The New Theater, as stated in the advertisement, was in the building belonging to Rip Van Dam, and as Kean & Murray’s Company, who came to New York eighteen months afterward,--that is, in February, 1750,--hired, as stated in my former paper, “a large room in the building on Nassau street, belonging to the estate of Rip Van Dam, the two theaters, that of 1732 and 1750, were probably in the same building, now generally referred to as the Nassau Street Theater. The comedy with which the New Theater was opened in 1732, “The Recruiting Officer,” is the earliest play known to have been acted in North America, for though, as has been stated, there was a play-house in Williamsburg ten years before, it is not known what plays were acted there until 1736, when four are referred to, and “The Recruiting Officer” was one of them, which had the attraction for Virginia that the Colony was referred to in it. It was a popular play in the early part of the last century, and continued to be acted frequently for nearly a century and a half. Much of its wit and sprightliness is in language that would not be tolerated now on any stage, as also some of the minor incidents of the plot; but its raciness in this respect was no doubt, at that time, a part of its attraction, and then its leading parts have been enacted by great players. It was written by George Farquhar, one of four dramatists--Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and himself--who are generally referred to as the leading comic dramatists of the Restoration; and of the four, this production of Farquhar was the one that continued the longest upon the stage. Leigh Hunt, a very competent critic, considered “The Recruiting Officer” one of the very best of Farquhar’s plays. Every character, he says, of any importance, is a genuine transcript from nature; that there is a charm of gaiety and good humor throughout it, and the fresh, clear air of a ruddy-making remote English town neighborhooded by ample elegance. It was performed in New York in 1843, and was revived February 8, 1885, in the same city, by Mr. Augustin Daly, who has done so much to enable the present generation to see what these witty and sprightly old comedies are when represented on the stage, so far as it can be done, by detaching from them what would be objectionable in the present age, and which, in the revival of “The Recruiting Officer,” he did by reducing its five acts to three. It will not, I think, be out of place to show what was the result by inserting two clever criticisms that appeared in two of the New York journals on the morning after this revival, by writers who were not only excellent dramatic critics, but also evidently thoroughly well acquainted with the dramatic literature of the period when “The Recruiting Officer” was written, and the correctness of whose account of the performance on that evening I am able to corroborate, having been myself one of the audience on that occasion.