ABSTRACT
While David Braham, Josh Hart, and Frank Kerns were busy at the Eighth Avenue Opera House, Charley White, in association with Sam Sharpley (the leader of Sharpley’s Minstrels), took over management of the Theatre Comique, the old Wood’s Minstrel Hall, at 514 Broadway, and commenced yet another season of variety entertainment. A piece of doggerel verse published by the New York Clipper on January 24, 1868, suggests the kind of entertainment to be had: At the Theatre Comique, up in famed Broadway street, Where three men are a flying in air, If you are not noodles, you will see some fine poodles Doing tricks that are funny and rare; There’s one little fellow, neither white nor yet yellow— We believe he’s the star of the troupe— Who jumps over girdles, and garters and hurdles, Likewise through a flaming big hoop.
