Theodore L. Chase, in an article in one of the public journals, after calling attention to Jones’s work of 1724, “The Present State of Virginia,” says that he finds in the Virginia “Gazette” of September 10, 1736, a statement that the young gentlemen of William and Mary College were to enact that evening the tragedy of “Cato,” and that therefore, at the hour stated, the comedies of “The Busybody,” “The Recruiting Officer,” and “The Beaux’ Stratagem” were to be enacted by the _company_, from which he infers that the play-house mentioned by Jones was still in existence, and that the “company” who were to enact the comedies mentioned were not, as I understand him, the students of the college, but an organized theatrical company, who were then performing in Williamsburg, where a theater had been built. It would be out of the ordinary course of things that a play-house like this, close to the market-place, should have been erected for occasional performances by amateurs. A hall in the college would have sufficed for such a purpose, as the halls in old mansions and other structures in England were used for such incidental occasions. It is more probable that it was an ordinary theater, where plays were performed by professional actors. There are many circumstances that lead to that conclusion. The Virginians were a very different people from the Puritans of New England, and had none of the repugnance to stage plays that prevailed among the latter. They had not, like the Puritans, fled to the wilds of America that they might enjoy unmolested their religious beliefs, and carry out their own ideas of religion and civil government, but persons who had gone to Virginia simply to better their condition. As Bancroft has described them, they were “a continuation of English society, who were attached to the monarchy, with a deep reverence for the English church, and a love for England and English institutions.” Upon the overthrow of Charles I., the loyalists in considerable numbers emigrated to Virginia, many of whom, as the same writer says, brought to the colony the culture and education that belonged to the English gentry of that day.