Early American Theatre from the Revolution to Thomas Jefferson: Into the Hands of the People. By Heather S. Nathans. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003; pp. 246. $70 cloth.

Heather S. Nathans's well-documented study, covering the colonial theatre, the theatre of the revolution, and postrevolutionary theatre to shortly after 1800, focuses on Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. She argues convincingly that the theatre of the time was significantly affected by social, political, and financial matters, therefore located in a social, political, and financial context Nathans calls “crucial” (5).

The Exterior of the Park Theatre, New York City, 1798

Of particular interest to scholars of the early American theatre is a 1798 water-color by Cotton Milbourne entitled “Saint Paul's Chapel, Broadway Between Fulton and Vesey Streets,” in the possession of the New-York Historical Society. Besides depicting the Chapel, the watercolor shows the Park Theatre as it appeared at the time of its opening in 1798. As such, it replaces the unreliable Elkanah Tisdale engraving, found in David Longworth's 1797 American Almanack, New-York Register and City Directory, as the most accurate view of the theatre prior to its reconstruction in 1820.

Notes on John Joseph Holland, with a Design for the Balitmore Theatre, 1802

John Joseph Holland, one of the most prominent scene painters of the early American theatre, was born in England about 1776 and apprenticed at the age of nine to Gaetano Marinari, chief artist at the King's Theatre, Haymarket. “For upwards of forty years,” George Raymond recalled, Marinari “was accounted one of the first scene painters in Europe.” He trained Holland in scene painting and architecture, and the young artist taught himself landscape painting in watercolors. Soon after his apprenticeship was over, Holland went to Convent Garden, where he was employed from August, 1794, to February, 1795, but he later returned to the King's Theatre, where Thomas Wignell found him in 1796 and engaged him for the Chestnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia.