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82 and printed in 1809. He also adapted Abaellino the Great Bandit, from the German of Zehokke, performed February 11, 1801, and printed in 1802, while from a French source he produced The Voice of Nature, played February 4, 1803, and published in the same year.

One of the best of his plays, printed in 1807 as Leicester and played April 24, 1794, as The Fatal Deception, is a verse tragedy laid in Elizabethan England.

André was performed at the Park Theatre, New York, March 30, 1798, It was received, Dunlap tells us, with warm applause, until Cooper, who acted "Bland," in pleading for André's life, tore the American cockade from his casque and threw it from him. The incident was hissed, but the play proceeded and a change in the lines was made on the second night, which removed the cause of the trouble. The new lines have been inserted in their proper places in this edition.

On July 4, 1803, Dunlap produced a version of André, much changed, called The Glory of Columbia. The first Act deals with André's capture, and the last Act occurs at Yorktown. Washington is introduced with his officers and then André's captors come in and there is a general glorification of the American arms. André was more of a unit than The Glory of Columbia and the dramatic action was more intelligible. The Glory of Columbia, however, was printed in 1817 and held the stage as late as 1847.

Dunlap's plays must be read usually in the early editions, difficult now to obtain. The proposed Collected Edition in ten volumes seems to have been carried only to three; Vol. I, Philadelphia, 1806 and Vols. 2 and 3, New York, 1816.

Darby's Return has been reprinted in an appendix to Washington and the Theatre, by Paul Leicester Ford, Dunlap Society Reprint. New York, 1899. André was reprinted by the Dunlap Society with a very interesting introduction by Brander Matthews, New York, 1887. The Father was reprinted by the Dunlap Society with an introduction by T. J. McKee, New York, 1887. Dunlap's History of the American Theatre, New York, 1832, or in better form, London, 1833, should be consulted for his life and for a description of his plays. For a complete bibliography of his plays prepared by the present editor, see the Cambridge History of American Literature (Vol. I, pp. 496–499).

The present text is based on the edition of 1798. With the permission of the editor of the Dunlap Society Reprint, Professor Brander Matthews, that text has also been used in the preparation of this volume.

A scholarly biography, William Dunlap, a Study of His Life and Works, by Oral S. Coad, was published in 1917. A complete Bibliography is included.