Transatlantic Actors: The Intertwining Stages of George Whitefield and Lewis Hallam Sr., 1739–1756

Abstract

George Whitefield’s ability to enthrall audiences through a potent combination of drama, religious rhetoric, and imperial pride is well documented, as is the Hallam Theater Company’s successful mid-eighteenth century tour of North America. Yet, as historian Odai Johnson recently asserted, scholars have almost always placed the two performers (and the larger movements they represented) in opposition. This article demonstrates that George Whitefield and Lewis Hallam Sr.—lead purveyors of the pulpit and the stage in mid-eighteenth century colonial America—should be understood as mutual contributors to the development of early American performance and, ultimately, professional theater. Both rose to prominence during a specific period (the mid-eighteenth century) in a specific place (the British American colonies) for a shared reason: to use professional performance to entrance the most colonists as possible. Ultimately, Whitefield and Hallam were quite different men who, through common pursuit of fame in North America, demonstrated just how much theatricality and religion—despite imagining themselves as oppositional forces—became entangled by the mid-eighteenth century.