ABSTRACT
Writing to the poet and intellectual Elizabeth Fergusson on 2 March 1781, College of Philadelphia Provost William Smith recalls a play he had seen a few nights before on campus:
What is remarkable about Smith’s account of the college production is not so much the bad manners exhibited, or the “amazing turn for dissipation” displayed, or even the vast crowds of the “thousands” who attended it. Nor, for that matter, that at the time there had been no professional theater in Philadelphia for nearly a decade. The first Continental Congress had declared the theater illegal in October of 1774 as they prepared for what looked like open war with Great Britain, reaffirming its illegality again in 1778. The professional company who developed and operated the American circuit of playhouses-the American Company-was obliged to close up their theaters and sit out the hostilities in Jamaica. And when, just months after Smith’s evening at the theater, a professional company did attempt to reopen the Southwark playhouse, they were rebuffed and closed after one performance, notwithstanding the presence of both General George Washington and the French Minister in the side box.2 What is surprising and frankly remarkable about the raucous evening in the theater in Philadelphia in 1781 is that at the time the city was still in the midst of a war against Great Britain, which raged across the recently united colonies. Independence may have been declared there, but the outcome of such a declaration was far from settled. Indeed during much of the winter and spring the British General Henry Clinton, headquartered in occupied New York, had seriously toyed with retaking Philadelphia (already once occupied and evacuated).3 Just across the river in New Jersey, Camden Town had fallen to
General Charles Cornwallis earlier, and it would not be the first time in this war that merry-making citizens found themselves suddenly surprised in the theater by a real army within shelling distance.4 Even in the thick of the uncertainty of ongoing military operations, and in spite of the illegal status of theater during the Revolution, student theatricals were thriving.
