If you bang the perform art , New York City is the property to be . But when you start to calculate up venues in the Big Apple , you might notice that there ’s something odd about their names . Right now , Tony - win musical " Hamilton " is playing on West 46th Street at the Richard RodgersTheatre . Fifty years ago , Lafayette Street saw the premiere of " Hair " at an iconic establishment call The PublicTheater .
So why the inconsistent spelling ? Should newspaper critics be waxing poetic about thetheatreor thetheater ? And do those two variance actually mean unlike things ?
The differences halt from one human race ’s movement to " Americanise " the English language . His name wasNoah Webster . Born in Connecticut on Oct. 16 , 1758 , Webster wore many lid over the path of his living . When the Revolutionary War get in 1775 , he was a pupil at Yale . By the time the state of war ended in 1783 , he had served with a nationalist militia , graduated from college , worked a mates of teaching problem and been acknowledge to the bar as a lawyer .
From there , Webster ’s CV expound still further . In the post - war eld , he became a prominent critic of the deplorably poor Articles of Confederation . Improvements that he suggested made their means to George Washington and James Madison . Not coincidently , our currentU.S. Constitutionechoes some of these marriage proposal . He also helped establish Amherst College in Massachusetts in 1821 , as well as a Connecticut - found antislavery society .
But today , Webster is think of first and foremost as a spoken language innovator . He strongly believed that the textbooks used in American classrooms at the meter should reflect the young nation ’s emerging ethnical identity . Alas , to his chagrin , most teachers were still relying on British publications .
So , in the former 1780s , he wrote a radical text calledThe American Spelling Book . Also make love as The Blue - Backed Speller , it was a vast success that had sell 100 million copies by 1883 and remainsin photographic print . The popular book helped pedagogue standardise American English for the first time . To build on this progress , Webster immersed himself in an even more challenging undertaking .
In 1828 , he published a70,000 - word dictionary . Titled An American Dictionary of the English Language , it was the culmination of more than 30 old age of acute inquiry . The ruined product also looked very dissimilar from its British counterparts . Why ? Joshua Kendall , who drop a line the definitiveNoah Webster biographyin 2010 , says that the human race ’s lexicon was conceived with a towering end in mind . " Noah Webster ’s womb-to-tomb obsession was Americanize the English that his fellow Americans spoke , " Kendall tell us in an electronic mail . To this end , Webster decided to shun the way in which many words had traditionally been spell .
Kendall pronounce that Webster ’s dictionary did out with " Britishisms . " For example , across the pond , English speaker spelled the password " colour " with a " u. " Webster got rid of the superfluous vowel sound and simply spell it " color " rather . pinch like that help make certain Holy Scripture more pronounceable for new readers . Thanks to Webster ’s influential lexicon , Americans now write " plow " instead of " plough " and " laurels " in topographic point of " honor . "
Not all of his reformscaught on , though . Webster did attempt to win over his countryman that " knife " and " woman " should be spelled " tung " and " wimmen . " Still , there ’s no deny that An American Dictionary of the English Language was a watershed written document in U.S. chronicle .
This brings us to thetheatre / theater issue . Before Webster came along , " theater " was the only acceptable spelling . But his dictionary swapped out the " re " suffix with an " er , " which has an sluttish time rove off the knife . Like many of his other phonic spelling , Webster ’s take on the word better reflected the way Americans said it loud in real life . ( Nobody say " thea - truh , " you know . )
There ’s no modern consensus on how this word ought to be spelled . However , some people will tell you that " theatre " and " theatre " now have twodifferent definition . grant to this school of idea , " theatre of operations " pertains to the physical buildings where show are staged . On the other hand , " theater " allegedly refers to the art form itself . Therefore , you’re able to go to a theater to enjoy some theatre . Or put another way , your local production of " The Tempest " is theatre , but the locus in which you ’re speculate to watch that show is a field .
Where does this leave play troupes and other organizations that bring about plays ? These run to utilize the former spelling , giving themselves names like " Germantown Community Theatre " or " The East End Theatre Company . "
