It may not unreasonably be supposed, then, that at an early period members of this ill-requited profession made their way to Virginia, like others with whom the world had gone hard, and found among a people of London habits and London tastes sufficient inducement to get a company together, and open a theater in a capital that then contained the most aristocratic and cultivated society in the colonies. I stated in the paper here reprinted that it appeared by an advertisement in Bradford’s “Gazette,” in 1733, that a play-house existed in New York in that year, and that this reference was all that I had found respecting it. Some years afterward Mr. T. F. De Voe, to whom I have before referred, and who is more generally known as the author of the “Market Book,” informed me by letter that he had found in the “New England and Boston Gazette” of January 1, 1733, under the head of New York News of December 11, 1732, the following account of the opening of this theater in 1732. “On the 6th instant, the _New Theatre_ in the building of the Hon. Rip Van Dam, Esq., was opened with the comedy of the _Recruiting Officer_, the part of Worthy acted by the ingenious Mr. Thos. Heady, Barber and Peruque maker to his Honor.” That it is referred to in this paragraph as the New Theater would seem to imply that there had been a previous one, or some building or place where dramatic performances were given. Governor Burnet, who had been the governor of the Colony from 1720 to 1728, was a highly cultivated man. He is described by Smith, the first historian of New York, as “a man of sense and of polite breeding, a well-read scholar, sprightly, and of a social disposition. Being devoted to his books, he abstained from all those excesses into which his pleasurable relish would have otherwise plunged him. He studied the art of recommending himself to the people, had nothing of the moroseness of a scholar, was gay and condescending, affected no pomp, visited every family of reputation, and often diverted himself in open converse with the ladies, by whom he was very much admired;” to which he adds that he was very fond of New York, his marriage there having connected him with a numerous family besides an unusual acquaintance, and that he left it with reluctance.[15] By such a man the drama might be looked upon as favorably as it was at that period by Addison, and it may be that during the eight years of his administration dramatic performances were given in the city, which was the capital of the province. Rip Van Dam, who was the owner of the building in which the New Theater was opened, was the acting governor from the time of Burnet’s departure until the arrival of Governor Cosby in 1732, a few months before the New Theater was opened, and was obviously the personage denominated “his honor,” to whom “the ingenious Mr. Thomas Heady,” who acted the part of Worthy, stood in the important relation, in his own eyes, of barber and peruque maker.