Excerpt from A History of the Theatre in America, Vol. 1: From Its Beginnings to the Present Time Indies, being part of that little band of English players who in 1746 crossed the Atlantic under the leadership of John Moody, the adventurous barber who later became a popular London comedian. That there was acting here of a sort long before these professional English players put in an appearance is hardly to be doubted. That interesting English ad venturer, Anthony Aston, says he acted in New York about the years 1702-1703. N 0 record exists, as far as is known, of dramatic performances in New York at that early date, but it is not unreasonable to believe that, with the exception of Puritanical New England where the extremely severe laws against play acting proved for many years an effective barrier against the incursions of enterprising thespians, theatrical entertainment was everywhere, then as now, a favorite form of public amusement. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.