AMERICANS BEGIN TO WRITE PLAYS. MERCY WARREN'S POLITICAL
SATIRES. THE MILITARY THESPIANS. MAJOR ANDRÉ. FIRST
AMERICAN PERFORMANCE OF "THE RIVALS." BALTIMORE'S
FIRST THEATRE. MR. AND MRS. DENNIS RYAN. FIRST AMERICAN
PERFORMANCE OF "THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL." RETURN OF
THE HALLAM PLAYERS. HALLAM-HENRY PARTNERSHIP. RISE
OF THOMAS WIGNELL. THEATRICALS IN ALBANY.

I N its resolution of 1774 Congress had merely
recommended the suspension of all public amuse-
ments. Four years later, a more stringent decree was
issued prohibiting play-acting in any form. Thus, as
far as the Colonists themselves were concerned, the
drama might, at this troubled period, have been ex-
tinguished altogether, but for the fact that the
younger officers of the British army, finding the time
heavy on their hands when not fighting the Yankees,
took to theatricals as a pleasant diversion from the
rigors of war. For eight years--from 1775, when
the military thespians first began to give perform-
ances in Boston, to 1783, the year before the declara-
tion of peace--the American stage was in full control
of the British military who occupied all the existing
theatres and produced plays in the professional man-
ner, for charity, amusement and profit.

This period in the history of the American stage
is of peculiar interest and significance from the fact
that it afforded native authors their first incentive and
opportunity to write for the theatre. Until now the
English dramatists had enjoyed a monopoly of our

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