By Authority./Never Performed before./By the American Company,/at the New Theatre, in Southwark,/On Friday, the Twenty-fourth of April, will be/presented, A Tragedy written by the late ingenious/Mr. Thomas Godfrey, of this city, called the/Prince of Parthia./The Principal Characters by Mr. Hallam,/Mr. Douglass, Mr. Wall, Mr. Morris,/Mr. Allyn, Mr. Tomlinson, Mr. Broad/belt, Mr. Greville, Mrs. Douglass,/Mrs. Morris, Miss Wainwight, and/Miss Cheer./To which will be added, A Ballad Opera called/The Contrivances./To begin exactly at Seven o'clock.—Vivant Rex & Regina./
In the Pennsylvania Gazette, for the same date, appears an advertisement, without the cast of characters.
The production occurred on April 24, 1767.
Seilhamer gives a probable cast of characters, although only the list of actors is given in the advertisement. Apart from this, little is known of the production: whether or not it pleased the theatre-goers of the time. We can judge, however, from the reading of the play itself, that there was little of extreme dramatic excellence in the situations, the chief claim, from the actor's point of view, being the opportunity to deliver certain very highly coloured, poetical lines modelled after the manner of the Elizabethan drama.
In the publication of "The Prince of Parthia," we have the first printed American tragedy in existence, and in its production we have one of only two plays, written by Americans, and presented on the stage before the Revolution. The other play is George Cockings's "The Conquest of Canada; or, The Siege of Quebec," printed for the author in 1766, and presented in Philadelphia in 1773. We note, in Dr. F. W. Atkinson's estimable Bibliography of American Plays in his possession, that Cockings later described himself as "Camillo Querno, Poet Laureate to Congress."
The interest in the early history of the American drama, which has become evident within recent years, and nowhere more evident than among the student body in our American colleges, induced the Zelosophic Literary Society, encouraged by the University of Pennsylvania, to revive "The Prince of Parthia," which was written by one of their alumni. The production was consummated on March 26, 1915. Even though we have no statement as to the actual manner in which the Douglass Company presented the play originally, we are given every evidence, by those who witnessed the revival, that the play, while containing many excellences, was not of a dramatic character according to modern ideas of stage effectiveness.
The only portrait of Godfrey known to have been in existence was that painted by Benjamin West, in his earlier years. It is interesting to note that in commemoration of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the original production of this play, Dr. Archibald Henderson, of the University of North Carolina, issued an édition de luxe of "The Prince of Parthia," with an extended introduction, historical, biographical and critical (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1917).
FOOTNOTES:
[1] A notice appeared in the Pennsylvania Gazette, December 19, 1749. See Scharf and Westcott's "History of Philadelphia" for references to Godfrey, Sr. Therein is given a picture of his house in Germantown, Pa. Barlow mentions him in his "Columbiad." A monument to his memory was erected in Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia, 1843. Note that David Rittenhouse, an American dramatist who translated, from the German, "Lucy Sampson; or, The Unhappy Heiress" (1789), was likewise a mathematical genius.