degrading yet admirable transition - he became a driveller. In short, his face was what he obliged you to fancy it - age, youth, plenty, poverty, everything it assumed." Goldsmith goes so far as to declare of Garrick, that "On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting, 'Twas only that when he was off he was acting." Dr. Johnson's pronouncement about his old friend: Here is a man who has advanced the dignity of his profession; Garrick has made a player a higher character," ,"1 is borne out by the honour once paid to this actor at the hands of Parliament. It happened that he was the sole occupant of the gallery in the Commons, one night of 1777, during a very fierce discussion between two members, one of whom, noticing his presence, moved that the "gallery should be cleared." Burke thereupon sprang to his feet, and appealing to the House in that strain of eloquence which Americans particularly have reason to remember, argued that Garrick, the great master of oratory, one to whom they all owed much and to whom he, Burke, felt the deepest indebtedness, be exempted from the general order that strangers leave the house. Fox and Townshend followed in similar vein, characterizing the ex-actor (for Garrick had by this time 1 1 Writing of Garrick's death, Hannah More says: "I can truly bear this testimony to his memory, that I never witnessed in any family more decorum, propriety and regularity than in his; where I never saw a card, or even met (except in one instance) a person of his own profession at his table, of which Mrs. Garrick, by her elegance of taste, her correctness of manners and very original turn of humour, was the brightest ornament." been many years off the stage) as their " great preceptor." Whereupon David Garrick was permitted to remain in the House of Parliament after the House had been cleared. Garrick, of course, was a wonderful stage manager as well as an incomparable actor. And he was also a playwright of no mean ability, as Americans early discovered. His farce, "The Lying Valet," was one of the first pieces put on in the South by those confusing companies of "Virginia Comedians," for whom conflicting historians variously claim histrionic precedence in America. That Garrick was being played at Annapolis three months earlier than the date long accepted as the natal day of American drama is, however, easily demonstrable. For in the Maryland Gazette of June 18, 1752 may be read the following: By Permission of his Honor, the At the New Theatre in Annapolis by the Company of Comedians from THE BEGGAR'S OPERA, likewise a Farce called THE LYING VALET To begin precisely at 7 o'clock. Tickets to be had at the printing office. Box, 10s. Pit, 7s. 6d. No person to be admitted behind the scenes. N. B. The Company immediately intend to Upper Marlborough, as soon as they have done performing here, where they intend to play as long as they meet with encouragment and so on to Piscataway and Port Tobacco. And hope to give satisfaction to the Gentlemen and Ladies in each place, that will favor them with their company. Dunlap, generally accepted as the historian of the American stage, from the appearance of his book1 in 1832, until 1888,- when George O. Seilhamer in his exhaustive work on the beginnings of the drama in America came along and proved that "most of Dunlap's history was fiction," - did not realize, apparently, that Garrick was thus related to early American drama. For Dunlap was perfectly satisfied with his own firm belief that the drama was introduced into this country by William Hallam, the successor of Garrick at Goodman's Field Theatre, who in 1752 formed a joint stock company which he sent to America under the management of his brother, Lewis Hallam. The first play ever acted in America was the "Merchant of Venice," Mr. Dunlap confidently asserted, and this was given by the Hallam Company on September 5, 1752, at Williamsburg, then the capital of Virginia, in an old storehouse which had been converted into a theatre. Seilhamer proves, however, that plays were being acted in the South, as has been shown, some time before the advent 1"A History of The American Theatre," by William Dunlap, New York, 1832. of the Hallams; and proves, too, that both in New York and in Philadelphia regularly established companies were performing plays at least two years before the Hallams came over. Credit is due to an eminent jurist, the late Charles P. Daly,1 for finding traces of even earlier theatrical performances in America than any of these. He discovered 2 evidence, from an advertisement, of the existence of some kind of theatre in New York, nineteen years before Hallam arrived in this country. This advertisement reads as follows: "To be Sold at Reasonable Rates, all Sorts of Household Goods, viz. Beds, Chairs, Tables, Chests of Drawers, Looking Glasses, Andirons and Pictures as also several sorts of Druggs and Medicines, also a Negro Girl about 16 years of age, has had the small-pox and is fit for Town or Country. Enquire of George Talbot, next Door to the Play-House." (New York Gazette, October 15, 1733.) That this theatre had opened December 6, 1732, with Farquhar's comedy, "The Recruiting Officer," a long overlooked paragraph in the New England and Boston Gazette of January 1, 1733, has since established. Seilhamer stoutly maintains that dramatic history in America began with the production of Addison's "Cato" in Philadelphia in August, 1749, quoting in 1" When Was The First Play Produced in America?" by Charles P. Daly. T. Allston Brown claims to have published in the New York Clipper, seventeen years earlier than the appearance of Judge Daly's article, the discovery that the first theatre in America was opened in 1732. support of his assertion the following entry in a manuscript journal left by John Smith, a son-in-law of James Logan: Sixth month (August) 22d, 1749. — Joseph Morris and I happened in at Peacock Bigger's, and drunk tea there, and his daughter being one of the company who were going to hear the tragedy of Cato acted, it occasioned some conversation in which I expressed my sorrow that anything of the kind was encouraged." The background of this pioneer dramatic undertaking was "Plumstead's Store," and the company appears to have been made up, in part at least, of actors who had had some experience in England. There is every reason to suppose that it was this same little band of Thespians who, on March 5, 1750, gave in New York the first professional performance of Shakespeare which can be indisputably ascribed to America. In the Weekly Postboy of February 26, the company announced their arrival from Philadelphia and stated that a room on Nassau Street had been taken for a playhouse. The play chosen for the initial program was Colley Cibber's version of "King Richard III," Thomas Kean acting the part of the humpbacked tyrant. This season was not a long one, though a variety of pieces were played, and at its close there were given a number of benefits, one of them being for the Widow Osborne, described in an advertisement as a person who had met "with divers late Hardships and Misfortunes" for which it was hoped that "all Charitable Benevolent Ladies and others will favor her with their Company." Not yet, however, was the drama |