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The Achievements of the Douglass Company in North America: 1758–1774

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2010

David D. Mays
David D. Mays
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of Theatre Arts and Humanities at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.
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Extract

On Monday, October 16, 1758., Hugh Gaine reported a novelty. “Friday last,” he told his readers in the New-York Mercury, “arrived here from the West Indies, a Company of Comedians; some Part of which were here in the Year 1753.” This brief notice, which went on to assure its readers that the company had “an ample Certificate of their Private as well as publick Qualifications,” marks the beginning of the most significant event in American theatre history: the establishment of the professional theatre on this continent. The achievements of the Company of Comedians during its sixteen-year residence in North America are virtually without parallel in the history of the theatre, and have not received sufficient recognition by historians and scholars.

Type
Research Article
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , November 1982 , pp. 141 - 149
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1982

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References

NOTES

1 The New-York Gazette, 16 October 1758.

2 Wright, Richardson, Revels in Jamaica (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1937), pp. 34–58Google Scholar, passim.

3 The Newport [Rhode Island] Mercury, 10 August 1761.

4 The New-York Gazette, 28 December 1761.,

5 The Pennsylvania Gazette, 22 January 1767.

6 The New-York Mercury, 28 December 1761.

7 The Newport [Rhode Island] Mercury, 3 November 1761.

8 The Pennsylvania Gazette, 6 December 1759.

9 The New-York Mercury, 1 February 1762.

10 The New-York Mercury, 28 December 1761.

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid.

13 The Newport [Rhode Island] Mercury, 10 August 1761.

14 The South Carolina Gazette and Country Journal, 6 May 1773.

15 The South Carolina Gazette and Country Journal, 13 August 1773.

16 Bost, James S., Monarchs of the Mimic World (Orono: The University of Maine at Orono, 1977), p. 131.Google Scholar

17 Rankin, Hugh S., The Theatre in Colonial America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965), p. 28Google Scholar, also pp. 84–125 passim.

18 The New-York Mercury, 6 November 1758.

19 The New-York Mercury! 18 December 1758.

20 Lillo, George, The London Merchant. McBurney, William H., ed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965), p. 59.Google Scholar

21 Rowe, Nicholas, The Tragedy of Jane Shore. 3rd edition (London, 1720), p. 12.Google Scholar

22 Oldschool, Oliver, Esq. “Theatrical Review, No. 1” The Portfolio, 3 January 1802, p. 4.Google Scholar Quoted in Bost, Monarchs …, p. 138.

23 The New-York Mercury, 3 May 1762.

24 The New-York Mercury, 10 May 1762.

25 Leonard Welsted, “Prologue to The Conscious Lovers.”In SirSteele, Richard, The Conscious Lovers, Kenny, Shirley Strum, ed. (Lincoln: The University of Nebraska Press, 1968), p. 8.Google Scholar

26 “Prologue to The Disappointment” (New York, 1767). In Mays, David, ed., The Disappointment, or, The Force of Credulity (Gainesville: The University Presses of Florida, 1976), p. 43.Google Scholar