unimportant. This period is noteworthy also for the beginning of organized dramatic criticism in New York in the work of a group headed by Peter Irving and Charles Adams, who met after the play, wrote critiques in common, and secured their publication.

The next period begins naturally with the work of James N. Barker of Philadelphia and John Howard Payne of New York. Barker's first play, Tears and Smiles, was produced in 1807. This comedy continued the representation of contemporary manners started in The Contrast and reflected also the reproduction of recent events in the reference to the Tripoli pirates. In his dramatization of historical American life in The Indian Princess (1808), probably the first dramatic version of the Pocahontas story, and Superstition (1824), whose motif was the witchcraft delusion in New England, Barker represents the American playwright working with native material. Even in Marmion (1812) he put in King James's mouth a ringing speech which, while seeming to apply to Scottish conditions, actually reflected the feeling of America toward England in 1812. Marmion was played as late as 1848. Payne, unlike Barker, represents foreign influence. From 1806 when his Julia, or The Wanderer, was acted in New York, his dramatic work consisted largely of adaptation from English, French, and German sources. His complete bibliography' records sixtyfour plays, of which nineteen were published. His most significant work was done in the field of tragedy, such as his Brutus, first played in London in 1818, or in comedy like Charles II, first performed in London in 1824, while the bulk of his work is composed of melodrama or farce. It was in his opera of Clari (1823) that the song Home Sweet Home was first sung. Payne's achievement can hardly be properly rated until it is ascertained how much of his work is original, and so far as his treatment of native material goes, he is not so significant as lesser dramatists such as M. M. Noah, who made a brave attempt to dramatize American history in She Would Be a Soldier (1819) and Marion (1821). She Would Be a Soldier was based on the battle of Chippewa in 1812. It proved popular; Forrest acted the Indian Chief in 1826, and it was repeated as late as 1848.

· See Bibliography.

There are several reasons why the year 1825 forms a convenient point of departure in the development of the drama. Up to about 1822, largely through the excellence of the company at the Chestnut Street Theatre where Jefferson, Warren, and Wood formed a triumvirate in comedy, Philadelphia had been the theatrical metropolis.' Then the growing importance of the port of New York brought an increasing number of foreign actors to that city and made it important for an actor to begin his career there. The year 1825-6, according to Ireland,' was remarkable in the history of the New York stage, since it witnessed the first attempt to establish Italian opera with a fully organized company, the beginning of Hackett's career as a comedian, and the combination of Placide, Hilson, Barnes, and Miss Kelly in comedy at the Park Theatre. Most important, this year marked the real beginning of Edwin Forrest's career, both in Philadelphia and in New York.

The very prominence of New York and its proximity to Europe, however much they added to its theatrical prestige, hindered the development of the drama. The succession of English actors who were brought over as "stars" resulted in little encouragement to native writers, while in Philadelphia, under the encouragement of Edwin Forrest and others, a group of dramatists arose whose work became widely known both at home and abroad. For the year 1829-30 Durang lists nine plays by American writers, among them Pocahontas by George Washington Custis and John Kerr's first draft of Rip Van Winkle.

In 1829 Forrest produced the Indian play of Metamora by John Augustus Stone, an actor who lived during his creative period in Philadelphia. The play was a bit bombastic and the speeches of Metamora show a curious mixture of Indian and Ossian, but they are at times very effective and some of the phrases of this play became bywords in the mouths of the people.

Forrest also inspired Robert Montgomery Bird of Philadelphia to write The Gladiator in 1831. It was played by Forrest in all parts of the Union and at Drury Lane in 1836. In this play Dr. Bird combined the principal sources of dramatic interest-self-preservation, love of wife, child, and brother, desire

See Durang, C., History of the Philadelphia Stage, Second Series, Chap. III, and Wemyss, F. C., Twenty-Six Years of the Life of an Actor-Manager, vol. 1, p. 74.

for freedom, and personal loyalty in one central character, expressed this combination of qualities and sentiments in a vigorous personality, especially suited for Forrest, and clothed the sentiments expressed in a dignified and flexible blank verse, varied at times by prose. Bird's tragedy of Peru, Oralloosa (1832), but more especially his Broker of Bogota (1834), both produced by Forrest, are among the most significant of American dramas. The character of Febro in The Broker of Bogota, energetic, with a middle-class mind but courageous and with a passion for his children, is admirably conceived. Bird was also known as a novelist, and one of his romances, Nick of the Woods, dramatized by Louisa Medina in 1838, proved to be one of the most successful melodramas of the time. His Infidel was dramatized by Benjamin H. Brewster and played in Philadelphia in 1835, and The Hawks of Hawk Hollow was put on the stage in 1841.1

Bird's fellow-citizen, Richard Penn Smith, while not so great a dramatist, is significant on account of his laudable attempts to treat native material. At least fifteen of his plays were performed, eleven of which have been preserved in print or in manuscript. Of his tragedy Caius Marius, in which Forrest starred, we have only tradition and one scene. His national plays, The Eighth of January, celebrating Jackson's victory at New Orleans, William Penn, his drama of colonial and Indian life, both played in 1829, and The Triumph at Plattsburg (1830), concerned with McDonough's victory on Lake Champlain, are vigorous plays and were well received.

Although Robert T. Conrad's historical play of Jack Cade, first acted in Philadelphia in 1835, was not written originally for Forrest, it was through his acting that it received its best interpretation. This play was a worthy rival of Bird's dramas for favour here and abroad. It has a deeper significance than appears at first glance, for it was made a vehicle for the expression of democratic ideals, and this strengthened its hold on the American people.

The most significant of this group of Philadelphia dramatists was George Henry Boker. His first play, Calaynos, is a tragedy based on the hatred of the Spaniards for the Moors. Previous to its performance in Philadelphia in 1851, it had a See also Book II, Chap. VII.

long run at the Sadlers Wells Theatre in London in 1849, where Samuel Phelps played Calaynos and G. K. Dickenson, Oliver.1 His second tragedy, Leonor de Guzman, produced in 1853, was also laid in Spain and is concerned with the revenge of the injured Queen, Maria of Portugal. His comedy The Betrothal, produced successfully in Philadelphia and New York in 1850, and played in England in 1853, is laid in Italy. With the exception of Under a Mask, a prose comedy, performed in Philadelphia in 1851, all of Boker's acted plays are of a distinguished quality. His masterpiece, however, was his tragedy Francesca da Rimini, first acted by E. L. Davenport in 1855 in New York and Philadelphia, and revived by Lawrence Barrett in 1882 and by Mr. Otis Skinner in 1901. The art with which the medieval Italian life is depicted, the music of the verse and the noble conception of Lanciotto, the wronged husband and brother, lift this tragedy to its deserved place in the first rank of verse dramas written in the English language during the nineteenth century.

It is not to be supposed that dramatic talent was limited to Philadelphia. Epes Sargent and Julia Ward Howe in Boston, Nathaniel Parker Willis of Boston and New York, Charlotte Barnes Conner and Anna Ogden Mowatt of New York, and George H. Miles of Baltimore, to mention only a few, wrote plays that were definite contributions to literature as well as practically adapted for the stage. From this point it becomes necessary, however, owing to the wealth of material and the imposed limits of the chapter, to treat the plays from the point of view of types of the drama, rather than as the work of individuals, and this is also most productive of results. Examination of printed plays before 1860, combined with search through the histories of the stage, discloses about seven hundred plays by American writers actually placed upon the boards. These figures are obviously incomplete,3 but they show at least the

I Calaynos, Lond. ed., n.d., p. 8.

The facts given here and in the Bibliography are based upon the manuscripts of Boker, in the possession of his family.

3 The histories of Dunlap, Durang, Wood, Ireland, Brown, Seilhammer, Clapp, Wemyss, and the MSS. diary of Wood have been carefully examined in preparation of these figures, but inaccuracies, confusions of titles of acted and printed plays, difficulty of deciding in all cases as to the nationality of the playwright, etc., make the statements only relatively exact.

wide activity of our early playwrights notwithstanding the difficulties under which they laboured, and to which one of them so vigorously refers.1

Of greatest distinction as literature are the tragedies. About eighty of these were performed, forty of which are extant, and they belong usually to the type known as romantic tragedy. In many cases there is an additional historical interest. Among those dealing with ancient history the most significant are Payne's Brutus (1818), Bird's Gladiator (1831), David Paul Brown's Sertorius, the Roman Patriot, acted by the elder Booth in 1830, and Waldimar by John J. Bailey, produced by Charles Kean in 1831 and based on the massacre at Thessalonica in the fourth century A.D. Dunlap's Leicester (1794), Barker's Marmion (1812), and Conrad's Jack Cade (1835) are the best of the dozen dealing with English history, while the historical interest is also definite in such tragedies as John Burk's Female Patriotism or The Death of Joan D'Arc (1798), Dunlap's Virgin of the Sun (1800), Mrs. Ellet's Teresa Contarini (1835), a Venetian tragedy, Epes Sargent's Velasco, laid in Burgos in 1046, and acted by E. L. Davenport in 1837, and Bianca Visconti, by Nathaniel Parker Willis, based on the career of Francesco Sforza. This play won the prize competition offered by Josephine Clifton, who produced it in 1837 in the principal cities of this country. It held the stage as late as 1852. George H. Miles's prize play of Mohammed, performed in 1851, and Leonor de Guzman and Francesca da Rimini of Boker belong also to this group. Even in the historical tragedies, however, it is the unhappy lot of the main character and the interest of the unfamiliar that hold the attention rather than the background, and there is no clear line to be drawn between those which are historical and those which are not. To the latter class belong Bird's Broker of Bogota, and a tragedy of peculiar interest, Octavia Brigaldi, by Mrs. Conner, in which she acted in the title rôle in 1837. The play was repeated often in this country and was successfully produced in London. It was based on the killing, in 1828, by Colonel Beauchamp of Kentucky, of Colonel Sharpe, who had seduced Beauchamp's wife before their marriage. Mrs. Conner transferred the scene to Milan * See "Letter from the Author" in Moll Pitcher, by Joseph S. Jones (1855). Trent, W. P., William Gilmore Simms, 1892, p. 117. W. G. Simms wrote

2