Scope and Content Note
The Chippendale Company Play Scripts consist of 16 anthologies of working theater scripts published between 1800 and 1868. William H. Chippendale used the scripts while working as an actor and stage manager in England and the United States between 1834 and 1851. It is likely that he also directed a dramatic company, which used the materials while on tour in the United States. The heavily annotated scripts document production practices in mainstream American theater at the time, as well as the performance histories for individual plays. Written by English dramatists and playwrights, the dramas, comedies, farces, and operettas in these volumes also lend insight into the types of British repertoire performed in America. The scripts encompass the works of William Bayle Bernard, John Baldwin Buckstone, Joseph Stirling Coyne, Charles Dance, Prince Hoare, Mark Lemon, John O’Keefe, Richard Brinsley Peake, James Robinson Planché, and Edward Stirling, among others.