Androboros

Androboros (1714), a “biographical farce” by Robert Hunter. Established as the first American play to be printed, it has left no records of any performance. Hunter published the work in 1714 as an oblique attack on his adversary, the colonial administrator Francis Nicholson. He depicted Nicholson as Androboros (Man Eater), a militaristic hothead determined to war against the Mulomachians (the French). Androboros persuades an all‐too‐docile senate to pass a resolution praising his bravery. When asked to explain its action, the senate suggests it praised Androboros before the battle, since there might be no reason to afterward. The play also attacked the officials of Trinity Church, who opposed Hunter after his refusal to grant land to the parish. The title page claimed the book was printed in Moronopolis (City of Morons). Robert HUNTER (d. 1734) was governor of New York and New Jersey from 1710 to 1719 and later served as governor in Jamaica from 1729 until his death. He was an author of some contemporary repute, his works having been singled out for praise by Jonathan Swift.

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Androboros is a play by Robert Hunter written in 1714 when Hunter was serving as the colonial governor of New York. It survives as the earliest known play ever written and published in the North American British colonies. The only surviving copy is currently held in the collections of the Huntington Library in San Marino, California.

The play is a two-act tragicomedy that ridicules Hunter's political enemies with lightly veiled characters corresponding to many important political figures in early New York, including the Rev. William Vesey, Adolphe Philipse, Thomas Smithfield, and Lewis Morris. The story takes place in a hidden room in the basement of the governor's mansion where a secret society meets plotting to take over the colony. Several characters, led by Adolphe Philipse, are duped into dressing like women to seduce the governor general and kidnap him. When they are found out, the seditious plotters are exposed and run out of town.

External links

• Androboros on Books Google

References

• Aspects of Early New York Society and Politics. Jacob Judd and Irwin H. Polishook, eds. Sleepy Hollow Press, NY, 1974.
• Three Hundred Years of American Drama and Theatre (Second edition). Garff B. Wilson, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1983.

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