9. Chaos Comes to Walnut Street

(© Podcast text copyright - Peter Schmitz. All rights reserved.)

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Welcome and welcome and welcome again to Adventures in Theater History: Philadelphia. This week we are finally going to address the topic that everybody around here asks me when I tell them I’m doing a podcast about the history of theater in Philadelphia: “Oh, so, you’se gonna talk about de Walnut Schree Theeter, Righ’?”

Yes, yes I am. Ah I can hear the contented sighs from everybody who has been WAITING for this topic, but I‘m going to immediately put them on edge again by telling them it’s not going to be exactly the story they may have expected. How the Walnut Street Theater got to the corner of Ninth and Walnut, where it stands today, is rather more chaotic, and less predictable than you might think. By the way, for those of you who are not so familiar with the streetscape and theater scene of Philadelphia, I’ve put a map on the blog for the website, the link is in the show notes.

Yes the story does involve, once again, lots of horses - so there’s that to look forward to. Because yes, you may already know the Walnut started out as an equestrian circus, but for those of you that are fanatical about the History of the Circus (and as I’ve learned lately Circus History people are quite, well, dedicated to their topic) nobody ever seems to realize what a truly random and otherwise inexplicable phenomenon the existence of this particular theater is. It’s not a natural development that two Frenchmen, Pepin & Breschard, and their troop of European circus guys should end up here in Philadelphia. And yet it’s such a well-known fact of early American theater history that people have, for years, just taken it for granted. “Oh yeh, it started out as a circus, right?” Yes. Yes it did.

It is said by those who study Chaos Theory that the movement of a butterfly’s wings in Beijing may cause a hurricane on the other side of the world. But my point would be: sometimes it works the other way around too. The cataclysmic events of world history sometimes put very small things in motion elsewhere, far away. We’ve already seen how the French and Haitian Revolutions of the 1790s - earth shaking events in the battle for human liberty, ended up sending some other insects - the tiny mosquitoes carrying the yellow fever virus to Philadelphia in 1793 . . though nobody knew exactly what caused them, at the time, yellow fever epidemics would continue to return the city at chaotically unpredictable intervals until 1820, killing many hundreds or thousands of Philadelphians each time - and that was a big thing, again, which had a small consequence: the theater activity in Philadelphia would mostly cease by mid July, and would not begin again until some time in November, when the cold weather returned. Thomas Wignell had arrived at that sensible plan for his New Theatre company after nearly losing his business in 1793 and 1798. He would instead keep his actors employed in residencies in Baltimore or Annapolis during the early autumn months, just in case. They would arrive back at Chestnut street in November when the coast was definitely clear, stage their most lucrative and popular shows during December, January and February, and then starting in March the ‘benefit’ shows would begin, continuing until early May, when the season would end. 

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I suppose I should explain about benefits. “Benefit” shows were another time-honored tradition of the British theater, which Wignell saw no reason not to keep going here in America. Although actors all received a weekly stipend, equal to their various ranks, that was not how actors really earned their money. For one night every season, each member of the acting company would be featured in an evening of plays that they themselves would have full control over. They would then receive the entire box office receipts for the evening, after the expenses of management had been deducted. Everyone got their turn. Leading performers, like Mrs. Merry, Mr. Warren, or Thomas Cooper, would get the earliest benefits. To show their devotion, their fans in the Philadelphia audience would all make a point of being present that night, indeed sometimes buying MORE tickets than they could use, because they knew the money would go directly to the actor. Lavish presents might be sent backstage to the evening’s honoree. All of this was meant to reward a favorite actor for the enjoyment and talent they had shared throughout the season. A lead actor might salt away a thousand dollars or more, just for that one night, which was a lot of money at the time. (Thomas Cooper, who was the best tragedian performing in the US at the time, was famous for speeding between various American cities in a single season: Philadelphia, New York, Charleston, and collecting huge payoff benefits in each one.) 

Then the medium level actors - players of ‘best friends’, the comedians, the secondary leads, would get their chance to shine. Typically their take was somewhat lower, but it was usually sufficient to last them throughout the long summer months of unemployment. And again, the regular audience members were meant to rally round, show support, watch these actors take on larger roles than they were usually given the chance to do. Then the lower level actors, players of messengers, anonymous soldiers, serving maids, etc, would get their benefits, late in the cycle. By this time, the wallets of the audience were getting rather more reluctant. There was a lot of sucking of teeth, and the finding of Better Things to Do that particular night. The weather was so wonderful wasn’t it? Sometimes the desperate lower level actors would program stunts with surprise elements, just to get people to show up, and they would beg the larger stars, the big names, to stick around and be in their shows, to keep the crowds coming. Sometimes the leading actors graciously agreed, but often they found that their voices needed “resting after the rigors of the season, don’t you know, dear boy, YOU understand.” It was nerve-wracking for all involved. If actors did not get what they hoped to reap from their benefit nights, they would resort to renting out the Old South Street Theater in June and July, doing a quick summer stock season, just to tide them over. Our old friend the dancer John Durang, ever resourceful, often staged shows and dances there, and the talents of his many children were employed too. And although the Durangs often would make out quite nicely, overall, it was a system that naturally led to some grumbling amongst the lesser members of the company, and indeed every actor who wanted a larger regular salary was only usually told “But you’ll make it all up on your benefit night! Just wait and see.”

In early 1803, at the height of that year’s season, the great English actress “Mrs. Merry”, Ann Brunton Merry, whose face you can see peering up from the lower left hand corner of our podcast logo, had a particularly notable change of billing. Mr. Merry, her rather difficult and prickly husband, had died back in 1798, and yet for years afterwards she loyally remained a member of the New Theater company, performing her signature roles of Juliet and Ophelia, and singing special songs that Alexander Reinagle composed for her. Among her other important roles were Calista in "The Fair Penitent", Isabella in "The Fatal Dowry", and Monominia in "The Orphan". Not well known roles today, I admit, but she was much admired in them at the time.

She always refused generous offers from New York City and Boston managers to leave Chestnut Street and join their companies, and although she did return briefly to England after Mr. Merry died, she soon came back to Philadelphia. 

The reason for this loyalty became clear in January 1803 when she finally married the amiable and generous manager and actor Thomas Wignell, much to the satisfaction of everyone involved, apparently. The new pair seemed set to become the power couple of the American Theater. Unfortunately, their marriage was to last just seven weeks. Suffering from chronic high blood pressure, Wignell was apparently in the habit of opening a vein in his arm and draining a measure of his own blood, if he felt the imminent signs of stroke coming. Unfortunately, this unadvisable practice caused him to develop an infection in his arm at the site where the piercing instrument, a spring lancet, had entered. After complaining for several weeks that his arm was causing him a bit of trouble, he excused himself from sitting with friends one night as he watched the show from a box at the New Theater. But he never returned. The gangrene in his arm had spread and in the end proved fatal to him. His entire interest in the ownership of the company passed to his widow.

Now "Mrs Wignell'', she continued to perform and to run the theater company, even though she was soon a mother (a daughter, Elizabeth Wignell, was born in September 1803), and was suffering from chronic health issues which sometimes caused her to cancel performances. She largely turned over affairs to her old friend from her youth, the experienced comedian William Warren and to another actor of the company named William Wood who, as it turned out, unlike most actors, was very good with numbers. In 1806 she married once again, this time to William Warren, whose own wife (an actress of the company) had also just passed away. She continued to perform, as her health allowed, as Mrs Warren. Unfortunately, complications from pregnancy proved fatal to her, and in 1808 she died after bearing a stillborn son in Alexandria, Virginia. Her interest in the company passed to Warren, who from that point on shared responsibility for programming and casting the season with Wood.

The other half of the business, Alexander Reinagle, for his part was also in ill health, and after 1803 he mostly remained in Baltimore, where he died in 1809, fortunately leaving his dozens of scores and songs in the repertoire of the New Theatre company. The two Williams, Warren and Wood, now became the joint managers of the company, and would remain so for over two decades. The institution that Wignell and Reinagle had created was in good hands, and the Philadelphia audiences kept returning to see the classical plays, comedies, dances, melodramas, and spectacles. As openings in the company came up, new corps of British actors would be recruited. Among these, notably, was the comedian Joseph Jefferson, who was to remain a favorite in Philadelphia for many years, and would raise a large family there, all of whom would eventually go into the theater business. 

Some American-born actors, indeed, were also part of the company. The parents of the writer Edgar Allen Poe were even briefly part of the ensemble, although it was generally acknowledged that Mrs. Poe was the much more talented of the couple. And the entire family of John Durang were employed as dancers, actors, and scene painters, filling in wherever necessary. 

But all ensemble members, both British and American, were expected to rally round when patriotic feelings ran especially high.  Many American patriotic tableaus and songs that were interspersed freely in the New Theater’s heavily Anglocentric repertoire, to keep the audience happy in times of international crises. In mid-December of 1807, for example, President Thomas Jefferson had instituted an Embargo of all American shipping, as a way of pressuring both England and France to stop violating America’s neutrality at sea. The New Theatre responded to the moment on December 26th, 1807 by presenting a show entitled The Spirit of Independence. A 'transparency' was displayed at the completion of the show. The painting for the drop was likely done by the young painter Thomas Sully, who had just arrived in America from England and was finding work preparing theatrical scenery.

The image is of a figure of the Goddess of Liberty, done in Greco-Roman style. She is holding a picture of President Jefferson and is mourning at the tomb of George Washington - a tall black pyramid, referring back to earlier scenic representations of Washington’s tomb first displayed at the theater in 1799 we described in Episode 8. But in this version the eagle weeping blood has come off the tomb, and sits beside the Goddess, as she holds a staff with a Phrygian 'liberty' cap, and stars representing the total number of states appear in a glowing halo around her. The transparency would have been lowered from above at the end of the play, and backlit to glow from within, inviting applause from the gathered crowd. By honoring both Washington and Jefferson, no doubt Warren and Wood hoped to placate both Federalists and Jerffersonians in the audience. But the Embargo was to have real long-term effects on Philadelphia, idling hundreds of her ships and thousands of her sailors, helping to end her predominance as leading port on the Eastern Seaboard, and adding to America’s growing conflict with the British Navy that would eventually break out into open warfare in 1812.

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Which brings us back to chaos, hurricanes, and butterflies. World History was rather full of hurricanes, so to speak, in the early 19th Century. Titanic events were taking place throughout the world. In France, General Bonaparte had himself crowned Emperor Napoleon, and immediately started his campaign to incorporate the whole of Europe under his rule, spreading the principles that had been sparked by the French Revolution, overthrowing long-entrenched monarchies, liberating Jewish ghettos, and setting up Republics. American slave owners in the South were even afraid he would free the people held in slavery in New Orleans and spark slave rebellions throughout America. However, it turned out that Napoleon wanted money to fund his wars even more than he cared about liberty, equality and fraternity.  With his Spanish allies one of the first things he did was to re-invade the island of Hispaniola and attempted to re-institute slavery and crush the Haitian regime of Toussaint L'Ouverture with an invasion force of 30,000 men. But when that invasion failed as two-thirds of the force died in battle or by tropical diseases, and with renewed war with Great Britain on the Continent of Europe looming, Napoleon decided to cut his losses in North America, and instead just raise cash. He forced the moribund monarchy of Spain to give him back Louisiana, then quickly sold the Territory to the young American Republic. Though the Spanish Ambassador to the US, the aristocrat Carlos Martínez de Irujo y Tacón, a longtime resident of Philadelphia, objected mightily about the deal to President Jefferson, the treaty was signed, The United States doubled in size overnight, and began to realize that it was now itself on the road to being a major world power, and was even fighting its own war with the Barbary States of North Africa. The city’s theaters attempted to capture public interest in current events by performing quickly produced pageants, operas, and plays with such titles as The Tripolitan Prize  and Liberty in Louisiana.

By late 1805 Napoleon was the master of Europe, but had lost his chance to invade Britain when the joint French and Spanish naval forces were crushed by Admiral Nelson at the battle of Trafalgar. In retaliation, Napoleon demanded that the entire European continent cease trading with Britain. However, when tiny Portugal refused to obey him, he decided to invade them too, crossing the Pyrenees and marching right through Spain in order to do so. And that is why I am doing my best imitation of the Mike Duncan of the Revolutions podcast, and telling you all these European battles and diplomacy and invasions. Well because for the purpose of this podcast - as far as I’m concerned, ALL those great and chaotic events happened, just so that one day a butterfly, okay a theater, would land at the corner of 9th and Walnut in Philadelphia. But at this particular historical moment that butterfly, okay two butterflies, okay two butterflies with an equestrian circus company was in a grave predicament 

Two young French entrepreneurs: Victor Pepin and Jean-Bapstiste Casmiere Breschard, were running a circus in Madrid in 1805 and 1806. We know they were doing a fairly brisk business, because the Diario de Madrid reported that they had grossed almost 30,000 reales for the month of October 1806 alone. Victor Pepin had actually been born in Albany, New York, the son of a French Canadian father who had fought on the side of the Americans during the Revolutionary War. His family returned to France when he was a boy, and he had evidently been thoroughly trained in cavalry tactics and military horsemanship in the “riding academies'' we discussed back in Episode 4. John-Baptiste Breschard, for his part, seems to have been a product of the training schools of French circuses. Phillip Astley had once had an equestrian amphitheater in Paris, you may remember, but when wars of The French Revolution took that away from him, the business passed to Antonio Franconi, who founded what was called was initially known as le Cirque d'Astley or le Cirque Anglais, but eventually was rebuilt and renamed le Cirque Olympique. 

Pepin and Breschard had broken away from Franconi's company in Paris and struck out on their own, establishing a new territory for international circus in Spain, having collected their own troupe of ambitious young performers, mostly of French, Italian or Spanish origin. 

But with their young business just beginning to succeed, they were undoubtedly quite alarmed by the prospect of Napoleon’s army rolling through Spain on its way to Portugal. Both men were married (indeed both their wives were performers in the troupe themselves) and undoubtedly did not wish to be swept up and forcibly enlisted into the French Imperial cavalry, as they surely would have been. Yet with most of Europe under Napoleon’s direct control, the British navy controlling the seas, and the Spanish colonial empire tottering on the brink of collapse, there weren’t many places for them to go. One possibility remained: the United States. The former Spanish ambassador to the US, the aforementioned Marquis Martínez de Irujo, had just brought his American wife, the former Sarah McKean, daughter of the governor of Pennsylvania, home with him to Madrid. The couple, who had been fond of Ricketts’ circus, in its day, could probably have told Pepin and Breschard that Philadelphia, the welcoming and civilized “Athens of America” as it was known, had a theatrical market that was wide open for equestrian circuses. Now, whether they were acting on the former Ambassador’s advice or for some other reason, Pepin and Breschard made their bold decision: Philadelphia, Here We Come! Though other English circuses had traveled over the Atlantic, this was the first complete Continental circus ever to attempt the ocean crossing and find success in the New World. 

The elan and bravery of their gambit still amazes me. Despite the fact that it was the middle of winter and a war, Pepin and Breschard managed to load their costumes, their company, their wives, and all their horses (including their prize steed, an educated black stallion named Conqueror) onto a ship to America, minimizing risk as much as they could by taking the shortest possible crossing - Their ship headed for the outstretched promontory of Cape Cod, and they landed safely at Plymouth, Massachusetts in December 1807. Resourcefully, they quickly built a circus amphitheater outside of Boston in Charlestown, where they endured a rather meager winter and only limited success. They started with three shows a week, then reduced that to two a week, then one - after April 1808 they gave up and left Boston, pushing on to New York City where they built an amphitheater near the tip of Manhattan and played to respectable houses for most of 1808. Then, their fortunes having finally improved, they moved on to their real goal, Philadelphia, where the resident Spanish Consul, Valentin de Foronda, had apparently made arrangements for them by buying the lot directly across the street from his house on the northeast corner of ninth and Walnut. 

Even before they even arrived in Philadelphia, Pepin and Breschard had borrowed a huge sum of money from Philadelphia businessmen, and ordered the construction of a truly ambitious structure to house their circus. Not  this time an uncovered amphitheater, but a fully enclosed building. Evidently their vision was to run this business for a long time. It was not dissimilar to the Circus Olympique being built by Franconi in Paris at the same time, though the work was all done by Philadelphia builders and craftsmen, though it is true there were quite a few French emigres in the city who could have told them what was expected. The New Circus, as it was first called, had thick walls of brick and was eighty feet by one hundred feet, with a huge domed roof and attached stables on the north side for the horses. The dome was topped by a flagpole rising 96 feet into the air, taller than any church steeple in the city. On the Walnut Street side, three stately doors stood at the top of a series of steps and led to an elegant lobby. The interior was a large riding ring, with three levels of boxes above (admission one dollar), and a raked audience area (admission 75 cents) beside the ring, seated behind a wooden fence. Above that was an open gallery for the cheapest seats (50 cents). An area for musicians was along one side of the ring. I’ll put a copy of the original ground plan, which still survives, on the website. Once the building was finished, the company moved inside, and began preparations for their first show. Pepin and Breschard, by all accounts, were supremely talented and enterprising performers and were unfailingly gracious and generous with their audiences.  Pepin was small and dashing looking and excelled in leaps, jumps and vaults, though he could double as a clown when needed. Breschard was a tall and elegant man, cutting a fine figure in a Spanish uniform, Breschard was an expert in Roman Riding - standing on top of several barebacked horses at a time, and directing them in synchronized jumps.

The New Circus made its Philadelphia debut on Thursday, February 2nd, 1809. The historian Charles Durang, writing many years later about the event, recalled that “their company was numerous, their stud of horses was thoroughly broken and composed of splendid animals. Their wardrobe was new, costly and indeed the best thing of its kind that had been seen in the country.”

Those of you remember our earlier episodes on Astley and Ricketts will recognize the basic parameters of the act. In addition to the leaps, jumps and vaults, “The Tailor of Brentford” sketch made an appearance, remade as “A French Taylor in London”, enacted by company member Cayetano Mariotini. Cayetano was also the star of another comic skit which had apparently been lifted from Franconi’s circus, Madame Angot, in which he would play a French Lady of society taking her first riding lesson, Other riders of the company Messrs. Codet, Segne, Clavery, Palli, and Alexander rounded out the act doing leaps, tricks and comic turns. I also find mention of a “Young African”, who would dance a hornpipe while riding on horseback around the ring - and that young man, ladies and gentlemen, may have the first professional Black performer ever at a theater in Philadelphia. I’ve been keeping my eyes open for that landmark. It’s a tiny step, long overdue, and one not to be repeated for quite a while, but there it is.

In the second half of the show, Breschard would disguise himself and sit in the audience, acting the part of a drunken ‘Canadian peasant’, who would loudly insist on riding the horses, whereupon being allowed to do so he would comically throw off layer after layer of his shabby clothing, eventually revealed in all his glory as a true rider, and direct the horses through magnificent tricks. Madame Breschard would also take turns about the ring standing on horseback. The company also introduced “Master Diego”, an eleven year-old boy who could do the “Flying Mercury” pose on Breschard’s shoulders. The entire evening entertainment took over two and half hours, ending with a display of flaming rings, through which the horses leaped magnificently and calmly.
The big finish was A single horse, WRAPPED IN FLAMES. Again, a signature move of the Paris circus, the star horse of the evening, Conqueror, would sit calmly in the middle of the ring while fireworks, and flaming barrels erupted all round him, an image of equine control and calm amidst the chaos.

I wish I had a picture of that to share with you. But what is REALLY frustrating about documenting Pepin and Breschard is that the two gentlemen apparently had an entirely different philosophy about publicity material than their British and American counterparts. They rarely advertised their bills in the newspapers, and never, it seems never, had prints or images made of themselves, which to their mind would have spoiled the magic of the evening. You have to be there to see us, they seemed to say. And so, no drawings, no paintings, no images at all of either man or their act have survived, if they ever existed. It’s maddening to us, who are so saturated and used to easily accessible images of just about everything these days. But that’s just not the way these guys saw it, apparently. Buy a ticket if you want to see the show.

Performances at the New Circus continued through the winter and spring of 1808, Pepin & Breschard mixing up the shows by hosting grand balls and public dances, and adding other acts such as rope dancers and acrobats, as well as a comic sketch in which a miller in white clothes, with a bag of white flour, got into a fight with a coalman in black clothes with a sack of black coal dust. By the end, of course both men were entirely gray.

On April 26th 1809, the two French showmen finally tried actual drama, staging a comic pantomime on horseback of Don Quixote de la Mancha, with Breschard as Quixote and Mr. Pepin playing Sancho Panza. The horses performed Quixote’s Rosinante and Sancho’s donkey. Now personally, I would say this is the first actual play ever performed at the Walnut Street Theatre. Most theater historians, with their bias towards human performers and literary dramatic texts, point to January 1, 1812 when the theater staged Sheridan’s School for Scandal. But I think that’s rank Speciesism and anthropocentricity, and I won’t have it. Plus I love the book Don Quixote. Even though the skits that the circus men came up with probably bore only a slight resemblance to the adventures of  Cervantes’ original narrative. There’s my ruling, and I’m sticking with it. First play at the Walnut? Don Quixote, with real horses.

Pepin and Breschard, like Ricketts before them, were soon expanding their business, branching out, adding new acts, touring around the country, building amphitheaters and performing in many other cities. Unfortunately for all their grand visions, like many young entrepreneurs, they ran into financial trouble within a few years and were deep in debt to their backers. And like many habitual risk-takers, they decided that the only course to take was to double down. They decided to expand the theater and make it even more like the grand circus buildings of London and Paris: they were going to add a stage. Early in 1811, they borrowed more money and purchased the lot just to the north. They hired builders to break through the back wall, extending the structure twenty feet and adding a stage 54 feet across. It was now a hybrid theater space, containing both a circus arena and a full-scale proscenium stage. In fact, Pepin and Breschard, thinking of their counterparts in Paris, called it the Olympic Theatre. In that time, circus people always liked to make classical associations, harking back to Ancient Greece and Rome.

Now I gotta say it, at this point: Most of the Olympic Theater, as it stood in its original incarnation, no longer exists. But wait, what? I hear many local partisans objecting vociferously.  It has long been Philadelphia’s bragging point that the Walnut Street Theatre, as it is called now, is the “oldest continually operating theater in the English Speaking world”.  Is that not true?

Well, yes and no. There has been a performance space there, continually since 1809. The stage door opening onto 9th Street has been in the EXACT SAME spot since at least 1811. But many other things have moved. In fact, one of the reasons the Walnut has survived so many years is oddly, not its permanence, but rather its ability to change. It has been re-built, re-vamped, re-designed and refurbished many MANY times over the years. I’ll try to detail some of these conversions in upcoming episodes, if I can. But the original dome was removed and a new roof installed, the facade has undergone many iterations, the audience space, the stage floor, the backstage area, all have been, over the years, remade, for perfectly good and practical reasons. It is a working theatrical space, and it needs to keep up with the times.

As for ‘continually operating’, well technically there were some long stretches especially in the early years, when economic times were dark, and the theater was unused, and its future seemed grim. As we shall see, Pepin and Breschard are about to be rocked by more chaos, as fear of fires and then the advent of the War of 1812 took away their audience. So maybe maybe only ‘continually operating’, if you squint a bit. By the way there was to be a similar rocky period in the theater’s future in the late 1930s and early 1940s. It was almost torn down. Chaos happens. 

Speaking of which: I’m talking to you in May of 2021, and there’s been no shows playing at the Walnut there since the Covid pandemic struck in March of 2020 - stopping a production of The Best Man, which was about to go into previews. Of course that was true everywhere, all theaters everywhere in the city, and the country, and the world, went into a prolonged hiatus. They tell me it all started with a butterfly flapping its wings somewhere in China, but it doesn’t really matter now.

The Walnut, and the rest of Philadelphia's theaters will come back, I promise. In fact, they’re not even really gone, as a wealth of artistic activity both in person and online has continued throughout the pandemic. Theater finds a way. It always has and it likely always will.

And, if you know where to look, you can still see the evidence of this first circus building, and its first expansion. I was in the very last show to be presented at the Walnut: Oscar Wilde’s A Woman of No Importance, which ended its planned run on March 3, 2020. I can personally attest that if you are an actor waiting in the wings at the Walnut Street Theatre and examine the proscenium wall stage left, you can still see the bricked-over door openings for all stables that used to be right there, where all the horses and riders made their way into the circus ring, about where the Orchestra Seats section is now. Since I tend to arrive early in the wings and wait around for five to ten minutes before any of my entrances, I’ve contemplated that wall many times. But we must remember: the play is not in the structure, it’s in the people. Theater does not take place in the past, it is always about what is happening now and what is about to happen next.

And I like to think that Pepin and Breschard also stood there, contemplating that wall, which when first built, and also did not about their past, but instead about their future, their fate in Philadelphia theater still undetermined. As they looked at that wall, and their new stage, they evidently decided that  what they really needed for this big new stage, their Olympic Theatre, was a Big Name, a star actor to bring in the crowds to inaugurate this grand theatrical space. And they knew just whom they wanted: George Frederick Cooke.

Who was George Frederick Cooke, you may well ask. Well now talk about chaos! He was both Chaos and Art mixed together and personified. His is, in fact, such an amazing story that I am going to have to leave it for a subsequent episode. Tune in to learn what happened when the George Frederick Cooke Trans-Altantic Hurricane blew into town, next time on Adventures in Theater History, Philadelphia.

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