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]
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.