John Durang: Man of the American Stage By Lynn Matluck Brooks

prohibited “public stage plays,” imposing hefty fines on producers, actors, and spectators.

The city was so barren of theater that Bostonians traveling outside their colony, like lawyer and patriot Josiah Quincy in 1773, were astonished by their theatrical encounters. Quincy, visiting New York, saw the American Company and wrote that he was “much gratified upon the whole, and I believe if I had staid in town a month I should go to the theatre every acting night.”⁵¹ He then piously added, “But as a citizen and friend to the morals and happiness of society, I should strive hard against the admission, and much more the establishment of a play-house of [sic] any state of which I was a member.” In 1784, perhaps in response to visits by Durang and other itinerant performers, the General Court’s prohibitory act against theater was renewed. Private and public fêtes were permitted for some political events—the birth of the Dauphin, the surrender of Cornwallis—but it would take nearly ten years after the defeat of the British for Massachusetts to legalize theater.

When Durang and employer slipped into the City on the Hill, Boston was just starting to climb out of its wartime economic depression. Smaller in area and population than Philadelphia, Boston had borne the brunt of resistance and war. But a Bostonian recalling that time wrote, “the light of toleration,” with the close of the war, “broke in upon us in full splendor in a moment, as it were, and scattered the fogs of superstition, ignorance and inhumanity.”⁵² That ray of light may have allowed Durang’s first theatrical visit to the city.

Despite Boston’s difficulties—or perhaps because the citizens so needed diversion and city fathers were distracted with more pressing matters—Durang and his employer had a successful run of “a bout two months” (14). Durang profited from a benefit and was granted his fare home. He noted that he saved all his earnings beyond living expenses. Even though the Memoir records his friends, activities, and impressions of Boston, it reveals little about his actual employment. The show must have consisted of similar amusements to those Durang had seen in Philadelphia: transparencies, magic lanterns, and machine shows. Durang probably danced a bit and provided musical accompaniment