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Correspondence and Confrontation between William Duffy, Manager, and John Hamilton, Actor

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2009

Extract

Still regarded by many as little more than vagrants, most actors in nineteenth-century America had no sense of economic security; many were continually on the edge of abject poverty, others victims of excessive drink. These difficulties produced countless emotionally charged confrontations between actors and managers all over the nation, much like the one between William Duffy and John Hamilton in Albany, New York.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1972

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References

Notes

1. Grant, Anne, Memoirs of an American Lady (New York, 1901), I, 285296Google Scholar.

2. Phelps, H.P., Players of a Century (New York, 1890), pp. 1630Google Scholar.

3. Ibid., pp. 38–128.

4. All letters quoted are from the Morange Collection of the Albany Institute of History and Art.

5. Morange Collection, Volume III, Letter 6, 14 September 1831.

6. Ibid., II, 33, 2 August 1831.

7. Phelps, p. 68.

8. Morange Collection, V, 90, 16 October 1835.

9. Ibid., V, 14, 20 October 1833, letter to Duffy's brother, Edward.

10. Ibid., III, 112, 4 March 1835.

11. Ibid., II, 22, 20 June 1829, letter to William Forrest.

12. Phelps, pp. 129–131.

13. Ibid., pp. 131–33.

14. Munsell, Joel, Collections of the History of Albany (Albany, 1867), II, 37Google Scholar.

15. Phelps, pp. 124–25.

16. Albany Daily Argus, 1 and 8 June 1829.

17. Phelps, p. 134.

18. Morange Collection, II, 87, 16 September 1831.

19. Ibid., V, 29. The friend, whose death elicited Hamilton's melancholic binge, was Freeman H. Crosby, a hotel and livery stable keeper on Pearl Street at the corner of Beaver, near the theatre.

20. Phelps, p. 172.

21. Morange Collection, V, 30, 24 January 1834.

22. Ibid., V, 31, 27 January 1834.

23. Ibid., V, 11, 13 June 1834.

24. Phelps, pp. 194–97.