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The Italian Father
''The Italian Father: A Comedy, in Five Acts'' (1799) is an American comedic play by William Dunlap, though substantially adapted from Part II of ''The Honest Whore'' (c. 1606) by Thomas Dekker. Dunlap considered it his best play. It was popular with the public at the time (who mistakenly believed it to be a translation of August von Kotzebue and approved it accordingly as a great work),Dunlap, WilliamA History of the American Theatre pp. 265-66 (1832)A History of the American Theatre from Its Origins to 1832
p. xvi (2005)
and considered positively by modern critics.Burt, Daniel S., ed

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William Dunlap
William Dunlap (February 19, 1766 – September 28, 1839) was a pioneer of American theater. He was a producer, playwright, and actor, as well as a historian. He managed two of New York City's earliest and most prominent theaters, the John Street Theatre (from 1796–98) and the Park Theatre (from 1798–1805). He was also an artist, despite losing an eye in childhood. He was born in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, the son of an army officer wounded at the Battle of Quebec in 1759. In 1783, he painted a portrait of George Washington, while staying at Rockingham in Rocky Hill. The painting is now owned by the United States Senate. He later studied art under Benjamin West in London. Another teacher was Abraham Delanoy, with whom he had a handful of lessons in New York. After returning to America in 1787, he worked exclusively in the theater for 18 years, resuming painting out of economic necessity in 1805. By 1817, he was a full-time painter. In his lifetime he produced more than s ...
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The Honest Whore
''The Honest Whore'' is an early Jacobean city comedy, written in two parts; ''Part 1'' is a collaboration between Thomas Dekker and Thomas Middleton, while ''Part 2'' is the work of Dekker alone. The plays were acted by the Admiral's Men. Part 1 Production ''The Honest Whore, Part 1'' was entered into the Stationers' Register on 9 November 1604; the first quarto was published later the same year, printed by Valentine Simmes for the bookseller John Hodges. Subsequent quartos of the popular play appeared in 1605, 1606, and 1616; a fifth quarto was published without a date. Q6 was issued in 1635, printed by Nicholas Okes for the bookseller Richard Collins. Scholars have debated the extent of Middleton's contribution to ''Part 1''. David Lake's analysis of the play gives most of it to Dekker, with Middleton's contribution strongest in Act I and the first scene in Act III, and with sporadic input elsewhere. The ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' reports, under Thom ...
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Thomas Dekker (writer)
Thomas Dekker (c. 1572 – 25 August 1632) was an English Elizabethan dramatist and pamphleteer, a versatile and prolific writer, whose career spanned several decades and brought him into contact with many of the period's most famous dramatists. Early life Little is known of Dekker's early life or origins. From references in his pamphlets, Dekker is believed to have been born in London around 1572, but nothing is known for certain about his youth. His last name suggests Dutch ancestry, and his work, some of which is translated from Latin, suggests that he attended grammar school. Career Dekker embarked on a career as a theatre writer in the middle 1590s. His handwriting is found in the manuscript of ''Sir Thomas More'', though the date of his involvement is undetermined. More certain is his work as a playwright for the Admiral's Men of Philip Henslowe, in whose account book he is first mentioned in early 1598. While there are plays connected with his name performed as early as ...
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August Von Kotzebue
August Friedrich Ferdinand von Kotzebue (; – ) was a German dramatist and writer who also worked as a consul in Russia and Germany. In 1817, one of Kotzebue's books was burned during the Wartburg festival. He was murdered in 1819 by Karl Ludwig Sand, a militant member of the ''Burschenschaften''. This murder gave Metternich the pretext to issue the Carlsbad Decrees of 1819, which dissolved the ''Burschenschaften'', cracked down on the liberal press, and seriously restricted academic freedom in the states of the German Confederation. Life Kotzebue was born in Weimar to the respected merchant Kotzebue family and was educated at Wilhelm-Ernst- Gymnasium in Weimar, where his uncle, the writer and critic Johann Karl August Musäus was among his teachers. In 1776 the young Kotzebue acted alongside Goethe in the latter's play ''Die Geschwister'' when it premiered in Weimar. In 1777, aged sixteen, he enrolled at the University of Jena to study legal science. He continued his stud ...
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Park Theatre (Manhattan)
The Park Theatre, originally known as the New Theatre, was a playhouse in New York City, located at 21–25 Park Row in the present Civic Center neighborhood of Manhattan, about east of Ann Street and backing Theatre Alley. The location, at the north end of the city, overlooked the park that would soon house City Hall. French architect Marc Isambard Brunel collaborated with fellow émigré Joseph-François Mangin and his brother Charles on the design of the building in the 1790s. Construction costs mounted to precipitous levels, and changes were made in the design; the resulting theatre had a rather plain exterior. The doors opened in January 1798. In its early years, the Park enjoyed little to no competition in New York City. Nevertheless, it rarely made a profit for its owners or managers, prompting them to sell it in 1805. Under the management of Stephen Price and Edmund Simpson in the 1810s and 1820s, the Park enjoyed its most successful period. Price and Simpson initi ...
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New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the List of United States cities by population density, most densely populated major city in the United States, and is more than twice as populous as second-place Los Angeles. New York City lies at the southern tip of New York (state), New York State, and constitutes the geographical and demographic center of both the Northeast megalopolis and the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban area, urban landmass. With over 20.1 million people in its metropolitan statistical area and 23.5 million in its combined statistical area as of 2020, New York is one of the world's most populous Megacity, megacities, and over 58 million people live within of the city. New York City is a global city, global Culture of New ...
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Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- most populous city in the country. The city boundaries encompass an area of about and a population of 675,647 as of 2020. It is the seat of Suffolk County (although the county government was disbanded on July 1, 1999). The city is the economic and cultural anchor of a substantially larger metropolitan area known as Greater Boston, a metropolitan statistical area (MSA) home to a census-estimated 4.8 million people in 2016 and ranking as the tenth-largest MSA in the country. A broader combined statistical area (CSA), generally corresponding to the commuting area and including Providence, Rhode Island, is home to approximately 8.2 million people, making it the sixth most populous in the United States. Boston is one of the oldest ...
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Richard Penn Smith
Richard Penn Smith (March 13, 1799 – August 12, 1854) was a minor American playwright who is best known for writing a largely fictitious account of events at and leading up to the Battle of the Alamo, which was presented as the work of Davy Crockett. Life and career Smith was born in Philadelphia. His father was William Moore Smith (1759–1821) and his grandfather William Smith (Episcopal priest), William Smith had been the first Provost (education), provost of the College of Philadelphia. In 1818 he began his legal studies in the law offices of William Rawle. During that time, he began writing a column called "The Plagiarist" for a local newspaper. This prompted him to purchase a small newspaper named ''The Aurora'' which he edited from 1822-1827. The next year his first play, "Quite Correct", was produced at the Chestnut Street (Philadelphia), Chestnut Street Theater. That same year, he sold ''The Aurora'' and returned to legal practice to support his theatrical work. He had ...
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Thomas Apthorpe Cooper
Thomas Abthorpe Cooper (born London, England, 1776; d. Bristol, Pennsylvania, 4 April 1841) was an English actor. Cooper was born in Harrow on the Hill, London, the son of a physician with the East India Company. He received a good education, and, on the death of his father, was adopted by Thomas Holcroft and William Godwin. His first appearance on the stage was with Stephen Kemble's company in Edinburgh, and later he acted at Covent Garden, London, with great success as Hamlet and Macbeth. In December, 1796, he made his first appearance in Philadelphia as Macbeth at the Chestnut Street Theatre, and in August of the following year played in the Greenwich Street Theatre, New York, as Pierre in ''Venice Preserved''. He returned to England in 1802, and for several years held a foremost rank on the English stage. In 1804, he returned to New York and soon afterward, for a long time, became lessee of the Park Theatre. Later he again visited England, but soon returned to the Uni ...
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Joseph Jefferson
Joseph Jefferson III, commonly known as Joe Jefferson (February 20, 1829 – April 23, 1905), was an American actor. He was the third actor of this name in a family of actors and managers, and one of the most famous 19th century American comedians. Beginning as a young child, he continued as a performer for most of his 76 years. Jefferson was particularly well known for his adaptation and portrayal of Rip Van Winkle on the stage, reprising the role in several silent film adaptations. After 1865, he created no other major role and toured with this play for decades. Life and career Jefferson was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His father, Joseph Jefferson, Jr., was a scenic designer and actor and his mother an actress. He appeared onstage early in life, often being used when a play called for "a babe in arms". His first recorded appearance was at the Washington Theatre in Washington, D.C., where he appeared in a benefit performance for the minstrel Thomas D. Rice. Jefferson ...
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Giles Leonard Barrett
Giles Linnett Barrett (b. c. 1744 - d. 18 November 1809) was an English actor who came to the United States in the 1790s, and was most popular in Boston.Fifty-years of a Play-goer's Journal
p. 32 (1860)


England

In England, Barrett was the manager of the in the 1780s and was married to the daughter of a Norwich alderman. He later left his wife and travelled to America with a second wife.Seilhamer, George O
History of the American Theatre: New foun ...
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1799 Plays
Events January–June * January 9 – British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger introduces an income tax of two shillings to the pound, to raise funds for Great Britain's war effort in the French Revolutionary Wars. * January 17 – Maltese patriot Dun Mikiel Xerri, along with a number of other patriots, is executed. * January 21 – The Parthenopean Republic is established in Naples by French General Jean Étienne Championnet; King Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies flees. * February 9 – Quasi-War: In the single-ship action of USS ''Constellation'' vs ''L'Insurgente'' in the Caribbean, the American ship is the victor. * February 28 – French Revolutionary Wars: Action of 28 February 1799 – British Royal Navy frigate HMS ''Sybille'' defeats the French frigate ''Forte'', off the mouth of the Hooghly River in the Bay of Bengal, but both captains are killed. * March 1 – Federalist James Ross becomes President pro tempore of the United States Senate. * March ...
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