyport and Portsmouth, were represented by ship owners and ship builders, merchants of the first class.”
The first attempt at the production of plays in New England was a signal for prompt and vital opposition. Little plays called drolls were exhibited in the taverns and coffee-houses; such plays as Pickle Herring, Taylor riding to Brentford, Harlequin and Scaramouch. About 1750 two young English strollers produced what must have been a mightily bald rendering of Otway’s Orphans in a Boston coffee-house; this was a step too far in frivolity, and stern Boston magistrates took rigid care there were no more similar offences. Many ingenious ruses were invented and presented to the public to avoid the hated term and conceal the hated fact of play acting. “Histrionic academies” were a sneaking introduction of plays. In 1762 a clever but sanctimonious manager succeeded in crowding his company and his play into a Newport tavern. Here is his truckling play-bill:—
“KINGS ARMS TAVERN NEWPORT RHODE ISLAND
On Monday, June 10th, at the Public Room of the Above Inn will be delivered a series of
Moral Dialogues
In Five Parts
Depicting the evil effects of jealousy and other bad passions and Proving that happiness can only spring from the pursuit of Virtue.
Mr. Douglass—Will represent a noble magnanimous Moor called Othello, who loves a young lady named Desdemona, and, after he marries her, harbours (as in too many cases) the dreadful passion of jealousy.