_The paper here reprinted by the Dunlap Society was read before the
New York Historical Society more than thirty years ago. In looking
through the files of Colonial newspapers in the possession of that
institution for another purpose, my attention was called by the late
Thomas F. De Voe, who devoted his leisure largely to the examination of
Colonial newspapers, and especially those of Colonial New York, to an
advertisement showing that there was a theater in the City of New York
anterior to the arrival of the company that, as Dunlap expressed it,
“planted the drama in America.” I followed up Mr. De Voe’s discovery by
going over the Colonial newspapers of New York in the possession of the
Historical Society for further information, and embodied the result in
the paper read before that body. The paper was published at the time
in the “New York Evening Post,” and a limited number of copies of it
were printed by that journal in pamphlet form. In expressing a wish
to reprint it the Dunlap Society requested that I would augment the
information by an account of what has since been ascertained upon the
subject, a request with which I have complied by adding it at the end
as a supplement, preferring that the paper should remain as it appeared
originally._
[Illustration:
FOUNDED IN
NEW-YORK
MDCCCLXXXV
The
DUNLAP SOCIETY]
First Theater in America.