PRINTED AT THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

-

form p-5 vii-17-19 14el

THE

HE Bulletin is published monthly by The New York Public Library at 476 Fifth Avenue, New York City. Subscription One Dollar a year, current single numbers Ten Cents. Entered at the Post Office at New York, N. Y., as second-class matter, February 10, 1897, under Act of July 16, 1894. Acceptance for mailing at special rate of postage provided for in, Section 1103, Act of October 3, 1917, authorized. Printed at The New York Public Library, 476 Fifth Avenue. July 1919, Volume 23, Number 7.

CONVOYED BY AIRPLANES

From the Drawing by Hugh Ferriss

BULLETIN

OF THE

NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS

VOLUME 23

JULY 1919

NUMBER 7

EARLY AMERICAN COMEDY1

BY ELBRIDGE COLBY

HE most characteristic thing about the earliest American plays, published

THE

on this side of the Atlantic prior to the Revolution, was that they were revolutionary. It was the same in all other departments of literature, and the conditions naturally applied to the comic side of the drama. Whatever the reason may be, it seems a well established fact in the history of all literature that colonies are unable to develop a vigorous and characteristic writing tradition. The political bond between India and England makes the Eastern Empire look to London for guidance in art and letters as well as in diplomacy, political economy, and commerce. New currents of thought produce new literatures, but new currents of thought do not thrive without independence. Before the Revolution and for some time afterwards, American publication was almost entirely restricted to reprints of English editions.

The first American plays were revolutionary, for they had found a new stimulating idea, a thesis of military enthusiasm and opposition. Thus we have Brackenridge writing "The Battle of Bunker Hill" (1776) and the "Death of General Montgomery" (1777). Mrs. Mercy Warren depicts the Bostonian theme of revolution in "The Group" (1775), "The Blockheads” (1776), and "The Motley Assembly" (1779). She was the daughter of James Otis and wife of General James Warren, and it is not surprising therefore to find that "The Blockheads" is a flippant farce, replying to General Burgoyne's production, "The Blockade." The connection between England and the colonies was, for the moment, completely broken. Their principles were in opposition

1 The reader is referred to List of American Dramas in The New York Public Library. (Bulletin, Oct., 1915, vol. 19, p. 739-786. Also issued as a separate.)

[ 427 ]

and so the colonial literature was free. "Common Sense," "The Crisis," the verse of Philip Freneau, and that of Trumbull could not have been written earlier; not so much that the facts did not demand them, but because the former ideas could not have given birth to such prodigies. The play, "The Military Glory of Great Britain," given one September at Princeton (1762), was succeeded by Peacock's drama "The Fall of British Tyranny."

But once the fighting was past and independence was gained, there was a reaction. Commercial houses in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Charlestown resumed their profitable relations with British merchants, and likewise theatrical managers in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Charlestown looked once more to London for dramatic traditions and innovations. Literature is very much a matter of continuity and conventions; and stage literature cannot be built up in a new and sparsely populated country. The scattered play-houses of the young United States were compelled, therefore, to look to London for plays and for inspiration. Nor is it fantastic thus to speak of the tendency of the American drama for, prior to 1850, there was nothing which could properly be called an individual note in our stage productions. We were dependent upon England.

Aside from the mere fact that these managers were really dependent upon England for the canon of theatrical literature from which they must draw in order to get up an attractive repertoire, they were dependent in another way, more direct and more determining. The crime of international literary piracy was world-wide, lack of decent copyright relations put the American publishers in a position where they often refused to pay a moderate price even for the American book which they knew to be good, because they could secure more cheaply a popular English book. The amount it cost them was almost nothing: the payment of charges on a postal packet and a small fee to an agent in St. Paul's churchyard who made a business of such traffic. There was a short and exciting race to see which New York or Philadelphia firm could issue a volume with his imprint first; then the book-market in the States saw another contemporary British volume taking the popular fancy and discouraging local production. Wrote Washington Irving to a novelist across the water in 1829: "If you can furnish me with a manuscript copy of the earlier part of the work, and supply the subsequent in sheets as struck off, so as to give some bookseller in America the decided start of his competitors, I think it highly probable I can get a little something for it to pay you for your trouble." Under such conditions as these, William Gilmore Simms was told by his publishers: "We do not see much hope in the future for the American writer of light literature

as a matter of profit it might be abandoned." The wonder