(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
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( About the Book Theatre has been an important part of Br...)
About the Book Theatre has been an important part of British and Irish culture, dating back to the Roman occupation. Medieval mystery plays and morality plays were performed at religious festivals. The reign of Elizabeth I the flowering of drama was personified by William Shakespeare. Puritans banned drama during the Interregnum of 1642—1660, but London theatres opened again with the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, and flourished thereafter. In the 18th century, highbrow and provocative Restoration comedy was replaced by sentimental comedy, and domestic tragedy (George Lillo's The London Merchant, 1731), and a fascination with Italian opera. The Romanticism period (1798–1836) saw melodramas, light comedies, operas, pantomimes, translations of French farces, and Victorian burlesque. Drama was revived again in the late 19th century with plays on the London stage by the Irishmen George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde and the Norwegian Henrik Ibsen. JM Synge and Noel Coward contributed in the 20th century. About us Leopold Classic Library has the goal of making available to readers the classic books that have been out of print for decades. While these books may have occasional imperfections, we consider that only hand checking of every page ensures readable content without poor picture quality, blurred or missing text etc. That's why we: • republish only hand checked books; • that are high quality; • enabling readers to see classic books in original formats; that • are unlikely to have missing or blurred pages. You can search "Leopold Classic Library" in categories of your interest to find other books in our extensive collection. Happy reading!
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Edwin Booth was born on November 13, 1833, on his father's farm near Bel Air, Maryland, United States, the fourth son of Junius Brutus Booth and Mary Anne (Holmes) Booth. He was named after the actors Edwin Forrest and Thomas Flynn, but dropped the "Thomas" in later life.
Edwin's formal education was obtained at various small private schools in the neighborhood, kept by a Miss Susan Hyde, by a Frenchman, M. Louis Dugas, and by a Mr. Kearney.
Edwin Booth's first appearance, in the minor part of Tressel in Richard III on September 10, 1849, at the Boston Museum, was featured on the program, and during the next two years he played occasionally with his father in such juvenile parts as Wilford in Colman's The Iron Chest and Titus in Payne's Brutus until in 1851 at the National Theatre, New York, the elder Booth one night without warning forced his son to appear in his stead as Richard III. Following these sporadic performances the younger Booth obtained an engagement, at a salary of six dollars a week, with Theodore Barton of Baltimore, but here he was a complete failure. He had not yet learned to overcome his smallness of stature, was awkward and ill at ease, and gave no indications of his future greatness. In July 1852 he accompanied his father to California, where, under the management of his brother, Junius Brutus Booth, Jr. , they had a profitable engagement at the Jenny Lind Theatre, San Francisco, and a very unprofitable one in Sacramento. At the latter place for his benefit Edwin Booth played Jaffierin Venice Preserved to his father's Pierre. California then suffering one of its intermittent states of financial depression, the elder Booth decided to return home but died during the long journey. Meanwhile Edwin together with the actor D. W. Waller attempted the theatrical conquest of Nevada County; the venture was not successful, their party was snowed in, barely escaping starvation, and Edwin returned to San Francisco in a penniless condition. Here he was again employed by his brother, in varying capacities ranging from utility man to star, occasionally appearing in such rôles as Petruchio, Richard III, Macbeth, Hamlet, Sir Giles Overreach, Sir Edwin Mortimer; later he joined Mrs. Catherine Forrest Sinclair, who had newly opened the Metropolitan Theatre; and still later he played with James E. Murdoch and Laura Keene, the latter attributing her failure to "Edwin Booth's bad acting. "
Back in Sacramento, Booth obtained a brief engagement at the Forrest Theatre in November, but was soon dismissed for reasons of economy. He was once more saved from imminent starvation by Mrs. Sinclair, who opportunely started at the Sacramento Theatre a joint stock company which he joined as leading man. On December 10 they produced for the first time in America The Marble Heart or the Sculptor's Dream, in which Booth created the part of Raphael. In February the company took over the Forrest Theatre where Booth continued to act, after the departure of Mrs. Sinclair for the East, until the end of April. By that time his popularity had become such that on April 19 he received a "Grand Complimentary Testimonial tendered by the Members of both Houses of the Legislature and the Citizens of Sacramento, " on which occasion he presented The Iron Chest, repeating the performance on April 22 by request of members of the legislature unable to attend the previous production. Then followed a week at the Sacramento Theatre, a two weeks' successful engagement in San Francisco, another run at the Sacramento Theatre, May 15-June 7, and a final farewell appearance in San Francisco, in King Lear prior to his departure for the East.
Booth had left the East a callow youth hardly started in his profession; he returned to it an accomplished actor. His style was inevitably moulded by that of his father and by the whole Kean tradition but it was marked by an intellectuality and a sustained power which the elder Booth never achieved. Not super-eminent as a comedian, in tragedy the younger Booth was soon to reach the level of Kean himself. On his arrival in the East he played at the Front Street Theatre in Baltimore and then toured the South in preparation for a momentous engagement in Boston, the city which was still considered the arbiter of American taste. He made a triumphant appearance there as Sir Giles Overreach on April 20, 1857, and immediately repeated the triumph in numerous rôles at Burton's Metropolitan Theatre, New York. Subsequent tours in the West and South maintained his newly established position at the very top of his profession in America.
In September 1861 Booth appeared at the Haymarket, London, in the rôles of Shylock, Sir Giles, and Richelieu, but aroused intense enthusiasm only in the last-named part, which was probably his greatest rôle. There followed relatively unsuccessful engagements at Liverpool and with a stock company at Manchester of which the youthful Henry Irving was a member. In 1862 and 1863 Booth was seen at the Winter Garden, New York. After a temporary retirement, Booth undertook the management of the Winter Garden, also purchasing in conjunction with his brother-in-law, John S. Clarke, the Walnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia. On March 28, 1864, he scored a notable success at Niblo's Theatre, New York, in the rôle of Bertuccio in Tom Taylor's The Fool's Revenge, an adaptation of Hugo's Le Roi S'Amuse. The next season saw his famous run of one hundred nights as Hamlet, a rôle particularly well adapted to his own melancholy, intellectual, and lofty temperament.
The assassination of Lincoln by Booth's younger brother, John Wilkes Booth, on April 14, 1865, sent the actor into a long retirement. But he himself had been entirely loyal to the Northern cause and when he returned to the stage on January 3, 1866, at the Winter Garden, although threats had been made against his life, he found that his audience was equally loyal to him. He now put on a series of the most lavishly staged performances which had yet been seen in America, terminated on March 23, 1867, by the disastrous burning of the Winter Garden in which his scenery and costumes, his library, and a valuable gallery of theatrical portraits were completely destroyed.
Booth almost at once started plans for a new theatre to be the most beautiful in America, and the building, known as Booth's Theatre, at the corner of Twenty-third St. and Sixth Ave. , was opened on February 3, 1869, with a performance of Romeo and Juliet. Meanwhile in the midst of increasing domestic and financial misfortune, Booth reached his high-water mark as an actor. The seasons 1869-1874 at Booth's Theatre were an epoch in the history of the American stage. Other players at Booth's Theatre were Joseph Jefferson, John S. Clarke, Edwin L. Davenport, John McCullough, John E. Owens, Lawrence Barrett, Mrs. Emma Waller, Charlotte Cushman, and Kate Bateman. But Booth had no head for pecuniary details, his business associations were unfortunate, and the most artistic theatre in America met financial disaster during the panic of 1873-1874. Booth withdrew from it in 1873 and the next year he went into bankruptcy. The theatre itself continued to function until April 30, 1883, when it was closed and a little later was torn down.
Booth soon paid off his debts but his career henceforth was that of a traveling actor without a permanent theatrical home. After the age of forty his powers slowly began to decline. His health, possibly injured by excessive drinking in early manhood and by excessive smoking at all times, was gradually undermined by the strain of an actor's life augmented by his long series of personal disappointments. In his acting he often seemed tired; his voice, always his weakest point, tended to become monotonous; his gestures became more formal. Yet he carried on gallantly for almost twenty years, and even to the very end he remained one of the greatest actors of his day.
In the season of 1880-1881 he had a brilliant repertoire engagement of 119 nights at the Princess's Theatre, London, shortly followed by an engagement in Othello at the Lyceum with Henry Irving, the two alternately playing Othello and Iago. In 1882 Booth reappeared at the Princess's, toured the British Isles, and gave extraordinarily successful performances at Berlin, Hamburg, Hanover, Leipzig, and Vienna. After his return to America, when not traveling he made his home at No. 29 Chestnut St. , Boston, until his retirement from the stage, after which he lived in the building at 16 Gramercy Park, New York, which he had presented to the Players' Club founded by him in 1888. His last performance was in Hamlet at the Academy of Music, Brooklyn, on April 4, 1891. A slight stroke of paralysis two years earlier had left his health permanently enfeebled, and he now sank steadily until his death on June 7, 1893.
Edwin Booth was the first American to perform Shakespeare for the British Crown in a command performance of "Hamlet" for Queen Victoria. His other most notable performances were as Romeo, Othello, Benedick, Macbeth, Richelieu, and at various times as Brutus, Cassius, and Mark Antony. He also founded Booth's Theatre in New York in 1869. Booth wrote Edwin Booth's Prompt Book (1878), which included the text of fifteen of his usual plays. This work was invaluable for students of the acting drama. During the Civil War he saved the life of Robert Lincoln, President Lincoln's son at a train station in Chicago.
( About the Book Theatre has been an important part of Br...)
(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
Quotations: "All my life has been passed on picket duty, as it were. I have been on guard, on the lookout for disasters - for which, when they come, I am prepared. Why do not you look at this miserable little life, with all its ups and downs, as I do? At the very worst, 'tis but a scratch, a temporary ill, to be soon cured, by that dear old doctor, Death - who gives us a life more healthful and enduring than all the physicians, temporal or spiritual, can give. "
Edwin Booth was a founding member of the Player's Club.
On July 7, 1860, Booth was married to Mary Devlin, a young actress of great charm who had played Juliet to the Romeo of Charlotte Cushman but who now after her marriage retired from the stage. She died on February 21 at their home in Dorchester Massachussets, leaving him with the care of a daughter, Edwina, then only two years old. On June 7, 1869, Booth was married to his leading woman, Mary McVicker, an actress of more ambition than ability; she left the stage after her marriage, but her restless energy fed upon itself until she became insane, dying on November 13, 1881.
