Early American drama

About This Book

This unique volume includes The Gladiator and seven other early dramas that mirror American literary, social, and cultural history: Royall Tyler's The Contrast (1787), a Sheridian satire about fashion-conscious New Yorkers; William Dunlap's Andre (1798); James Nelson Barker's telling of the Pocahontas story, the Indian Princess (1808); William Henry Smith's The Drunkard (1844); Anna Cora Mowatt's Fashion (1845), the most successful nineteenth-century play by a female American playwright; George L. Aiken's 1852 dramatization of Uncle Tom's Cabin; and The Octoroon (1859), Dion Boucicault's tragedy concerning a young woman doomed by her racial heritage.