Thomas Abthorpe Cooper: America's Premier TragedianFairleigh Dickinson Univ Press, 1996 - 362 pages Cooper's career stretched through the terms of America's first eleven presidents, and during those years he toured from one end of the Union to the other, often driving from town to town in his own gig at the reins of a team of galloping horses hitched in tandem. Like a comet he traveled, as one of his contemporaries described it: north to Boston, south to New Orleans, across the frontier, and on to the burgeoning river towns along the banks of the Mississippi, keeping alive for the audiences to which he played, probably more than any other actor of his generation, the great classical plays of the English repertory. |
Contents
Much More than a Common Father | 3 |
A False Start | 12 |
A Strolling Player | 21 |
Covent Garden | 32 |
Enter Thomas Wignell | 42 |
Aut Caesar Aut Nihil | 46 |
The Park Theatre | 58 |
The Conquering Hero Comes | 64 |
A Place on the Stage Which No Man in England or America Is Yet Able to Fill | 180 |
The Frontier | 193 |
On the Crest of the Wave | 202 |
A Stranger at Home | 209 |
I Am Banished Home | 219 |
A Magnificent Old Castle | 224 |
The King Comes Here Tonight | 238 |
Papa Looks So Much Happier | 250 |
I Would Rather Reign in Hell | 74 |
The Pencil of a Master | 86 |
Mr Cooper at Drury Lane | 95 |
Return to America | 104 |
A Roscius of Superior Powers | 112 |
Manager of the Park | 122 |
Garrick Take the Chair | 132 |
Partners with a King | 138 |
Cookes Tour | 147 |
Mary Fairlie | 160 |
Last Seasons as Manager | 165 |
The Blue Horse Affair | 172 |
The Veteran | 256 |
Alas He Is Old Now | 263 |
Robert Tyler | 271 |
Finale | 280 |
Paterfamilias | 284 |
Afterword | 295 |
Chronology of the Repertoire of Thomas Abthorpe Cooper | 299 |
Notes | 309 |
341 | |
347 | |
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Abinger Papers actor actress American Anne Merry announced appeared April arrived audience August Baltimore began Boston Bowery Theatre brilliant Bristol Caldwell career character Charles Charleston Theatre Chestnut Street Theatre closed Coleman Papers Cooke's Cooper and Priscilla Cooper played Cooper to Godwin Covent Garden Damon debut December Diary Drury Lane England February Federal Street Theatre Fennell George Frederick Cooke Hamlet Hodgkinson Holcroft Ibid James January John Philip Kemble Junius Brutus Booth Kean Kotzebue later letter London Macbeth manager March Mary Grace Mount Meigs Norval November October once opened Orleans Othello Park Theatre Philadelphia Chestnut St Pierre popular Priscilla Cooper Tyler Raoul rehearsals repertoire repertory Richard Richard III Richmond roles Romeo salary Sarah Siddons scene season September South stage success T.R. Liverpool theatrical Tom's tragedian tragedy traveled Virginia Washington Irving week Wignell's William Dunlap William Shakespeare wrote York Evening Post York Park young