Mount Vernon,
having a severe cold that caused him to cough incessantly, he heard the
door of his chamber open gently and there stood the General with a
candle in one hand and a bowl of hot tea in another. Doubtless George
and Martha had heard the coughing and in family council had decided that
their guest must have attention.

Washington was a Cavalier, not a Puritan, and had none of the old New
England prejudice against the theater. In fact, it was one of his
fondest pleasures from youth to old age. In his Barbadoes journal he
records being "treated with a play ticket by Mr. Carter to see the
Tragedy of George Barnwell acted." In 1752 he attended a performance at
Fredericksburg and thereafter, whenever occasion offered, which during
his earlier years was not often, he took advantage of it. He even
expressed a desire to act himself. After his resignation and marriage
opportunities were more frequent and in his cash memorandum books are
many entries of expenditures for tickets to performances at Alexandria
and elsewhere. Thus on September 20, 1768, in his daily record of
_Where & how my time is Spent_ he writes that he "& Mrs. Washington & ye
two children were up to Alexandria to see the Inconstant or way to win
him acted." Next day he "Stayd in Town all day & saw the Tragedy of
Douglas playd."

Such performances were probably given by strolling players who had few
accessories in the way of scenery to assist them in creating their
illusions.

In September, 1771, when at Annapolis to attend the races, he went to
plays four times in five days, the fifth day being Sunday. Two years
later, being in New York City, he saw _Hamlet_ and _Cross Purposes_.

On many occasions both in this period of his life and later he went to
sleight of hand performances, wax works, puppet shows, animal shows, "to
hear the Armonica," concerts and other entertainments.

The "association" resolutions of frugality and self-denial by the
Continental Congress put an end temporarily to plays in the colonies
outside the British lines and put Washington into a greater play, "not,
as he once wished, as a performer, but as a character." There were
amateur performances at Valley Forge, but they aroused the hostility of
the puritanical, and Congress forbade them. Washington seems, however,
to have disregarded the interdiction after Yorktown.

He had few opportunities to gratify his fondness for performances in the
period of 1784-89, but during his p