Elizabethan and Jacobean Plays [Other Than Shakespeare] in America

Although some non‐Shakespearean Tudor and Stuart plays were performed by the earliest professional ensembles, these productions were few and far between, a situation that persisted all through the 19th century. There was, however, one notable exception, Massinger's A New Way to Pay Old Debts, which seems to have first been staged during the 1794–95 season in Philadelphia and soon became one of the leading vehicles for early American tragedians. The meaty role of the villainous Sir Giles Overreach afforded Junius Brutus Booth and Edwin Booth, as well as many other less distinguished actors, a chance for a tour de force. The play held the stage with marked regularity as late as 1886, when the younger Booth offered his last revival of the work. The rise of academic playhouses in the late 19th and early 20th century may have whetted interest in many of these long‐neglected plays, and the 20th century did see some notable revivals, although they were highly infrequent and never fully in the theatrical mainstream. A few of the more noteworthy revivals have been the Theatre Guild's 1928 staging of Volpone; Orson Welles's Dr. Faustus (1937) and The Shoemaker's Holiday (1938); Elisabeth Bergner's 1946 mounting of The Duchess of Malfi; the Phoenix Theatre's 1950 production of The White Devil; and Anthony Quayle as Tamburlaine the Great (1956).