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Originally published in 1939
Some of this information may no longer be current and in that case is presented for historical interest only.
Edited by GET NJ, COPYRIGHT 2002
It required the combination of the Mexican War, the religious wavering of the 1840's, and the arrival of less inhibited German and Irish
immigrants to create a theatrical Renaissance. The opening of the Concert
Hall in Newark in 1847 with The Youthful Queen, or Christine of
Sweden, ushered in the smoky, romantic Opera House period. Until
shortly after 1880 the local stage largely forsook classic British plays for
Continental European melodramas that culminated in the corrupt American imitations known as thrillers and tear jerkers.
Despite the many towns on the New Jersey "road" between 1850 and
1870, the erection of theaters progressed slowly. Greer's Hall in New
Brunswick first resounded to the snarls of the bloodhounds in Uncle
Tom's Cabin in 1854, and in Hoboken Niblo's Garden had a respectable
stage for German and American melodramas and romances. Perth Amboy
had no theater before 1860, and road companies had to wait until 1867
before they could play Trenton's plush-and-gilt Taylor Opera House instead of the wooden-benched Temperance Hall.
Temperance and puritanism persisted in the face of such increasing luxury and freedom. The Trenton Gazette grudgingly welcomed the city's
new theater with the following: "The influence of the theater is generally
pernicious, socially and morally. Nevertheless, we think a place of dramatic amusement can be maintained in this community without detriment
if it can be carefully supervised." The bluenoses were not only vigilant
about the "new drama" but also powerful enough to make performances
of Pilgrim's Progress and The Curse of Intemperance as frequent as those
of the thrillers After Dark and The Streets o f New York.
The emotionalism of the puritanical propaganda plays overflowed into
the romances and contributed to their debasement into cheap and sentimental or hair-raising melodramas. Such plays as Under the Gaslight,
East Lynne, and In the Nick of Time formed the repertory of the stock
companies that developed after the Civil War and brought the theater to
previously ignored places such as Bordentown, Paterson, Elizabeth, and
Orange.
Occasionally in Newark, where the stock company tradition dated back
to the less swashbuckling days of 1847, a troupe rose successfully to the
requirements of Shakespeare, Otway, or Boucicault. Mrs. Emma Waller
played so great a Lady Macbeth and Lady Teazle there in 1867 that she
quickly became a New York and national sensation. While not usually
productive of such players as these, the local stock companies were at
least responsible for the building of theaters that afterward housed greater
actors.
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