History of the Philadelphia Stage, Between the Years 1749 and 1855. By Charles Durang. Volume 2. Arranged and illustrated by Thompson Westcott, 1868
Name:
Durang, Charles; Westcott, Thompson
Date:
1868
Description:
"Volume II contains 118 pages of text, including the remaining 20 chapters of the first series (LVI to LXXV) and the first 33 chapters (I to XXXIII) of the second series. The chapters of the first series were published in the Sunday Dispatch between May 27, 1855 (Vol. VIII, No. 4) and October 7, 1855 (Vol. VIII, No. 23), while those belonging to the second series appeared between June 29, 1856 (Vol. IX, No. 9) and February 8, 1857 (Vol. IX, No. 41).
In the final part of the first series, Durang comments upon the last years of the old Chestnut Street Theatre, up to the fire which caused its closure in 1820. The first appearances on stage of Edwin Forrest, as well as the Philadelphia debut of British actor Edmund Kean, are discussed at length. In this portion of the series Durang also describes the new Chestnut Street Theatre (opened in 1822), and provides a long list of all the American plays produced in Philadelphia before 1822.
In the first chapters of the second series, Durang discusses the activities of the new Chestnut Street Theatre, as well as that of other institutions such as the Walnut Street Theatre, the Prune Street Theatre, the Tivoli Garden Theatre, and the Olympic Circus. As in the final part of the preceding series, every season is described in full detail. Additional anecdotes and biographical descriptions of famous actors, such as Junius Brutus Booth, Charles William Macready, and Charles Mathews, are also included.
The collection of portraits and engravings added by Westcott to the volume features a wide number of figures quoted by Durang in the text and variously connected with the Philadelphia theatrical scene – among them, Louisa Cranstoun Nisbett, Joseph George Holman, Robert William Elliston, Anna Maria Crouch, Charles Incledon, Ann Catley, Sarah Bartley, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, James William Wallack, Susanna Centlivre, Elizabeth Inchbald, John Philip Kemble, Alexander Rae, William West, Edwin Forrest, Edmund Kean, Sarah Siddons, Joseph Jefferson, Maria Gibbs, Dorothea Jordan, Ann Street Barry, Elizabeth Billington, Junius Brutus Booth, Charlotte Goodall, Thomas Potter Cooke, Julia Dean, Elizabeth Hopkins, John Fawcett, Maria Theresa Bland, John Henderson, Elizabeth Hartley, François-Joseph Talma, Mademoiselle Mars, John Bannister, Charles Mathews, Elizabeth Farren, William Farren, Eliza Logan Wood, Anna Thillon, Sarah Egerton, Maria Foote, Mary Ann Davenport, Sam Cowell, Maria Theresa Kemble, Fanny Maria Kelly, and Charles William Macready. The volume also includes several engravings of American and European theaters, opera houses, and other performance venues, such as the Prune Street Theatre, the new Chestnut Street Theatre, and the New Adelphi Theatre of Philadelphia, the Holliday Street Theatre (Baltimore), the Bowery Theatre (New York), the Tremont Theatre (Boston), the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, the Surrey Theatre, Sadler’s Wells Theatre, and Astley’s Royal Amphitheatre (London), the Queen’s Theatre and Opera House (Edinburgh), the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin and the Théâtre de l’Opéra-Comique (Paris), the Schauspielhaus (Cologne). Autographs include a handwritten payment receipt, penned by actor William Warren, and a signed portrait of actor Robert Dempster."
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