Catalogue of Extremely Rare and Valuable Antiquities, Furniture and Objects D'art of Miss. Ada Rehan: Comprising Many Exceedingly Choice Examples of ... Italian, English and Dutch Schools, Arms, Ar
(Excerpt from Catalogue of Extremely Rare and Valuable Ant...)
Excerpt from Catalogue of Extremely Rare and Valuable Antiquities, Furniture and Objects D'art of Miss. Ada Rehan: Comprising Many Exceedingly Choice Examples of Old Beauvals and Flemish Tapestries, Furniture of the French, Italian, English and Dutch Schools, Arms, Armor, Real Bronzes Sedan Chair, Paintings, Clocks, Italian and French Harps, D'aubusson Carpets
Four engravings, Scenes from Twelfth Night, Merchant of Venice, Comedy of Errors Photogravures, James Lewis and Mrs. Gilbert.
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This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
Catalogue of Extremely Rare and Valuable Antiquities, Furniture and Objects D'art of Miss. Ada Rehan: Comprising Many Exceedingly Choice Examples of ... Italian, English and Dutch Schools, Arms, Ar
(Excerpt from Catalogue of Extremely Rare and Valuable Ant...)
Excerpt from Catalogue of Extremely Rare and Valuable Antiquities, Furniture and Objects D'art of Miss. Ada Rehan: Comprising Many Exceedingly Choice Examples of Old Beauvals and Flemish Tapestries, Furniture of the French, Italian, English and Dutch Schools, Arms, Armor, Real Bronzes Sedan Chair, Paintings, Clocks, Italian and French Harps, D'aubusson Carpets
Four engravings, Scenes from Twelfth Night, Merchant of Venice, Comedy of Errors Photogravures, James Lewis and Mrs. Gilbert.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
(Excerpt from Ada Rehan a Study
Pity it is that the momen...)
Excerpt from Ada Rehan a Study
Pity it is that the momentary beauties flowing from an harmonious elocution cannot. Like those of poetry. Be their own record; that the animated graces of the player can live no longer than the instant breath and motion that presents them, or at best can but faintly glimmer through the memory of a few surviving spectators.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
Ada Rehan was an American actress and comedian who typified the "personality" style of acting in the nineteenth century.
Background
Ada Rehan was born April 22, 1860 at Limerick, Ireland, the daughter of Thomas and Harriett Crehan. Five years later the family emigrated to the United States and settled in Brooklyn, New York, where Ada lived as a child. Her elder sisters went on the stage, and in 1873, at Newark, New Jersey, she played a small part in Across the Continent, by her brother-in-law, Oliver Doud Byron, who was her first coach. Her sister, Mrs. Byron, soon secured her a place in Mrs. Drew's famous company at the Arch Street Theatre, Philadelphia.
Career
By a printer's error, she was billed as Ada C. Rehan for her début, much to her distress. But as the début was highly successful, Mrs. Drew finally persuaded her to keep the name Rehan under which it was made. After a season in Philadelphia she played in stock in Louisville, two seasons in Albaugh's company at Albany and Baltimore, and in the supporting companies of Fanny Davenport, Booth, Lawrence Barrett, John T. Raymond, and other stars. Both in the stock companies and with the stars, she was frequently called upon for Shakespearian rôles, and it was while she was playing Bianca in The Taming of the Shrew in Albany, in 1877, that Augustin Daly first saw her. He saw her again in 1879, supporting Fanny Davenport in his own play, Pique. He thereupon engaged her for his New York company, and in May 1879, at the Olympic Theatre, New York, she began the association that was to last as long as Daly lived, appearing in his version of L'Assommoir.
On September 17, 1879, Daly opened his own theatre, on Broadway at Thirtieth, and Ada Rehan then played Nelly Beers in Love's Young Dream. Almost immediately Divorce was revived, and she took the leading part. From that date until the Daly company was disbanded more than twenty years later, she was its leading woman, one of the group of players there who came to be known as the "Big Four, " and a popular idol of the New York and London play-going public.
Miss Rehan's training was secured in a large number and variety of rôles. She probably played, in twenty-six years, over two hundred parts, ranging from Rosalind to Tilburina, from Meg Merrilies to Miranda. But under the Daly régime the style of the plays in which she appeared had less variety than the number of her parts might indicate, and the style of her acting was conditioned both by her own personality and the demands of the Daly repertory. When she joined Daly, a girl in her teens, the poetic drama (especially Shakespeare) and the "old comedies" were still the dignified base of most ambitious players' repertories. They remained the base of Daly's to the end. For his more popular bills, he turned most often to foreign farce, which he freely adapted to the needs of his company, especially Mrs. Gilbert, Miss Rehan, James Lewis, and John Drew - the "Big Four. " His aim was theatrical effect.
Miss Rehan's art accordingly developed along different lines from the main current of evolution in the theatre during her prime. Nearly all the parts she played (the best of them comedy rôles, for by nature she was most gifted as a comedienne) came to be considered "artificial" before the new century was under way. Some, of course, were artificial because they belonged to the poetic drama; some because they belonged to the older Comedy of Manners; some, and these chiefly the Daly adaptations of German farces, because they had little relation to life in the original, and less in the adaptations.
Naturally poetic drama requires its rhetorical technique, and the old Comedy of Manners demands a style of precision and sparkle and unselfconscious artificiality. Translated into terms of over-emphasis and comic artificiality, this style fitted the Daly farces of the eighties and nineties. In it Ada Rehan was reared and became its complete mistress: and on the death of Daly and the passing of his company, it meant the end of her career when she was still in her prime. In that fact, much more than in the list of parts she played or triumphs she enjoyed, lies the real interest of her story to a later day. Unlike John Drew, who escaped from the Daly company in the early nineties and adapted his style (always much more instinctively naturalistic than hers) to the new drama, she remained devoted to her manager till it was too late.
This was expanded prophetically by G. B. Shaw, in his Dramatic Opinions and Essays, when he reviewed her acting in London during the nineties. There is no better or more vivid appreciation of her merits, and no keener analysis of her weakness, to be found in print than this passage. Outside of the theatre, her life was uneventful.
As early as 1884 Daly took his company to London, where in July she acted at Toole's Theatre. In May 1886 the Daly company again visited London, playing at the Strand for nine weeks, and then made a tour to Paris, Hamburg, Berlin, as well as the English provincial cities. On January 18, 1887, in New York, Miss Rehan first acted her most famous part, Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew. The Induction was played for the first time in America.
In June 1888 she was playing Katherine in London, and in August she played it at the Memorial Theatre in Stratford. She also acted again in Paris. On December 17, 1889, in New York, she first appeared as Rosalind, and in June 1890 she played that rôle in London. In September 1891 the Daly troupe again invaded Paris, acting at the Vaudeville, where Miss Rehan played Lady Teazle, Katherine and Rosalind. The company then went to the Lyceum in London.
The actress visited Tennyson at this time, to hear him read The Foresters, and in October laid the cornerstone of Daly's Theatre, Leicester Square, in which she was a partner. The Foresters was first produced in New York the next March, with Miss Rehan as Marian.
On June 27, 1893, Daly's London theatre was opened, and Miss Rehan acted therein till the following May, giving 111 performances of Twelfth Night and more than fifty of The School for Scandal.
In 1896 she and the Daly company toured America to San Francisco and in July 1896 again played in London. She first played Miranda on Apr. 20, 1897, in New York, but in August she was in England, giving a benefit performance at Stratford, and touring the provinces.
In 1898 she was the Roxane in Daly's rather ineffective production of Cyrano de Bergerac, and early in 1899 played in The Great Ruby. She went to England with Daly in the late spring of 1899, and in June he died, in Paris. In 1900-01 she acted in a play of Paul Kester, Sweet Nell of Old Drury, and in 1903-04, in association with Otis Skinner, revived The Taming of the Shrew and other plays of her repertory. The next season she continued to present these plays, on tour, with Charles Richman, but the glamor of the Daly company was lacking, taste had changed, and public response was not great. Her last public appearance was at a benefit in New York, May 2, 1905, given at the Metropolitan Opera House for Madame Modjeska. Thereafter she lived in retirement, in New York and at her summer home on the Cumberland coast of England.
She died at Roosevelt Hospital, New York, after a long arterial illness, in January 1916.
Achievements
Ada Rehan has been listed as a notable actress by Marquis Who's Who.
Ada Rehan was an Irish-eyed, brown-haired, tall, ample, and vivacious woman, not conventionally beautiful but arch, piquant, incessantly alive, with great feminine charm, sensitive perception, and a fine voice under perfect control.
She was simple, studious, full of fun.
Quotes from others about the person
Otis Skinner has told of her "abounding joy and vitality. " "She gave her audiences no opportunity for indifference of mood, " he says.
Writing of her revival of Lady Teazle in 1904, James Huneker said, "It is still adorably artificial, artlessly artificial. She executes passages of old comedy in the right key, with bravura in the grand manner. There are few surviving on the stage who are to the grand manner born as is Miss Rehan. Miss Terry is more intimate, more contemporary. But the Rehan is still the goddess in the cloud. "
Connections
She was unmarried, and she devoted herself ardently to her professional work.
