An Epoch of Child Spectators in Early US Theatre

Although histories of early US theatres are remarkably silent on the matter of child spectators, I establish their presence in urban playhouses based on the memoirs of thirty-five, primarily middle- and upper-class, white persons who first witnessed performances between the ages of seven and sixteen from 1749 to 1849. My examination of popular musical spectacles adapted from nursery stories and advertisements of half-price tickets for children under age ten or twelve explain how child spectators entered men’s cultural domain of theatre by experiencing the same repertoire as adults and subsequently drove theatre managers and critics to recognize, accommodate, and consequently differentiate their aesthetic tastes by the 1820s. Despite lingering anti-theatrical prejudices, this epoch of child spectators reveals how and why managers eventually instituted “family circle” seating in 1847 by instructing and amusing generations of young citizens.