Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Longer Plays by Modern Authors
It has been said more than once by competent critics that there was no American drama till it was founded in 1890 by Clyde Fitch. But Bronson Howard came before Clyde Fitch, and plays have been written and acted in the United States ever since the years following the close of the French and Indian Wars. The Prince of Parthia, a romantic tragedy in blank verse, was performed in 1767 in Philadelphia. This was the first American play to be acted by professionals. It was composed by a young poet, Thomas Godfrey. He had been a pupil of William Smith, Provost of the College of Philadelphia, later the University of Pennsylvania, the scene in the mid-eighteenth century of sundry masques, dialogues and entertainments of a quasi-dramatic char acter. These academic exercises, together with the presence of a company of professional actors in Philadelphia, are supposed to have quickened Godfrey's impulse to write his tragedy.
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