MEETING #1684

4:00 P.M.

May 8, 2003

The Players Have Arrived ...
Bring the Tomatoes

by Paul J. Little Ph.D.

Assembly Room, A. K. Smiley Public Library

Synopsis

Of the several forces at work in the shaping of the theatre in Colonial America, English culture was the most pronounced. The theatre was not instantly a part of the social life of the new world towns. Two of the first important American plays written and produced after the Revolutionary War treated the specific problem of American emulation of English social fashion. It satirized the American proclivity for aping the snobbish patterns of English societal forms. It was most important, however, for its introduction into American theatrical literature of the first uniquely American theatre personality, the Yankee. Throughout the southern colonies, the English born-and-trained clergy of the Established Church had a controlling influence on the cultural development of the area. In spite of these areas of independence, the northern colonies did not achieve cultural immunity from the influence of England. In the middle colonies of New York and Pennsylvania, the English cultural influence was equally formative. Trade relations between Philadelphia and England were not as extensive as those between London and Virginia or South Carolina. The theatre that soon emerged in the prospering colonies also betrayed itself as the transplanted fruit of an English institution. "Even the patterns of audience conduct emulated those of the English playhouse. The Southern disposition toward the theatre was the result of an imported taste, which reflected its cultural dependence on England. Theatre in the North was fiercely condemned if not actually forbidden.
New World opposition was exactly like the opposition that Shakespeare had faced in the Old World. The bitter opposition to the theatre in the northern and central colonies did not remain unchallenged.     Early professional theatre that was available for the enjoyment of the theatrically inclined townspeople was performed entirely by itinerant English actors. The early theatre was crude and unskilled by later professional standards.
Into the daily routine the theatre introduced entertainment, romance, escape. This development of the theatre as a part of the American social and cultural experience was but one fragment of the colonial culture beginning to emerge.

Prologue

    The founding of the American Colonies was, for the contemporary Englishman, an isolated, if not insignificant, event. It was relegated to the incidental in the light of historical and political occurrences in England during the westward colonization. During the early years of the Stuarts, Jamestown was settled; the Puritan revolt, which was to become such a disruptive problem for the second of the Stuarts, had reached such perplexing dimensions that when those more obstreperous and daring of the recalcitrant sought the Holy Kingdom in a new world, they were most willingly assisted by the distraught authorities. The Dutch had made an effort at the establishment of a New Netherlands and settled themselves temporarily between the New England Puritans in the north and the Cavalier Virginians in the south. By the end of the first half of the seventeenth century, while Cromwell was commanding England, the Swedes had settled in Delaware; and during the Restoration period, the English had strong settlements in the Jerseys and were successful in extricating the Dutch from New Amsterdam. By the end of the century, William Penn had received his land grant for his "Holy Experiment" in Pennsylvania.

Economic and political events, and personalities which commonly emerged from them, often dwarfed, if not completely obscured, other events of cultural significance which occurred during the same period, and which greatly affected the thinking and ideals of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Parenthetically, the arbitrary distinction I have made between political, economic and cultural history is a pragmatic one. To limit cultural history to those areas of the human experience normally identified as arts and letters is to neglect the impact of political and economic factors upon our total social experience. But back to the subject. William Shakespeare had reached the zenith of his popular productivity by the time the first of the American colonies was settled; the dramatic productivity of Ben Johnson was at its peak, and many lesser luminaries were writing acceptable though not equally brilliant, plays. Two years after the establishment of the Virginia colony, the King James Version of the Holy Bible was published. Some fifty years later, the Puritan genius John Milton was composing his most lasting poems and young John Dryden was beginning his assent to literary importance. Adding combustible fuel to the fire of the Puritan complaint and contributing to the frustration of those pious separatists were the bawdy and licentious rakes of the Restoration Comedy who were exhibiting their polished and witty brilliance upon the stages of London.

The literature of England in general, and the literature written for the stage in particular, influenced the persons responsible for the establishment of the colonies in the New World. This literature and the artistic forms used to express it profoundly affected points of view and influenced early attempts at literary and artistic production in the colonies.

It is incorrect to approach the theatre primarily as a literary art. The theatre is a performing, social art, and the reactions of its antagonists as well as its protagonists must be considered as reactions to the form of the art as well as to, if not more than, the substance of the art. A written play is identified as drama. A written play produced on a stage by actors before an audience is identified as theatre. Any final judgment of a play must be based not merely on its quality as literature but on its effect in production.

There is significant research among contemporary historians into the creative expression of our early colonizers, particularly the Puritans of New England. In response to the disparaging attitude of earlier historians such as V.L. Parrington in his "Main Currents in American Thought", and Leslie Hotson, in "The Commonwealth and Restoration Stage", an apology for the aesthetic values of early Americans has evolved. Michael Draus, in his descriptive analysis of the cultural complex of the early Atlantic civilization, states, "…the aesthetic values…of Americans, even in their earlier colonial period, was much deeper and finer than it is generally understood. Reputed Puritan hostility to 'art' is another of the many historical judgments which requires serious modification." The Puritan aesthetic was not that of the Cavalier, but it was an inescapable, valid and vital part of the life of the New World, expressed in forms congruent with the simplicity of the common life.

The pragmatics of life did have a restraining effect however. Ben Franklin held that in the existing stage of American development a schoolmaster was worth a dozen poets (thank Bacchus he didn't say actors) and that:
…a taste for the arts should not be generally cultivated until the means for its indulgence exists. Nothing is good or beautiful but in the measure that it is useful: Yet all things have a utility under particular circumstances. Thus poetry, painting, music and the stage as their embodiment are all necessary and proper gratifications of a refined state of society, but objectionable at an earlier period, since their cultivation would make a taste for enjoyment precede its means.

Franklin's attitude was typical of the attitude found in most of the colonists. It found its expression in a population composed largely of adventurers and social or religious outcasts, who were distributed sparsely along the fringe of a vast and unexplored continent. Preoccupied with the establishment of their settlements and the precarious task of self-preservation, they had little time for the arts, particularly the art of the theatre, which demands extreme social interaction. In this regard, the early colonial society was monolithic. It lacked the social diversity that is customary if the arts and graces are to flourish. As the early American theatre historians, Coad and Mims so quaintly said, "Until the pioneers could free themselves from the hand to hand struggle with nature, the ancient dramatic method of expressing thought and feeling must, of necessity, remain in disuse."

The people, who made this new world their home, lived in an age when the most vital of all the forces and factors that contributed to the composition of life was still religion. It is difficult for the inhabitants of our contemporary secular society to conceive the extent to which the lives of colonial Americans were dominated by theology. This abstract power was made tangible in their lives by the inviolable presence of the church. It towered as the most dominate institution of the early American village and the identifiable point where the social life of the new community was synthesized. It was this strong influence in the life of the social units of the colonial villages that constituted the most powerful negative reaction to the theatre, and directed the protracted offensive against its presence in a society supposedly dedicated to the administration of God's will upon the earth.

However, even with this social uniformity, the idea of art, particularly in its dramatic form, was current, even if crude in its expression, and crude it was. In a puritanical, as well as boisterous, and new society, what theatre there was drew a barroom patronage and neither playwright or actor found performing before such an audience compatible with their personal desires or professional abilities. When the news was spread that the players had arrived, the patrons of the theatre also arrived….some of them carrying tomatoes.    

The Players Have Arrived ... Bring the Tomatoes

Of the several forces at work in the shaping of the theatre in Colonial America, English culture was the most pronounced. The penchant for dramatic representation was present in the English settlers, but equally present was the force that would lead the opposition to those "pagan practices that corrupt and weaken men and nations", the Puritan Divines.
    The forces of the Muse and the vanguard of morality did not enter into immediate conflict in the New World. The theatre was not instantly a part of the social life of the new world towns. As the hold of religion on life patterns began to be challenged, and the social complexity of the New World began to increase, the desire for the communal experience of a theatre began to reveal itself in limited but enthusiastic productions. Without delay, the arguments in resistance to the "evil theatre" found eloquent and fiery friends on this side of the Atlantic.
    The supremacy of religion as an institutional force in the lives of the American townspeople began to show indications of decline before the middle of the 17th century. Particularly in the North the power of insurgent rival sects began to be felt, each offering an alternative to the Puritan avenue of salvation and moral conduct. The uniformity of social control, which had been possible under the influence of a clergy in a monolithic religious structure, was eroding. Of these rival religious orders, one of the most significant was the Church of England as it developed in New England. Carl Bridenbaugh in Cities in the Wilderness draws attention to the beauty and pageantry of an Episcopal service in Boston, the citadel of New World Puritanism. He notes that, in 1696, a Mr. Viesy had succeeded in drawing together an Established Church congregation, and was conducting services for them. As one recorder reported, "….he had many auditors."¹
Not only was there the presence of rival sects, but also an increasing secularization of daily life was eliciting a preoccupation with the physical that detracted from the holy obsession of the original founders. Prior to this time, the scope of life could adequately be described as a quest of the Eternal, and struggle for the spiritual. Now the enjoyment of the present was becoming a calculated quest. Bridenbaugh crystallizes the metamorphosis:
As early as 1697, Dr. Sewall noticed a falling off in attendance at Thursday lectures, and Cotton Mather "feared 'twould be an omen of our not enjoying the lecture long, if it did not ament." There were many deeply religious people in every town, but as in any age, the bulk of the churchgoers sought at Sabbath services, sociability, entertainment, and the opportunity to meet their friends.
The moral control of the churches also lessened in this period. While new religious societies were organized in each town, they did not keep pace with growth in population. Whereas in 1690, Boston churches were able to accommodate one quarter of the population, in 1720 they could shelter only about a fifth of the town's inhabitants. At Philadelphia they could seat probably only seventeen hundred out of a population of ten thousand…The truth was that the churches were reaching a smaller proportion of townsmen; some failed to hold their communicants, and all appealed to fewer new members, especially among the youth…. Important as was the position which the church still held, there had appeared in all towns by 1720 portents of its declining influence as a social force.²

    The changes in the economic structure, which produced the alterations in the religious life of the people, carried with them the seeds of an American Theatre that would soon be born. The consensus of American theatre historians is that it was within the expanding boundaries of business that the origins of American theatre can be found, not within the groups or individuals who were amateur fans of theatricals. This development and control by business factions was so monopolistic that according the historian Elmer Rice, "During the two centuries of its existence, it has in the main been dominated by business enterprise."³ There are historians who place the theatre in the larger complex of the intellectual and cultural, rather than business interests. However, they recognize the increase of wealth in Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Williamsburg, as the major contributing cause of the development of Colonial cultural and intellectual interests.⁴
    In spite of the independent spirit that motivated their moving to the frontier of the New World, those that found life in England incompatible with the concept of the true life never completely divorced themselves from the background and traditions which produced them.⁵ From the arrival of the first colonists, through the 1790's, the colonies continued to regard England as the normative standard in all things culturally acceptable, and constantly reshaped their New World experiences to conform to the events and changes current in London.
If in the mother country Chippendale furniture began to replace the tables and chairs of the Queen Anne style, it was certain that within a few years it would find its way also into the houses of the merchants of Boston and Philadelphia and the planters of Virginia and South Carolina. The lady who attended a ball in a gown outmoded in London, or who was unfamiliar with the latest English
dance step, subjected herself to ridicule; the gentleman whose clothes were out of style, who had not read the latest English books, or who was unfamiliar with the gossip of the London coffee houses was considered behind the times.⁶
Two of the first important American plays written and produced after the Revolutionary War treated the specific problem of American emulation of English social fashion. The more successful of the two was Royall Tyler's The Contrast, presented in 1787. It satirized the American proclivity for aping the snobbish patterns of English societal forms. It was most important, however, for its introduction into American theatrical literature of the first uniquely American theatre personality, the Yankee. Tyler endeavored to persuade his audience that this pure, honest, plain American was, in his ruggedness and directness, what all Americans should be in "contrast" to the highly-polished, socially conscious gentlemen developed through a careful reading of Lord Chesterfield. This dissonant voice against cultural dependency was ineffective and had to be sounded again in 1840 by the creative Mrs. Anna Mowatt in her pre-Civil War play, Fashion.
The character of their social life reflected clearly the English background of many of the southern colonists. The customs of dress, the books they read, the music they listened to, and the dances they enjoyed were imports from the Old World. Along with furniture and spices came Milton and Addison; libraries were laden with the best of English sermons, and letters contained the newest available gossip from the London coffee houses. To imply that the above semblances of culture were the possessions of all, or even many of the New World inhabitants would be grossly to exaggerate a limited phenomenon. But among the belongings of those who had the means to bring with them across the Atlantic more than the absolute necessities of existence, these things were present. Those who soon found the wealth of the new land to be greater than they had dreamed, and were successful in accumulating it, quickly imported bits of culture from London, and soon found themselves catering to English tastes in the best homes of the socially emerging American aristocracy.⁷ These new world aristocrats did all within their power to strengthen the cultural bonds between Old England and her new colonies.
    Throughout the southern colonies, the English born-and-trained clergy of the Established Church had a controlling influence on the cultural development of the area. These ministers exerted particular influence on the South as part-time tutors in the homes of the wealthy-a development that strengthened the ties with England, as they were instrumental in directing many of the young southern scholars to return to the established English universities and colleges for their advanced studies.⁸
    The situation was not entirely the same in New England. The spirit of independence was much more in evidence in the northern colonies, particularly in the areas of education and religion. As far as the staunch Puritans were concerned, the true "Church of England" was the reformed and separated church established fresh and vital in the land distant from the decadent religious institution from which it had been forced to separate. Exercising extreme caution out of fear that any such corrupting influence might contaminate the thinking of the new "true" church, the Puritans scrupulously directed the education of the children of the New Zion. They developed their own catechism and utilized their own free catechists. They founded their own colleges for the training of their own ministers and they established a school system to prepare their young people for the colleges. It was in the area of religious and educational independence that the northern colonies made the first of many declarations that would eventually complete their separation from England.⁹
    The extent to which this program of independence was successful can be measured by a proclamation of Cotton Mather, who boasted, "In its first century of existence New England has educated more ministers for England than England for New England." ¹⁰
    In spite of these areas of independence, the northern colonies did not achieve cultural immunity from the influence of England. The literature the Puritan read at night was printed in England, as were most of the better articles he read in his papers and journals. The architectural styles that had been so unique in the seventeenth century gave way to the influence of Christopher Wren, and Wertenbaker revealingly states, concerning craft-snobbery, that "The tailor, or silversmith, or architect, or coach-maker who could boast that he had learned his trade in London regarded his American-trained rival with contempt."¹¹
    In the middle colonies of New York and Pennsylvania, the English cultural influence was equally formative. The dominance of the English Georgian School affected the talented craftsmen of this area to such a degree that they discarded the native patterns that they had once found so practical for existing upon the stern frontier. They found it unprofitable to continue in the Old Quaker plainness. The rising wealth of the successful Quaker merchant brought with it an escalating taste for the very things he once thought sinful, when he did not have the means to obtain them for himself. Yet even here the English influence was not as strong as it was in the southern colonies. Trade relations between Philadelphia and England were not as extensive as those between London and Virginia or South Carolina. The result of this limitation of trade was a limitation of cultural interchange. This factor and the comparatively small number of English-trained ministers and teachers were the two most important causes for the diminished influence of English culture in Pennsylvania.¹²
    The theatre that soon emerged in the prospering colonies also betrayed itself as the transplanted fruit of an English institution. The basic theatrical forms were those the theatregoers in London had known before departure from home. These forms had shown their flexibility by yielding to the colonial pressures that twisted them into shapes more uniformly harmonious with the patterns already present in the new environment.¹³ Esther Cloudman Dunn, in her analysis of the presentation of Shakespeare in America, notes that the early productions were slavish but fashionable recreations of the performances of Drury Lane and the Hay Market in London.¹⁴ "Even the patterns of audience conduct emulated those of the English playhouse. There were the same gallery gods, hurling eggs upon the stage and insults at the actors, creating all sorts of boisterous disturbances, even while under the threat of exclusion from the playhouse…. The young bucks of the New World insisted upon emulating their London cousins,…."¹⁵
In the Charleston Morning Post of November 11, 1786, there is reference to a dance that was to be performed by Mr. James Godwin. For some unknown reason Mr. Godwin did not include the dance in his program. This action precipitated a riot in the audience that would have paralleled the finest of London audience riots. During the enthusiastic demonstration, tomatoes were thrown on to the stage and the reporter candidly writes, "…one was returned by Mr. Godwin."
    The rigid terms of present-day theatre that arbitrarily divide performances and performer into the categories of professional and amateur are difficult to apply to the first theatricals in America. Limitation of detailed evidence makes it awkward to establish with certainty what was the first theatrical performance by a company of players on the North American continent. There was a dramatic expression in the religious ritual of the natives of North America, but though it was the most significant element in their worship, it did not compare with the liturgical mysteries nor could it be said to constitute a theatrical performance. The French settlers in what is now Canada are known to have produced a play prior to 1665, and many historians believe that this French production may have been the first
legitimate stage performance in the New World. Arthur Hornblow, in his extensive history, develops a theory of amateur theatricals performed in scattered locales across the frontier, many years before one finds printed records of them in newspapers or broadsides. This was particularly so in the southern colonies where the prejudice against the stage was less overt. He writes of the limited primary material available for information about early performances:
    "That so little should be known of the early beginnings of the acted drama in America is not surprising when one considers the intolerance of the age against the theatre and the player. In face of the almost general condemnation of the playhouse the journals of the day were not encouraged to give much, if any, space in their columns to the doings of player-folk. It was also the custom at that time for the actors themselves to distribute handbills at the houses of prospective theatregoers, and thus stir up interest in the coming performance, instead of depending solely on newspaper advertising, as is the modern practice. These reasons, perhaps, sufficiently explain the almost total absence of theatrical news in the pre-Revolutionary newspapers, a fact that has rendered exceedingly difficult the researches of the historian."¹⁶
The Southern disposition toward the theatre was the result of an imported taste, which reflected its cultural dependence on England. In the North the attitude was in no way cordial to an influence deemed corruptive. For the dedicated New England Puritan and his Pennsylvania Quaker neighbor, the playhouse was still the highway to hell, and the actors the ambassadors of Satan himself. Theatre in the North was fiercely condemned if not actually forbidden.
    This condemnation was also rooted in the attitudes of the English communities. New World opposition was exactly like the opposition that Shakespeare had faced in the Old World. The attitude of most civic authorities was one of mistrust. They felt toward the theatre as the small town authorities of 1930 Mid-West America felt toward the traveling circuses. As Esther Dunn says, "The trouble involved and the responsibility involved were too great. The easiest thing was to withhold the performance permit."¹⁷
    The bitter opposition to the theatre in the northern and central colonies did not remain unchallenged.¹⁸ As the cities developed and the means to support a respectable leisure became more easily available, there emerged in the important locations groups of people who wished to enjoy the recreation they knew to be both fashionable and entertaining to their compeers in London.¹⁹
It is not unreasonable, then, to presume that as the Colonies grew in importance, and communication between American and Europe became more frequent, the old spirit of irreconcilable intolerance, which put a ban on all secular amusements, was considerably modified, especially in the important towns. The citizens of these communities, in their moments of leisure, no doubt often longed for the pleasures of the theatre, glowing accounts of which arrived from London by every ship.²⁰
The ban officially placed upon stage performances did not eliminate the clandestine performances that occurred with increasing regularity. There is recorded evidence of stage performances in the larger colonial cities even after the laws enacted to prevent them had been written into the local codes. The neglect of the civil authorities in certain cities to enforce the anti-theatre laws appears to indicate the possibility of political expedience not moral rectitude as the motivation for the enacting of such legislation. Such action may well have been a matter of the judicious placating of a vociferous segment of public opinion rather than a serious attempt at the complete prohibition of the theatre.²¹ Performances of stage plays in Boston and Philadelphia in 1714 and 1749, and in New York in 1702, are evidence to support the contention that not all of the northern and middle colony inhabitants were willing to be denied the recreation of theatrical leisure.
    Early professional theatre that was available for the enjoyment of the theatrically inclined townspeople was performed entirely by itinerant English actors. The earliest known of such strolling soldiers of thespianic fortune was one Anthony Aston, a swashbuckling rake who was most capable of holding an exaggerated opinion of his own importance. In relating his adventurous escapades, he tells of a 1702 arrival at "Charlestowne…Full of Lice, Shame, Poverty, Nakedness and Hunger," and, following the pattern of so many of his home land destitutes, "turned Player and Poet and wrote one play on the subject of the Country."
    Aston was also known to have played in Virginia where "the noble governor Nicholson treated me handsomely." This statement is found in a copy of the Fools Opera page 21, which I found in the Houghton Library, at Harvard.
    Aston pushed on to New York where, again by his own account, he spent the winter "acting, writing, courting and fighting." If Aston's account is true, perhaps he gave particular impetus to the anti-theatre sentiment that led the Province of New York in 1709 to forbid play-acting along with cockfighting and other disreputable forms of entertainment.
    Aston eventually returned to England in 1704 where he took up his acting trade. In 1735 he presented a petition and speech before the House of Commons in an attempt to stop governmental action to lessen the number of playhouses and to more strictly control the movements of actors. A copy of this petition is in the collection of manuscripts at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C.²²
    Eventually traveling bands of players emerged, playing broken schedules in the major cities along the seaboard. In the early years they would spend a season in New York presenting a repertoire of plays, travel on to Philadelphia and present the same series, and then on to Williamsburg and Charlestown. The small companies divided the major roles among their cast and when limitation of personnel made a scene in a play impossible to cast, that scene would be pulled from the show and no one seemed to be very disturbed over its absence. There was little variance in the theatrical productions in the different towns on the Atlantic seaboard, since they were monopolized for the most part by the same few companies of wandering actors.²³
    The early theatre was crude and unskilled by later professional standards. Coad and Mims, however, point out in their romantic style, that limited as it was; it provided an invaluable service for the colonists:
"It brought a new form of diversion, a new element of satisfaction, into their circumscribed lives, and in the process it gave them an acquaintance with the great masters of the English drama…Colonial evenings were long, and diversions were few; books were expensive and hard to obtain. Into the daily routine the theatre introduced entertainment, romance, escape. What though the costumes were dingy? What though the same sets of battered scenery were compelled to do duty from play to play? What though the house was mean, and the smoky oil lamps and tallow candles were inadequate to dispel the gloom, and the actors doubled their roles? The players had come to town, and the irresistible magic that is peculiar to the theatre was once more working its spell."²⁴

This development of the theatre as a part of the American social and cultural experience was but one fragment of the colonial culture beginning to emerge. Under the frontier conditions of the seventeenth century, the early expressions of art in that culture were understandably lacking in sophistication. By the end of the second century of colonization, this emerging culture had overcome the awkwardness of its adolescence and attained the strength and virility of maturity.²⁵
    The variances noted within this cultural framework, particularly in reference to the theatre, were broad and explicit. The influence of the different areas and traditions upon this new culture was significant. The warm welcome accorded the English theatre in the South, the bitter opposition of Philadelphia, the complete ban laid down by New England were but expressions of the different traditions and concepts of these communities.
    Our theatre exist today as a result of the efforts of many people and the fact that any nation that achieves a true degree of economic stability will eventually respond to the artistic urge. Any nation that succeeds as a nation will develop a cultural expression and image. The theatre, as the most social of the arts, will eventually and belatedly find its place alongside art, music, literature and architecture. The only way the antagonists to the theatre could have succeeded in their attempt to abolish all theatre, would have been to abolish the success of the New World.

Biographical Material from Paul J. Little

    Because of poor family planning Paul was born in Wister, Oklahoma, which, for those unfamiliar with the particulars of the state, is north of Snow and northeast of Antlers.
    He received his early education in the California school districts of El Centro and Riverside, a period that is remembered, if at all, with disparagement.
After completion of a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Divinity degree, he received a PhD in Humanities from Syracuse University, and a Doctor of Divinity degree from the American Baptist Seminary of the West in Berkeley. . He also received a Certificate in Acting from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London.
    Paul has served on the faculty of Linfield College and the University of Redlands where he chaired their Theatre Arts Departments.
In the ninth grade he knew he had to pursue the theatre muse after watching Paul Robeson perform the title role in "Othello" at the old Biltmore Theater in Los Angeles. He recalls with injured dignity being accidentally knocked to the floor by Lord Lawrence Olivier back stage at the Old Vic in London and, with great pride, the first time he saw his son play the Phantom in "Phantom of the Opera" at the Majestic Theatre on Broadway. His favorite acting role is a draw between Salierie in "Amadeus" and Don Quixote in "Man of La Mancha". Two productions he directed at the University of Redlands were selected for performance at the American College Theatre Festival of the American Educational Theatre Association. For a multitude of summers he produced and directed musicals for the Redlands Bowl.
    Since his retirement as the Dean of Fine Arts at Cypress College in 1991 he has served as the interim pastor for ten American Baptist Churches from California to Michigan.
    Paul and Jo, his wife for fifty-five years, have three children, six grandchildren, no pets and few regrets.

Bibliography

1. Cities in the Wilderness. New York, 1955) p265

2. Bridenbaugh, Carl, Cities in the Wilderness. (New York) p.265

3. Rice, Elmer, The Living Theatre. (New York, 1959)  p. 80

4. See Wertenbaker, T.J., The Golden Age of Colonial Culture. (New York, 1942)  p.3

5. Coad, Oral Sumner, "The American Theatre in the 18th Century", The South Atlantic Quarterly,XVIII (1918), p. 196-197.

6. Wertenbaker, p. 11.

7. The English elements in the development of the culture of America are discussed in detail in Louis B. Wright's The Cultural Life of the American Colonies.  (New York, 1962)  See Chapters 5,6,8 and 9.

8. Wertenbaker, p. 12.

9. Wright, p. 98-105.

10. Wertenbaker, p. 13.

11. Wertenbaker, p. 14.

12. Wertenbaker, p.  16.  For a discussion of the non-English cultural elements and their influence on the colonies see Wright, Chapters 3-9 45-71.

13. Rankin, Hugh, The Theatre in Colonial America. (Unpublished manuscript, Colonial Williamsburg Research Department, Williamsburg, Virginia, 1955)  p.305 

14. Dunn, Esther Cloudman, Shakespeare in America.  (New York, 1939) p.  36-37.

15. Rankin,  p.  305

16. Hornblow, Arthur, A History of the Theatre in America.  (Philadelphia, 1919),  I, p.  24.  It should be noted that the increase of exceptional collections of theatrical materials since the date of Professor Hornblow's volumes has made available to the researchers material unknown in 1919.  The amount of material available in sources other than newspapers in considerable.

17. Dunn,  p.  37-38.

18. Moody, Richard, American Takes the Stage.  (Bloomington, 1955), p.  26.

19. Dunn,  p.  133-134.

20. Hornblow,  p. 26.

21. Hornblow,  p.  25

22. Anthony Aston died in London sometime after 1749.

23. Wertenbaker, Thomas J., The Founding of American Civilization: The Middle Colonies. (New York, 1938),  p.  151.

24. Coad and Mims, p.  10.

25. Wertenbaker, The Golden Age. P.  3.  See also Mary Crawford The Romance of the American Theatre.  (Boston, 1913), p. 70-73:  William Dunlap, History of the American Theatre.  (New York, 1832), p.  1.