their drama and theatre from the eighteenth century to 1915, that is, from the
first appearance of periodicals on the American literary market to the middle of
that "formative decade" ¹² When the Provincetown Players and other enthusi-
asts, inspired by European developments, inaugurated a new epoch on the
American stage. The texts present the various arguments put forward both for
and against drama and theatre in almost two hundred years of American criti-
cism. In addition, they give graphic descriptions of die early American theatre,
which some transformed into a zoological exhibition, a drinking saloon, or a
whorehouse, and they offer suggestions for the improvement of its morals, its
architecture (e.g., its safety and ventilation), but also its frequently rioting
members of the audience.

2. Since I also aimed to provide a tool for further research on the begin-
nings of American drama and theatre, my search was focused on early and
unretrieved material. Consequently, I chocked many early periodicals whose
names do not indicate any connection with the American theatre and discov-
ered a substantial amount of relevant material in journals not listed in Carl J. Stratman's
bibliography of American Theatrical Periodicals. In addition, I
included the better-known criticism by authors like Irving, Poe, and Whitman.
There was no risk of duplicating texts gathered in the few existing anthologies
of American theatrical criticism because they made only very limited use of
pre-1915 material. ¹³

These objectives account for the fact that I was more interested in represen-
tative articles reflecting widely accepted attitudes and values than in critiques
of individual performances that were often mere puffery, anyway. Therefore, I
consulted weeklies and monthlies, with only a few exceptions: In my anthology
I reprint Joseph Tisdale's 1767 speech to the Boston House of Representatives
because of its revolutionary anticlerical argumentation, and, in my bibliogra-
phy, I list John Edwards's "warning to sinners" of 1812 as an outstanding
example of early nineteenth-century anti-theatre pamphlets as well as the New
York Evening Post reports on the Astor Place Riots because of their circum-
stantiality. As a rule, therefore, I did not consult daily newspapers because their
coverage was limited to the facts of a particular theatrical event; naturally, they
were not interested in a general discussion of the state and future of the Ameri-
can drama and theatre. My reading corroborated Clayton Hamilton's statement
that "most newspapers, and even many magazines, report plays as they report
base-ball games." ¹⁴ Finally, I was no concerned with historical surveys,
biographical sketches of actors, or articles on the opera.

I retain the language and spelling of the original versions with all their
timeworn idiosyncracies and silently emended only obvious typographical
errors. However, I have deleted the typographical emphasis frequently given to
names (by italics or inverted commas) and standardized the writing of titles; I
use italics throughout where the originals use small capitals, boldface, or
inverted commas. Because of the futility of such an endeavor in most cases, I

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