Jay T. Last Collection of Entertainment: Theatrical Broadsides and Playbills

This collection contains approximately 1,000 printed 19th and early 20th century entertainment broadsides, playbills, and related advertisements, and forms a subset within the Jay T. Last Collection of Entertainment. These items advertise theatrical performances including plays, variety entertainment such as minstrel, burlesque, and vaudeville shows, and optical displays such as dioramas, living statues, and tableaus. Over 250 theaters primarily from the Northeastern United States are represented in the collection, though there are also materials from theaters in the Midwestern, Southern, and Western United States, and approximately 26 items from Canada, Ireland, England, and Scotland. Theaters with the largest subsets include the Boston Museum (Boston, Massachusetts) with 120 items, Liberty Hall (New Bedford, Massachusetts) with 96 items, Theatre Comique (New York, New York) with 66 items, and the Troy Museum (Troy, New York) with 47 items.

The materials date from 1809 to 1923, with the bulk of the items spanning between 1840 and 1890. The earliest dated item in the collection is an August 1809 playbill from the Lyceum Theatre in London, England; the most recent item is a March 1923 broadside for the Hyperion Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut. Almost all of the items are in English except for an Italian bill for the Teatro Italiano (New York, New York) and a Spanish bill for the Gutierrez Show; there is also one bill for the Heywood Bros. Combination that has both English and German text.

The materials range in size from approximately 9 ½ x 6 inches to 42 ½ x 14 inches and consist of single-sheet unfolded advertisements for theatrical productions that were intended to be distributed by hand, posted on walls, fences, or in windows, or sold to playgoers entering the theater. The printed text typically includes the name of the theater and lists information about the play or entertainment, names of performers, acts or scenes, dates and times of performances, and admission prices. Often the text publicized multiple performances over the course of a day or a few days. Among the names given to these types of advertisements, according to their size and mode of distribution, are broadsides, dodgers, handbills, hangers, playbills, posters, and show bills. The notices in this collection are primarily long, narrow broadsides printed on one side of newsprint paper in black ink using letterpress type of varying fonts and size, though some have colored ink, colored paper, or woodcut illustrations. More than 100 bills have illustrations, often consisting of head-and-shoulder portraits of show proprietors or performers, depictions of performances by minstrel blackface entertainers and musicians, or scenes from plays or variety show acts.

The items are grouped by theater and arranged in folders according to the geographic location of the theater, with the largest number coming from theaters in the Northeast United States. The states and foreign countries with theaters represented in the collection consist of:

There are also approximately thirty playbills focused on specific performers or shows without theater information, as well as two playbills for unidentified locations.

Among the most commonly credited printers in the collection are Metropolitan Job Printing (New York, New York); Richardson & Foos (New York, New York); Cameron & Co. (New York, New York); C.L. Mac Arthur (Troy, New York); F.A. Searle (Boston, Massachusetts); Hooton's Press (Boston, Massachusetts); and the Van Benthuysen Printing House (Albany, New York).

The contents list below contains a brief entry for each item in the collection. All entries include the theater name and date if known; some entries also include additional notes that typically indicate the presence of illustrations or minstrel troupes featured in the text.