William Dunlap
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
William Dunlap (1766-1839) was a pioneer of the American theater. He was a producer, playwright, and actor, as well as a historian. He managed two of New York's earliest and most prominent theaters, the John Street Theatre (from 1796-98) and the Park Theatre (from 1798-1805).
He was born in Perth Amboy New Jersey on 1 February 1766, the son of an army officer wounded at Quebec. In his lifetime he produced more than sixty plays, most of which were adaptations or translations from French or German works. A few were original: these were based on American themes and had American characters.
Among his works were the following:
- The Father (1789)
- Andre (1798)
- The Stranger (1798)
- False Shame (1799)
- The Virgin of the Sun (1800)
- Memoirs of George Frederick Cooke (1813)
- History of the American Theater, 2 vols. (1832)
[edit] References
Wilmeth, Don B. and Christopher Bigsby, eds. The Cambridge History of American Theatre, Volume I: Beginnings to 1870. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
