The really auspicious beginnings in American play-writing up to 1800 were hardly followed up in the period before the interruption of the drama by the Civil War. One man stands out, John Howard Payne (1791-1852). Starting as a precocious boy actor and a dramatist whose first play was staged at the age of fifteen, he developed into a reputation greater than that of Dunlap, but in the perspective of time little more enduring. His "Brutus" was played for years by well-known tragedians, and his "Charles II," in which Washington Irving had a hand, was long successful as a comedy. But he was too prolific for high excellence, and he did nothing new. Now and then men who wrote abundantly produced single plays of rather high merit though of imitative quality, such as Robert Montgomery Bird's "Broker of Bogota." There was a generous output, but a low level of production; tragedies, historical plays, comedies of manners, local dramas, social satires, melodramas, and farces followed in steady flow. Successful novels of Cooper, Simms, Mrs. Stowe, and writers of lesser note were quickly staged, but no one of undoubted distinction came to the fore. Writers in other fields, like Nathaniel Parker Willis, the essayist, George Henry Boker, the poet, and Julia Ward Howe, turned their hands at times to play-writing with moderate success. But it is significant that the conspicuous names of the period were names of actors and producers rather than of playwrights. The history of the American stage has been unbroken up to the present time, but it was not until near the end of the century that the literary material presented on the stage became more than a vehicle for the enterprise of managers and the talents of actors. This later stage will be briefly discussed in one of the closing chapters of this book. BOOK LIST =_General References_= CRAWFORD, M. C. The Romance of the American Theater. 1913. DUNLAP, WILLIAM. History of the American Theater. 1832. HUTTON, LAURENCE. Curiosities of the American Stage. 1891. MOSES, MONTROSE J. Famous Actor-Families in America. 1906. MOSES, MONTROSE J. The American Dramatist. 1911. SEILHAMER, G. O. History of the American Theater, 1749-1797. 3 vols. 1888-1891. TYLER, MOSES COIT. Literary History of the American Revolution, 2 vols. Vol. II, chap. xxxii. WINTER, WILLIAM. The Wallet of Time. 2 vols. 1913. =Collections= MOSES, MONTROSE J. Representative Plays by American Dramatists, Vol. I. 1918. Vols. II and III in press. QUINN, ARTHUR H. Representative American Plays. 1917. =Special Articles= GAY, F. L. An Early Virginia Play. _Nation_, Vol. LXXXVIII, p. 136. 1909. LAW, ROBERT A. Early American Prologues and Epilogues. _Nation_, Vol. XCVIII, p. 463. 1914. LAW, ROBERT A. Charleston Theaters, 1735-1766. _Nation_, Vol. XCIX, p. 278. 1914.