On Monday, June 10, at the Public House of the above Inn, will be Delivered a Series of MORAL DIALOGUES, IN FIVE PARTS, depicting the evil effects of jealousy and other bad passions, and proving that happiness can only spring from the pursuit of virtue.

MR. DOUGLAS will represent a noble and magnanimous Moor named Othello, who loves a young lady named Desdemona, and after he has married her, harbors (as in too many cases) the dreadful passion of jealousy.

On 1 September 1797, both the John Street Theatre and the New Theatre, Greenwich-Street advertised Sheridan's The School for Scandal. Although the company at the John Street Theatre subsequently postponed its performance, this confrontation was typical of what G.C.D. Odell referred to as the “Battle Royal of 1797,” New York City's first competitive theatre season. While most scholars of the American theatre are familiar with the history of the John Street Theatre, very little has been written about New York City's first “regular opposition theatre,” the Greenwich Street Theatre. Lack of information combined with scholarly bias has left us with only impressionistic images of this theatre's place in history.

In the National Library of Scotland under R.283.C. (bound volumes) and pressmrk Mus.Box.250 (boxes of loose materials) are collections of long-neglected playbills—a mine for detailed study of many aspects of theatre in Edinburgh. No printed catalogue of these ephemerae exists, though they provide valuable information that J. C. Dibdin chose to omit from The Annals of the Edinburgh Stage. The collections of Edinburgh playbills are uneven. Sixteen of forty-two Theatre Royal seasons between 1810 and 1851 are not represented by any bills.

In researching my dissertation topic, “Arthur McKee Rankin's Touring Production of The Danites by Joaquin Miller (1877–1881),” I became convinced that the casual use of the term “manager” in nineteenth-century press releases requires some clarification. Indeed, journalists often cited, without distinction, several individuals as “managers” of Rankin's traveling company.

The continued interest in the theatrical innovations of the Bancrofts and T. W. Robertson has led to numerous recent scholarly reevaluations. William Kleb, in his excellent “Marie Wilton (Lady Bancroft) as an Actress,” notes that “the important dramatic, scenic, and managerial aspects of the Bancrofts' work should not be allowed to obscure the fact that their theatre was also fundamentally an actors' theatre.” T. W. Robertson's dramaturgical innovations, however, have also obscured the fact that he began his theatrical career as an actor. In this note, I would like to trace his acting career as a preliminary step in documenting this pivotal period in Robertson's development.