Performing patriotism

"Performing Patriotism examines the role of theatrical performance and printed drama in the development of early American political culture. Building on the eighteenth-century commonplace that the theater could be a school for public virtue, Jason Shaffer illustrates the connections between the popularity of theatrical performances in colonial British North America and the British and American national identities that colonial and Revolutionary Americans espoused. The result is a wide-ranging survey of eighteenth-century American theater history and print culture."--Jacket.