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Full-Text Articles in History
"The Tenter-Hooks Of Temptation": The Debate Over Theatre In Post-Revolutionary America, Meredith Bartron
"The Tenter-Hooks Of Temptation": The Debate Over Theatre In Post-Revolutionary America, Meredith Bartron
The Gettysburg Historical Journal
In Royall Tyler’s 1787 play The Contrast, the innocent and simple Yankee Jonathan unknowingly attends a playhouse, mistaking it for a hocus pocus show. The historian and eighteenth-century theatre manager, William Dunlap, later criticized Tyler’s play because his hero was a clown who misrepresented the new nation that the Revolutionary War created. Tyler’s satirical portrait of his hero, however, is not an attack on the Yankee, but rather a symbol of the ideological conflicts within America. Jonathan repeats the religious charges against theatre, but he also joins in the fun at the playhouse. He is simple and honest, but he …
A Majestic Presence: A Study Of The Development Of The Majestic Theater In Gettysburg, Jay Gallagher, Kelly Burnham, Nancy Moll
A Majestic Presence: A Study Of The Development Of The Majestic Theater In Gettysburg, Jay Gallagher, Kelly Burnham, Nancy Moll
The Gettysburg Historical Journal
In an era of collective entertainment, before private home entertainment systems, people sought amusement within their communities. One aspect of this community entertainment, the theater, offered a social gathering place. Theaters provided an important dual role for the community—both for entertainment and also a certain amount of public service. Theaters in the 1920s and 1930s, in small towns such as Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, served a much different purpose than they do today, with a more prominent and more important role within society. In the 1920s and 1930s, Gettysburg had several theaters. The two most prominent were the Majestic and the Strand …