First Theater in America

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Dunlap, the historian of the American Stage, informs us that the drama was introduced in this country by William Hallam, the successor of Garrick in Goodman’s Field Theatre, who formed a joint stock company and sent them to America under the management of his brother Lewis Hallam in the year 1752, and that the first play ever acted in America was the “Merchant of Venice,” represented by this company on September 5, 1752, at Williamsburg, then the capital of Virginia, in an old store-house which they converted into a theater within two months after their arrival at Yorktown.