Isaac Clark Pray

Background

He was born on May 15, 1813 in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, the son of Isaac and Martha (Haggens) Pray.

Education

In 1829 he entered Harvard College but soon afterward he transferred to Amherst College and was graduated in 1833.

Career

He had so varied a career in the allied professions of journalism and the stage that it is difficult to follow him through the chronicles and records of a lifetime of constant work as he shifted back and forth between the editorial chair, the author's desk, and the theatre. At times he seemed to be following all these professions at once, and even they were not sufficient to satisfy his versatility and energy, for he was often engaged in the training of pupils for the stage, some of whom became famous, and at the same time he would be writing prose and verse for publication in periodicals and books. There seems to have been no logical sequence in his work, which was the obvious result of a diversified skill at the doing of many things.

While at Amherst College he edited a monthly magazine called the Shrine. Before he was twenty he had written a play entitled The Prisoners, which was produced in Albany. His first book, Prose and Verse from the Portfolio of an Editor, published in Boston in 1836.

During the thirties he edited the Boston Pearl and other papers. In 1836 he went to New York and assumed the management of the National Theatre where his tragedy, Giuletta Gordoni, was acted. At about the same time, there was produced at the Park Theatre in New York a farce he had written, The Old Clock, dramatized from a story he had contributed to the Sunday Morning News, of which he was editor. He also edited the Dramatic Guardian, the Ladies Companion, and wrote dramatic criticism for the Express and other New York papers.

In England in 1846 and 1847 Pray suddenly blossomed forth as an actor, playing such leading characters as Hamlet, Romeo, Othello, Macbeth, Claude Melnotte, and Sir Giles Overreach. He appeared in London and other cities. He starred tours, and managed of the Theatre Royal in Cork.

He returned to New York and along with his other diverse activities served as manager for Gustavus Vaughan Brooke, with whom he had acted in Ireland. In 1849 he was back in Boston as manager of the Beach Street Museum, going again to New York for the next year to become musical and dramatic critic of the Herald.

He was editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1859-60, and his Memoirs of James Gordon Bennett and His Times. He died November 28, 1869.

Achievements

• Isaac Clark Pray was a successful theatrical manager, and among the persons whom he trained for the stage was Charlotte Cushman. His numerous famous dramas included Medea, Orestes, Virginius, and The Hermit of Malta, and the range of his work extended through comedies, tragedies, dramas, farces, librettos, and burlesques, among the last being a popular piece called The Female Forty Thieves.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Teresa Parodi And The Italian Opera (1851)

    (This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)

  • Prose and verse, from the port folio of an editor

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

  • Memoirs of James Gordon Bennett and his times.

    ( Title: Memoirs of James Gordon Bennett and his times. ...)

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• He was, said William Winter, "an amiable man, gentle in character and serene in life. "

Connections

He had a wife Sarah (Henry) Pray, and had two children.

Father:

Isaac Pray

Mother:

Martha (Haggens) Pray

Spouse:

Sarah (Henry) Pray

pupil:

Charlotte Cushman

pupil:

Agnes Ethel