This is one of an edition of two hundred andsixty copies printed from type for the Dunlap Societyin the month of May, 1896.
FIRST THEATER IN AMERICA
Charles P. Daly LL.D.
Chief Judge of the New York Common Pleas.
President of the American Geographical Society Vc.
FIRST THEATER IN AMERICA
WHEN WAS THE DRAMA FIRST INTRODUCED IN AMERICA?
An Inquiry
BY
HON. CHARLES P. DALY, LL. D.
INCLUDING
A CONSIDERATION OF THE OBJECTIONS THAT HAVE BEEN MADE TO THE STAGE
NEW-YORK
THE DUNLAP SOCIETY
1896
Copyright, 1896, by Charles P. Daly.
INTRODUCTION.
The paper here reprinted by the Dunlap Society was read before theNew York Historical Society more than thirty years ago. In lookingthrough the files of Colonial newspapers in the possession of thatinstitution for another purpose, my attention was called by the lateThomas F. De Voe, who devoted his leisure largely to the examination ofColonial newspapers, and especially those of Colonial New York, to anadvertisement showing that there was a theater in the City of New Yorkanterior to the arrival of the company that, as Dunlap expressed it,“planted the drama in America.” I followed up Mr. De Voe’s discovery bygoing over the Colonial newspapers of New York in the possession of theHistorical Society for further information, and embodied the result inthe paper read before that body. The paper was published at the timein the “New York Evening Post,” and a limited number of copies of itwere printed by that journal in pamphlet form. In expressing a wishto reprint it the Dunlap Society requested that I would augment theinformation by an account of what has since been ascertained upon thesubject, a request with which I have complied by adding it at the endas a supplement, preferring that the paper should remain as it appearedoriginally.
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