mask was removed" and the statement of receipts in Wood's Diary shows no falling off of importance. It was printed in 1816. Barker's play, The Armourer's Escape or Three Years at Nootka Sound, which was acted at the Chestnut Street Theatre, March 21, 1817, had a peculiar interest since John Jewitt, armorer of the ship Boston, on whose adventures the play was based, acted the leading part himself. How to Try a Lover, a comedy, printed in 1817, was never acted, though it was cast and put in rehearsal. It is easily one of the best of Barker's plays.
Superstition was first acted at the Chestnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia, March 12, 1824. Wood tells us it was acted "with deserved applause." F. C. Wemyss, who acted "George Egerton," speaks in his Twenty-six Years of the Life of an Actor Manager of the success of the play, and states that Wood did not put the play on oftener because Mrs. Duff in the character of "Mary" outshone Mrs. Wood in "Isabella." "I have been surprised," he adds, "that no manager ever rescued so good a play from oblivion."
Barker's plays are now hard to obtain. Marmion was reprinted, with Superstition, in 1826, in the "Acting American Theatre" of Lopez and Wemyss. An account of Barker's plays, written by himself, is to be found in Dunlap's History of the American Theatre, Vol. 2, pp. 308-316.
