1788 engraving of Inkle and Yarico, via British Museum,, issued under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence
Source: Henry Wansey, The Journal of an Excursion to the United States of North America in the Summer of 1794 (Salisbury/London: J. Easton/ G. and T. Wilkie, 1796), pp. 42-43
Production: George Colman the Younger and Samuel Arnold, Inkle and Yarico, and David Garrick, Bon Ton, Federal Street Theatre, Boston (Massachusetts), 9 May 1794
Text: A very elegant theatre was opened at Boston about three months ago, far superior in taste, elegance and convenience, to the Bath, or any other country theatre that I have ever yet seen in England. I was there last night, with Mr. and Mrs. Vaughan. The play and farce were Inkle and Yarico, and Bon Ton; I paid a dollar for a ticket. It held about twelve hundred persons. One of the dramatis personae, was a negro, and he filled his character with great propriety. The dress of the company being perfectly English, and some of the actors, (Jones and his wife,) being those I had seen perform the last winter at Salisbury, in Shatford’s company, made me feel myself at home. Between the play and farce, the orchestra having played Ca Ira, the gallery called aloud for Yankee-doodle, which which after some short opposition was complied with. A Mr. Powell is the manager of the play-house. Mr. Goldfinch, the ingenious architect of this theatre, has also lately built an elegant crescent, called the Tontine, about fourteen or sixteen elegant houses, which let for near two hundred pounds sterling, a year.
Comments: Henry Wansey (1752?-1827) was an English antiquarian and traveller. In 1794 he visited the United States of America and two years later published an account of his travels, including meeting President George Washington. He attended the Federal Street Theatre in Boston, Massachusetts in May 1794, the theatre having opened the previous year. It was designed by Charles Bulfinch, not Goldfinch. Inkle and Yarico was a popular and widely performed comic opera about a shipwrecked Englishman and his love for an Indian native. Shatford was the English actor-manager James Shatford. Mr Jones played Trudge and Mrs Jones played Patty. The African-American actor Wansey says that he saw has not been identified, and is not mentioned in contemporary published accounts. Bon Ton was a comedy by the actor-manager David Garrick.
Links: Copy at Hathi Trust
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