In a 1703 discourse on the nature of comedy, Anglo-Irish dramatist George Farquhar declared “an English play is intended for the use and instruction of an English audience.” He further identified this audience as a “mixture of many nations” and as “a people not only separated from the rest of the world by situation, but different also from other nations as well in the complexion and temperament of the natural body as in the constitution of our body politick.”1 By “body politick,” Farquhar imagined an imperial nation defined by its variegation and collectivity. Theater scholars Jeffrey Richards and Elizabeth Maddock Dillon have adapted and applied Farquhar’s prescription for a national drama to the New World. Richards characterizes the American audience as “a changeable cluster of identities that individuals or groups might recognize as pertaining to them,” specifically a cluster of Irish, Black, female, and working-class identities that are not fixed or predetermined.