Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T18:57:55.030Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Renderings of the Charleston, South Carolina, Theatre of 1793

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2010

Julia Curtis
Julia Curtis
Affiliation:
Professor in the Department of Dramatic Arts at the University of Nebraska at Omaha
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Charleston will be celebrating another bicentennial in 1993, the restoration of its theatre. Several illustrations of the Charleston Theatre of 1793, its scenery, costumes, and performers have recently surfaced, enabling us to celebrate its bicentennial more vividly. An oil painting of the theatre under construction reappeared in a private estate in 1989 and was purchased by the Gibbes Art Gallery, Charleston, the following year. In addition, watercolors and pencil sketches of the interior of the theatre, its scenery, and costumes have recently been deposited at the South Carolina Historical Society.

Type
Research Article
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 33 , Issue 1 , May 1992 , pp. 23 - 31
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 “Sketches from Nature by A. Fraser and C. Fraser,” from the estate of Maud Winthrop Gibbon, part of the Winthrop-Fraser papers, deposited at the South Carolina Historical Society, Charleston.

2 See also Newlin, Jeanne T., “A Charleston, South Carolina, Playbill of 1794,” Antiques 131 (February 1987): 432–33.Google Scholar

3 Statutes at Large of South Carolina, ed. Thomas Cooper and David J. McCord, 10 vols. (Columbia, S. C.: A. S. Johnston, 1836–1841), Act No. 1531, 5: 195.

4 Curtis, Julia, ‘The Architecture and Appearance of the Charleston Theatre, 1793–1833,” Educational Theatre Journal 23 (March, 1971): 1–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Dunlap, William, History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States, new ed., 3 vols. (Boston: Frank W. Bayley and Charles E. Goodspeed, 1918), 1: 286–87.Google Scholar

6 Middleton, Margaret Simons, “Thomas Coram, Engraver and Painter,” Antiques 29 (June, 1936): 243.Google Scholar See also Batson, Whaley, “Thomas Coram: Charleston Artist,” Journal of Early Southern Decorative Arts 1 (November 1975): 35–47.Google Scholar

7 Times (Charleston), 3 May 1811.

8 Map issued by the Phoenix Fire-Company of London, taken from a survey of 2 August 1788 (South Carolina Historical Society). See also A Charleston Sketchbook, 1796–1806, ed. Alice R. Huger (Charleston, S. C.: Carolina Art Association, 1940), [2].

9 Oty Gazette, 14 August 1792.

10 Mrs Maigault to Gabriel Maingault, 20 November 1792: Maingault papers at South Caroliniana Library, Columbia, South Carolina.

11 Frascr, Charles, Reminiscences of Charleston (Charleston: S. Russell, 1854), 26 and 88.Google Scholar

12 Four years after Coram completed his oil, Fraser made a watercolor of his own, “View of Charleston Taken from Savage's Green,” but at an angle which precluded the theatre. See A Charleston Sketchbook, note 8 above.

13 City Gazette, 13 February 1793.

14 See Curtis, Julia, “Redating ‘Sketches from Nature by A. Fraser and C. Fraser,’“South Carolina Historical Magazine 93 (January 1992): 51–62Google Scholar, which includes a discussion of the problems of attribution.

15 Six of the theatrical renderings have been reproduced in Severens, Martha R. and Wyrick, Charles L. Jr, Charles Fraser of Charleston (Charleston: Carolina Art Association, 1983).Google Scholar See also Severens, Martha R., “Charles Fraser of Charleston,” Antiques 123 (March 1983): 606–611.Google Scholar

16 The title of this comic song, which premiered at the Haymarket in London on 26 November 1792, was a colloquial expression meaning “in the height of fashion.”

17 See Curtis, “Redating ‘Sketches from Nature by A. Fraser and C. Fraser.’ “Several arguments have been advanced for shifting the date back to 1793: the theatrical calendar of the opening season of 1793, unlike later seasons, includes the close succession of the four plays represented in the sketchbook; the statue of William Pitt was removed from the intersection in the spring of 1794 and would probably not have been painted in a later scenic drop; and there is a receipt in the sketchbook dated 1793.

18 See Stoddard, Richard, “The Haymarket Theatre, Boston,” Educational Theatre Journal 27 (March 1975): 63–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and his “A Reconstruction of Charles Bulfinch's First Federal Street Theatre, Boston,” Wintenhur Portfolio 6 (1970): 185–208.

19 Dunlap, 2: 237.

20 Gty Gazette, 1 April 1793.

21 City Gazette, 20 April 1793.

22 According to Shockley, Martin Staples, The Richmond Stage, 1784–1812 (Charlottes-ville: University of Virginia Press, 1977), 67–68Google Scholar, Bignall had sung the role in Richmond. Therefore, it is assumed he repeated it for the 22 April production in Charleston; yet neither his name nor the role appears in the Charleston cast list.

23 Fraser, , Reminiscences of Charleston, 20.Google Scholar

24 Fraser, , Reminiscences of Charleston, 39.Google Scholar See also Kennedy, Michael L., “A French Jacobin Club in Charleston, South Carolina, 1792–1795,” South Carolina Historical Magazine 91 (January 1990): 4–21Google Scholar, and Terry, G. D., “A Study of the Impact of the French Revolution and the Insurrections in Saint-Domingue upon South Carolina, 1790–1805” (M.A. thesis, University of South Carolina, 1975).Google Scholar