<— [Return to “Reading Handwritten Documents”]
Object: Memorial and Remonstrance of Divers Inhabitants of the City of Philadelphia
Creator: “Philadelphia Committee of Citizens”
Date: 1783
Shelf-mark: Theater Arts Manuscripts Collection
Repository: Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin
Rights: Public Domain
This is the first page of a draft letter publicly protesting the building of a theatre in Philadelphia. Part of the challenge in transcribing this document is that the ink on the reverse side of the paper is visible. It is also a heavily edited draft, with words and phrases crossed out and rewritten.
Transcription (click to reveal)The Memorial and Remonstrance of Divers Inhabitants of the City of Philadelphia
That understanding with equal apprehension and regret a design is in agitation, and preparations have been making for opening a Theatre in the suburbs of this City for the exhibition of Stage plays or other pernicious amusement of the like kind, we conceive it our duty to represent to you some general observation on this occasion in which the virtue and morals of the people are immediately interested.
Previously remarking as a real subject of peculiar thankfulness that it hath pleased the Sovereign Ruler of all human events to dispose the hearts of the Powers lately “at war to put a period to the effusion of human blood,” whereby the people of this city, and of the Continent in general are happily relieved from the dangers and calamities to which they had been long exposed, and the interposition of Divine Providence remarkably conspicuous for their preservation in times of great extremity, a serious recollection which ought to impress every mind “with humble gratitude to that Almighty Being from whose Goodness and Bounty all our blessings are derived”; but an attempt to introduce those scenes of vanity, prolificacy, & desperation is an instance of great inconsideration and depravity in those who are concerned in promoting things, as it is also a contemptuous violation of the laws.
The nature and tendency of those Exhibitions unhappily introducing