Book excerpt: Androboros, A Bographical [sic] Farce in Three Acts (1715), is universally acknowledged as the first play both written and printed in America. Its significance stems not simply from its publication but from its eventual impact. Androboros was not just the first of its kind, it was also ahead of its time in many ways, preceding the harsh political satires and farces of the later eighteenth century by some fifty years. The play inadvertently laid the foundation for one of the defining rights of the nation that would eventually emerge some seventy-five years later - the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. As a closet drama intended only to be read by close friends and political supporters, this play has languished as a minor footnote in American intellectual history. Scholarly research published to date has been, for the most part, inadequate and occasionally inaccurate. This study remedies that oversight, providing a full analysis as well as an annotated typescript and facsimiles of the original printing. -- from back cover.