The Italian Father

The Italian Father: A Comedy, in Five Acts (1799) is an American comedic play by William Dunlap, though substantially adapted from Part II of The Honest Whore (c. 1606) by Thomas Dekker.

Dunlap considered it his best play. It was popular with the public at the time (who mistakenly believed it to be a translation of August von Kotzebue and approved it accordingly as a great work),[1][2] and considered positively by modern critics.[3][4] It debuted at the Park Theatre in New York City on April 15, 1799, and played for three performances that season. It also played in Boston in the fall, and was revived in New York for one performance in 1802.[4]

The play was published in 1810, wherein Dunlap admitted he had "enriched his work" from old English sources but claimed it was "without forfeiting his claim to originality in the composition."[1] When writing his History of the American Theatre twenty years after that, Dunlap admitted that "Decker furnished many of the finest passages in this drama."[5]

The 1830 play The Deformed by Richard Penn Smith is based both on The Honest Whore and Dunlap's adaptation.[6]

  1. ^ a b Dunlap, William. A History of the American Theatre, pp. 265-66 (1832)
  2. ^ A History of the American Theatre from Its Origins to 1832, p. xvi (2005)
  3. ^ Burt, Daniel S., ed. The Chronology of American Literature, p. 108 (2004)
  4. ^ a b Coad, Oral Sumner. William Dunlap: S Study of His Life and Works of His Place in Contemporary Culture, pp. 67, 167, 287 (1917)
  5. ^ Hoy, Cyrus. Introductions, Notes and Commentaries to Texts in 'The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker', Vol II, pp. 74-75 (1979)
  6. ^ Quinn, Arthur Hobson, ed. The Literature of the American People: An Historical and Critical Survey, p. 470 (1951)