SOURCE: McNaughton, Howard. “The Emergent Drama, 1840-1914.” In New Zealand Drama, pp. 15-27. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1981.

In the following essay, McNaughton presents a survey of New Zealand drama from the late 1800s to the mid-twentieth century.

When the systematic colonization of New Zealand began in 1840, the English and Scottish settlers faced a rugged, largely unexplored country. The six early townships were widely separated through the two major islands, and each settlement quickly established cultural idiosyncrasies which were to be fostered by isolation and parochialism. The indigenous Maori population had no theater form of its own, and the European settlers—with a background of Protestant puritanism—were largely antagonistic to the arts. This meant that mid-nineteenth-century New Zealand drama was practiced by an atypical minority, viewed only by the more adventurous of the citizenry, and reported—if at all—by morally defensive newspaper columnists. However, when one considers that...