Frederick Brown and Montreal's Doomed Theatre Royal, 1825-26

The financially inept British actor Frederick Brown (d. 1838) was the first manager of Montreal's Theatre Royal, located at the corner of Saint Paul and Victor Streets. John Molson was a major shareholder in the theatre, Montreal's first. The author argues that the small size of the city's population, the linguistic division of the city into English and French sections, the opposition of the Roman Catholic Church to the theatre, the shareholders' preference for a legitimate theatre in English over the more popular combination of circus and light drama, and the political strife engendered by the bitter English-French conflict in Quebec in the 1820s are cited as some of the factors that doomed the theatre in Montreal. Focusing on the demographic, linguistic, and religious features of Montreal in 1825–26, the author examines the difficulties of operating an English-language theatre in a colony without a common culture and stresses economic mismanagement as a factor in the failure of the Theatre Royal.

Theatre Survey

Vol. 24

65-75

May-November 1983

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