The brush for rubbing off the rust of care in America

Abstract

In eighteenth‐century America adventurous solo actors occasionally performed monologues and songs. The epitomie of this genre in the 1790s was The Brush for Rubbing off the Rust of Care. Although actors performed The Brush throughout the states, they found it to be of particular advantage in the North. It was most dramatically used in Boston, home of a strong anti‐theatre law and of actively hostile magistrates. There it helped one actor gain control of the theatre.