Fields"; Funk and Wagnalls Company for quotation privileges in connection with John Ranken Towse's "Sixty Years of the Theatre"; Miss Marian Spitzer, author, and the Saturday Evening Post, publishers, for permission to reproduce the incident about Queen Victoria and the American minstrels; also Harper and Brothers for permission to quote George M. Cohan's "Twenty Years on Broadway," Arthur Hobson Quinn's "History of the American Drama," Lawrence Hutton's "Curiosities of the American Stage" and "Charles Frohman, Manager and Man," written by Isaac F. Marcosson and Daniel Frohman. J. Frank Davis, who recently contributed to Scribner's Magazine a delightful article on "Tom Shows," has also been most courteous and helpful, as has Eola Willis, whose monumental work on "The Charleston Stage in the XVII Century" (published by the State Company of Columbia, South Carolina) will long remain a mine of valuable information for workers studying the history of the theatre in the South. I am glad to thank, too, Lyon Gardiner Tyler for an elusive bit of information in regard to the actress-wife of his brother, - that lady who as Mrs. Robert Tyler became briefly mistress of the White House. And now a word or two concerning the method I have followed. This book was never meant to be a history of the theatre; the utmost to which it aspired was historical accuracy in its somewhat eclectic survey of the whole field. And since obviously it could not be contemporary in treatment, the fairest way to approach the subject of the development of the theatre in America seemed to me to be from the standpoint of dominant personalities and general tendencies. This was also the natural method for the reason that, for many years, the actors were the theatre. So, more especially as I have prepared for the new edition material covering the birth and growth of minstrelsy and its ramifications, and the development of the theatre along our western and southern frontiers, I have let the minstrels and the managers speak for themselves, feeling that in this way the color and movement bound up in the very practice of the actor's profession might be best preserved. Happily, a number of books have recently appeared from the pens of contemporary players, and such works have been of immense assistance in presenting first-hand impressions of our stage. To these actors, turned authors for the nonce, as to those player-folk of yesterday and the day before, who dared greatly and endured much for the sake of the work they loved, I trust the present volume may help to bring its quota of deserved recognition. BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS, July, 1925 M. C. C. Wahr III RISE OF THE THEATRE AS AN AMERICAN INSTI- IV THE CURIOUS ADVENTURES OF CERTAIN EARLY VII EDWIN FORREST AS ACTOR AND MAN VIII A PLAYER WHO INSPIRED A SONG AND ANOTHER ILLUSTRATIONS Julia Marlowe as Katharine in "The Taming of the John Drew and Ada Rehan in the Daly revival of "The Playbill for New York performance in 1750 of Otway's William Dunlap, first American man of letters to make play-writing a profession Scene from "The Contrast" From a drawing by Dunlap 61 80 81 94 95 • 95 |