Movatterモバイル変換

This book, as its name implies, is a series of chapters from the annals ofthe American Theatre; and it considers Plays and Players more particularlyin their less familiar aspects. It does not pretend to be critical; andthe greatest care has been taken to verify all the facts it contains (manyof them here presented for the first time), in order that it may appeal tothe small but select band of specialists known as Dramatic Collectors, aswell as to those influential members of the community who are glad to callthemselves Old Play-goers.

The chapters upon “The American Stage Negro,” upon “The AmericanBurlesque,” and upon a “A Century of American Hamlets,” appearedoriginally inHarper’s Magazine; the others have been printed, in part, inother periodicals, but as now published they have all been rewritten,elaborated, and extended.

The portraits with which the volume is enriched[Pg xii] are in many instancesvery rare, and some of them, never engraved before, have been preparedespecially for this work. They are from the collections of Mr. J. H. V.Arnold, Dr. B. E. Martin, Mr. Thomas J. McKee, Mr. C. C. Moreau, Mr. EvartJansen Wendell, and The Players, to all of whom the author here expresseshis sincere thanks.

A double Index—personal as well as local—makes the book easily availablefor reference; and it will lend itself readily to extra illustration. Itis intended to instruct as well as to entertain.

ACT I.
THE NATIVE AMERICAN DRAMA.

The American play is yet to be written. Such is the unanimous verdict ofthe guild of dramatic critics of America, the gentlemen whom Mr.Phœbus, inLothair, would describe as having failed to write theAmerican play themselves. Unanimity of any kind among critics isremarkable, but in this instance the critics are probably right. In all ofits forms, except the dramatic form, we have a literature which isAmerican, distinctive, and a credit to us. The histories of Motley and ofParkman are standard works throughout the literary world. WashingtonIrving and Hawthorne are as well known to all English readers, and asdearly loved, as are Thackeray and Charles Lamb. Poems like Longfellow’sHiawatha, Whittier’sSnow-Bound, Lowell’sThe Courtin’, and BretHarte’sCicely[Pg 4]belong as decidedly to America as do Gray’sElegy toEngland,The Cotter’s Saturday Night to Scotland, or the songs of theMinnesingers to the German Fatherland, and they are perhaps to be asenduring as any of these. Mr. Emerson, Mr. Lowell, and Professor JohnFiske are essayists and philosophers who reason as well and as clearly,and with as much originality, as do any of the sages of other lands. Inour negro melodies we have a national music that has charms to soothe thesavage and the civilized breast in both hemispheres. American humor andAmerican humorists are so peculiarly American that they aresui generis,and belong to a distinct school of their own; while in fiction Cooper’sIndian novels, Holmes’sElsie Venner, Mrs. Stowe’sOldtown Folk,Howells’sSilas Lapham, and Cable’sOld Creole Days are purelycharacteristic of the land in which they were written, and of the peopleand manners and customs of which they treat, and are as charming in theirway as are any of the romances of the Old World. Freely acknowledging allthis, the dramatic critics are still unable to explain the absence ofanything like a standard American drama and the non-existence of a singleimmortal American play.

The Americans are a theatre-going people. More journals devoted todramatic affairs are published[Pg 5] in New York than in any European capital.Our native actors in many instances are unexcelled on any stage of theworld; we have sent to England, to meet with unqualified favor fromEnglish audiences, J. H. Hackett, Miss Charlotte Cushman, JosephJefferson, Edwin Booth, John S. Clarke, Lawrence Barrett, Edwin Forrest,Miss Mary Anderson, Miss Kate Bateman, Augustin Daly’s entire company ofcomedians, Mr. and Mrs. Florence, Richard Mansfield, and many more; while,with the exception of certain of Bronson Howard’s comedies, “localized”and renamed, how many original American plays are known favorably, or atall, to our British cousins?Rip Van Winkle, although its scenes areAmerican, is not an original American play by any means; it is anadaptation of Irving’s familiar legend; its central figure is a Dutchmanwhose English is broken, and its adapter is an Irishman. YetRip VanWinkle, Joseph K. Emmett’sFritz, andThe Danites are the mostpopular of the American plays in England, and are considered, no doubt,correct pictures of American life.

That the American dramatists are trying very hard to produce Americandramas all theatrical managers on this side of the Atlantic know too well,for shelves and waste-paper baskets are full of them to overflowing.Frequent rejection and[Pg 6] evident want of demand have no effect whateverupon the continuous supply. How few of these are successful, or are likelyto live beyond one week or one season, all habitual theatre-goers can say.During the single century of the American stage not twoscore plays of anydescription have appeared which have been truly American, and which at thesame time are of any value to dramatic literature or of any credit to theAmerican name.

By an original American play is here meant one which is the original workof an American author, the incidents and scenes and characters of whichare purely and entirely American. In this category cannot be includeddramas like Mr. Daly’sPique, orThe Big Bonanza, for the one is froman English novel and the other from a German play; nor Mr. Boucicault’sBelle Lamar, orThe Octoroon, which are native here, but from the penof an alien; nor plays likeUncle Tom’s Cabin, which are not original,but are drawn largely, if not wholly, from American tales; nor plays likeA Brass Monkey orA Bunch of Keys, which are not plays at all.

The first purely American play ever put upon a regular stage by aprofessional company of actors wasThe Contrast, performed at thetheatre in John Street, New York, on the 16th of April, 1787. It was, asrecorded by William Dunlap in hisHistory[Pg 7] of the American Theatre, acomedy in five acts, by Royall Tyler, Esq., a Boston gentleman of no greatliterary pretensions, but in his later life prominent in the history ofVermont, to which State he moved shortly after its admission into theFederal Union in 1791. Mr. Ireland and Mr. Seilhamer preserve the originalcast ofThe Contrast, which, however, as containing no names prominentin histrionic history, is of no particular interest here. Not a verybrilliant comedy—it was weak in plot, incident, and dialogue—it isworthy of notice not only because of its distinction as the first-born ofAmerican plays, but because of its creation and introduction of the now sofamiliar stage-Yankee, Jonathan, played by Thomas Wignell, an Englishmanwho came to this country the preceding year. He was a clever actor, andlater, a successful manager in Philadelphia, dying in 1803. Jonathan, nodoubt, wore a long tailed blue coat, striped trousers, and shortwaistcoats, or the costume of the period that nearest approached this;certainly he whittled sticks, and said “Tarnation!” and “I vum,” andcalled himself “a true-born son of liberty” through his nose, as have thehundreds of stage-Yankees, from Asa Trenchard down, who have come afterhim, and for whom he and Mr. Wignell and Royall Tyler, Esq., wereoriginally responsible. Jonathan was[Pg 8] the chief character in the piece,which was almost a one-part play. Its representations were few.

This Jonathan is not to be confounded with another and a better Jonathan,who figured inThe Forest Rose, a domestic opera, by Samuel Woodworth,music by John Davies, produced in 1825, when Tyler’s Jonathan had beendead and buried for many years. Woodworth’s Jonathan was originally playedby Alexander Simpson, and later by Henry Placide. It was long a favoritepart of the gentleman known as “Yankee Hill.”

The American Drama—such as it is—may be divided into several classes,including the Indian Drama, and the plays of Frontier Life, which areoften identical; the Revolutionary and war plays; the Yankee, or characterplays, likeThe Gilded Age, orThe Old Homestead; the plays of locallife and character, likeMose, orSquatter Sovereignty; and thesociety plays, of which Mrs. Mowatt’sFashion, and Bronson Howard’sSaratoga are fair examples. Of these the Indian drama, as aboriginal,should receive, perhaps, the first attention here.

The earliest Indian play of which there is any record on the Americanstage was from the pen of an Englishwoman, Anne Kemble (Mrs. Hatton), amember of the great Kemble family, and a sister of John Kemble and of Mrs.Siddons. It is described[Pg 9] as an operatic spectacle, and was entitledTammany. Dedicated to, and brought out under the patronage of, theTammany Society, it was first presented at the John Street Theatre, NewYork, on the 3d of March, 1794. Columbus and St. Tammany himself wereamong the characters represented. The Indians who figured upon the stagewere not very favorably received by the braves of that day, a large partyof whom witnessed the initial performance of the piece; andTammany wasnot a success, notwithstanding the power of the Kemble name, the good-willof the sachems of the Society, and the additional attraction of thestage-settings, which were the first attempts at anything like correct andelaborate scenic effects in this country.

At the Park Theatre, June 14, 1808, was[Pg 10]presented the next Indian play ofany importance, and, as written by a native American, James N. Barker, ofPhiladelphia, it should take precedence ofTammany, perhaps, in thehistory of the Indian drama. It was entitledThe Indian Princess, wasfounded on the story of Pocahontas, and, likeTammany, was musical inits character. It was printed in 1808 or 1809; the versification is smoothand clear, the dialogue bright, and the plot well sustained throughout.

Pocahontas has ever been a favorite character in our Indian plays. GeorgeWashington Parke Custis wrote a drama of that name, presented at the ParkTheatre, New York, December 28, 1830, Mrs. Barnes playing the titularpart. James Thorne, an English singer, who died a few years later, wasCaptain John Smith; Thomas Placide was Lieutenant Percy; Peter Richings,Powhatan; and Edmund Simpson, the manager of the Park for so many years,played Master Rolf. Robert Dale Owen’sPocahontas was produced at thesame house seven years later (February 8, 1838), with Miss Emma Wheatleyas Pocahontas; John H. Clarke, the father of Constantia Clarke, theOlympic favorite in later years, as Powhatan; Peter Richings, an Indiancharacter, Maccomac; John A. Fisher, Hans Krabbins; his sister, Jane M.Fisher (Mrs. Vernon),[Pg 11] Ann; and Miss Charlotte Cushman, at that timefond of appearing in male parts, Rolf. As these several versions of thestory of the Indian maiden are preserved to us, that of Mr. Owen isdecidedly the best in a literary point of view. It has not been seen uponthe stage in many years. ThePocahontas of John Brougham cannot beclaimed as a purely American production, and it must be reserved forfuture discussion and under a very different head.

[Pg 13]Unquestionably, Mr. Forrest’s great success withMetamora, a prize dramafor which he paid its author, John Augustus Stone, five hundred dollars—alarge sum of money for such an effort half a century ago—was the secretof the remarkable run upon Indian plays from which theatre-goersthroughout the country suffered between the years 1830 and 1840. Forrest,even at that early period in his career, was the recognized leader of theAmerican stage, the founder of a peculiar school of acting, with a host ofimitators and followers. Metamora was one of his strongest and mostpopular parts; its great effect upon his admirers is still vividlyremembered, and, naturally, other actors sought like glory and profit insimilar roles.

Metamora; or, The Last of the Wampanoags, was produced for the firsttime on any stage at the Park Theatre, New York, December 15, 1829. Mr.[Pg 14]Forrest, Peter Richings, Thomas Placide, John Povey, Thomas Barry, Mrs.Hilson (Ellen Augusta Johnson), and Mrs. Sharpe were in the original cast.As Metamora Mr. Forrest appeared many hundreds of nights, and in almostevery city of the American Union. Wemyss, at the time of the firstproduction of the play in Philadelphia (January 22, 1830), wrote of himand ofMetamora as follows: “The anxiety to see him crowded the theatre[Arch Street] on each night of the performance, adding to his reputationas an actor as well as to his private fortune as a man. It is a veryindifferent play, devoid of interest; but the character of Metamora isbeautifully conceived, and will continue to attract so long as Mr. E.Forrest is its representative. It was written for him, and will in allprobability die with him.” Mr. Wemyss’s prophecy was certainly fulfilled.No one after Mr. Forrest’s death, with the single exception of JohnMcCullough, and he but seldom, had the hardihood to risk his reputation ina part so well known as one of the best performances of the greatest ofAmerican actors; and Metamora and Mr. Forrest have passed away together.

[Pg 17]Metamora owed everything to the playing of Forrest; if it had falleninto the hands of any other actor it would no doubt have been asshort-lived as the rest of the Indian dramas generally—a night or two,or a week or two at most, and then oblivion. As a literary production itwas inferior to others of its class; not equal toThe Ancient Briton,for which Mr. Forrest is said to have paid the same author one thousanddollars; or toFauntleroy orTancred, dramas of Mr. Stone’s, which metwith but indifferent success. John Augustus Stone’s history is a very sadone; in a fit of insanity he threw himself into the Schuykill, in thesummer of 1834, when barely thirty years of age; after life’s fitful feversleeping quietly now under a neat monument containing the simpleinscription that it was “Erected to the Memory of the Author ofMetamoraby his friend, Edwin Forrest.” With all of his faults and failings, thegreat tragedian was ever faithful to the men he called his friends.

The Indian of Fenimore Cooper is the father of the stage Indian; and bothhave been described by Mr. Mark Twain as belonging to “an extinct tribewhich never existed.” A full list of the Indian plays more or lesssuccessful, known in other days and now quite forgotten, would be one ofthe curiosities of American dramatic literature. A few of them are herepreserved:

Sassacus; or, The Indian Wife, said to have been written by WilliamWheatley, then a leading young man at the Park Theatre, New York, whereSassacus[Pg 18] was produced on the 8th of July, 1836, Wheatley playing anIndian part, Pokota; his sister, Miss Emma Wheatley, then at the height ofher popularity, playing Unca, and John R. ScottSassacus. This lattergentleman, as a “red man of the woods,” was always a great favorite withthe gallery, and he created the titular roles inKairrissah,Oroloosa,Outalassie, and other aboriginal dramas with decided credit to himself.In the course of a few years, while the stage-Indian was still thefashion, were seen in different American theatresThe Pawnee Chief;Onylda; or, The Pequot Maid;Ontiata; or, The Indian Heroine;Osceola;Oroonoka;Tuscalomba;Carabasset;Hiawatha;Narramattah;Miautoumah;Outalissi;Wacousta;Tutoona;Yemassie;Wissahickon;Lamorah;The Wigwam;The Manhattoes;Eagle Eye; and many more, not one of which lives to tell its own taleto-day.

The reaction against the Indian drama began to become apparent as early as1846, when James Rees, a dramatist, author ofCharlotte Temple,TheInvisible Man,Washington at Valley Forge, but of no Indian plays,wrote that the Indian drama, in his opinion, “had of late become aperfect nuisance,” the italics being his own.

The first of the purely Revolutionary plays presented in New York was,probably,Bunker Hill; or, the Death of General Warren, and the work ofan Irishman, John D. Burke. It was played at the John Street Theatre in1797; and it was followed the next year by William Dunlap’sAndré, atthe Park. Mr. Brander Matthews, in his introduction to a reprint ofAndré, published by “The Dunlap Society,” for private circulation amongits members, enumerates a number of plays written shortly after theRevolution upon the subject of the capture and death of the British spy,many of which, however, were never put upon the stage. André had been deadless than twenty years when Dunlap’sAndré was first produced, in 1798,and Arnold was still living; and, curiously enough,The Glory ofColumbia, also by Dunlap, in which Arnold and[Pg 20] André both figured, wasplayed at the old South Street Theatre, Philadelphia, in 1807, with scenespainted by André himself, who had superintended amateur theatricals atthat house, and had played upon that very stage.

AfterBunker Hill andAndré came at different periods in New YorkTheBattle of Lake Erie;The Battle of Eutaw Springs;A Tale ofLexington;The Siege of Boston;The Siege of Yorktown;TheSeventy-Sixer;The Soldier of ’76;Marion; or, The Hero of LakeGeorge;Washington at Valley Forge; and many more of the samestamp—all of which were popular enough during the first half-century ofour history, but during the last half they have entirely disappeared.

[Pg 23]A play of Revolutionary times which deserves more than passing notice herewasLove in ’76, by Oliver B. Bunce, produced at Laura Keene’s Theatrein New York in September, 1857; Miss Keene playing Rose Elsworth, theheroine; Tom Johnstone Apollo Metcalf, a Yankee school-teacher—a partthat suited his eccentric comedy genius to perfection; and J. G. BurnettColonel Cleveland of the British Army, a wicked old soldier, in love withRose, and completely foiled by the other two in the last act.Love in’76 was unique in its way, being the only “parlor play” of theRevolution, the only play of that period which is entirely social inits character; and a charming contrast it was to its blood-and-thunderassociates on that account—a pretty, healthy little story of woman’s loveand woman’s devotion in the times that tried men’s hearts as well assouls. It was not put upon the stage with the care it deserved, and wastoo pure in tone to suit a public who craved burlesque and extravaganza.It has not been played in some years. Mr. Bunce was the author of otherplays, notably theMorning of Life, written for the Denin Sisters, thenclever little girls, which they produced at the Chatham Theatre, New York,in the summer of 1848. George Jordan and John Winans, the latter a verypopular low-comedian on the east side of the town, were in the cast. Atthe same house, two years later, was playedMarco Bozzaris, a melodramain blank verse, with very effective scenes and situations, written by Mr.Bunce, and founded not on Halleck’s poem, but on the story of Bozzaris asrelated in the histories. James W. Wallack, Jr. (then known as “YoungWallack”), was the hero; Susan Denin was his martyred son; John Gilbertwas the villain of the piece; and Mrs. Wallack the hero’s wife.MarcoBozzaris was very popular, and was not withdrawn until the end of theBowery season.

But to return to the drama particularly devoted[Pg 24] to war.The Battle ofTippecanoe related to the Indian wars, asThe Battle of New Orleans wasfounded on the War of 1812, andThe Battle of Mexico on our Mexicandifficulties some years later. The contemporaneous literature of the stageinspired by the War of the Rebellion was not extensive or worthy ofparticular notice. It was confined generally to productions likeTheFederal Spy; or, Pauline of the Potomac, at the New Bowery Theatre, NewYork, andThe Union Prisoners; or, The Patriot’s Daughter, at Barnum’sMuseum. During the struggle for national existence war on both sides ofthe Potomac was too serious a business, and too near home, to attractpeople to its mimic representations on the stage, and it was not untilHeld by the Enemy andShenandoah were produced, a quarter of a centuryafter the establishment of peace, that American play-goers began to findany pleasure in theatrical representations of a subject which hadpreviously been so full of unpleasantness. These later war dramas,however, are so much superior in plot, dialogue, and construction to anyof the plays founded upon our earlier wars, so far as these earlier playshave come down to us, that they may encourage the optimist in theatricalnovelties to believe that there is some hope for the future of that branchof dramatic literature at least.

The drama of frontier life in this country may be described as the Indiandrama which is not all Indian; and even this variety of stage play is fastdisappearing with the scalp-hunter, and with the Indian himself, goingfarther and farther to the westward every year. It may be said to havebeen inaugurated by James K. Paulding, a native of the State of New York,who wrote the part of Colonel Nimrod Wildfire, inThe Lion of the West,for J. H. Hackett, in 1831. Wildfire, afterwards put into a drama calledThe Kentuckian, by Bayle Bernard, wore buckskin clothes, deer-skinshoes, and a coon-skin hat; and he had many contemporary imitators, whocopied his dress, his speech, and his gait, and stalked through the deeptangled wild woods of east-side stages for many years; to the delight ofcity-bred pits and galleries, who were perfectly assured thatKit, the[Pg 26]Arkansas Traveller—and one of the best of his class—was the real thing,until they saw Buffalo Bill with actual cowboys andbona fide Indians inhis train, and lost all further interest inThe Scouts of the Prairies,or inNick of the Woods, which hitherto had filled their idea of a lifeon the plains.

[Pg 28]Only two modern plays of this character are worthy of serious attentionhere—Augustin Daly’sHorizon and theDavy Crockett of Frank E.Murdoch.Horizon, one of Mr. Daly’s earliest works, was produced at theOlympic Theatre, March 22, 1871, and ran for two months. In theadvertisements it was called “a totally original drama, in five acts,illustrative of a significant phase of New York society, and embodying thevaried scenes peculiar to American frontier life of the present day.” Itwas certainly an American play. In no other part of the world are itscharacters and its incidents to be met with. Complications of plot andscenery and certain surprises in the action were evidently aimed at by theauthor rather than literary excellence. A panorama of a Western river anda night surprise of an Indian band upon a company of United States troopswere well managed and very effective. The play was suggestive of BretHarte’s sketches and of dime novels, with its gambler, its Heathen Chinee,its roughs of “Rogues’ Rest” its vigilance committee, its[Pg 29]abandonedwife, and its prairie princess. The Indian element did not predominate inHorizon, and was not offensive. The part of Wannamucka, thesemi-civilized redskin, very well played by Charles Wheatleigh, was quitean original conception of the traditional untutored savage; he was wild,romantic, treacherous, but with a touch of dry humor about him that madehim attractive in the drama, if not according to the nature of his kind.Panther Loder might have stepped out of the story ofThe Outcasts ofPoker Flat—one of those cool, desperate, utterly depraved, butgentlemanly rascals whom Mr. Harte has painted so graphically, and whomJohn K. Mortimer could represent so perfectly upon the stage. Mortimer,during his long career, never did more artistic work than in thisrôle.The stars inHorizon whose names on the bills appeared in the largesttype were Miss Agnes Ethel, the White Flower of the Plains, and George L.Fox. The lady was gentle, charming, and very pretty in a part evidentlywritten to fit her; not so great as inFrou Frou, in which she made herfirst hit, or as Agnes, which was to follow; but it was a pleasant,creditable performance throughout. Poor Fox, as Sundown Bowse, theTerritorial Congressman, furnished the comic element in the piece; he washumorous and not impossible—the first of the[Pg 30] Bardwell Slotes and ColonelSellerses and Silas K. Woolcotts who are now the accepted stage-Yankees,and who furnish most of the amusement in the modern American drama. Mr.Fox has not been greatly surpassed by any of his successors in this line.Miss Ada Harland as his daughter, Miss Lulu Prior as the royal Indianmaiden, Mrs. Yeamans as the Widow Mullins, and little Jennie Yeamans asthe captured pappoose all added to the popularity of the play. Taken as awhole,Horizon is the best native production of its kind seen here inmany years, with the single exception ofDavy Crockett.

Mr. Frank Murdoch called hisDavy Crockett a “backwoods idyl.” It isalmost the best American play ever written. A pure sylvan love-story, toldin a healthful, dramatic way, it is a poem in four acts; not perfect inform, open to criticism, with faults of construction, failings of plot,slight improbabilities, sensational situations, and literary shortcomings,but so simple and so touching and so pure that it is worthy to rank withany of the creations of the modern stage in any language. The character ofDavy Crockett, the central figure, is beautifully and artistically drawn:a strong, brave young hunter of the Far West; bold but unassuming; gentlebut with a strong will; skilled in woodcraft but wholly ignorant of theways of the civilized world[Pg 31] he had never seen; capable of great love andof great sacrifices for his love’s sake; shy, sensitive, and proud; unableto read or to write; utterly unconscious of his own physical beauty and ofhis own heroism; faithful, honest, truthful—in short, a naturalgentleman. The story is hardly a new one. Davy seems to be the son of thefamous Davy Crockett whose reputation was so great that his very namebecame a terror to the ’coons of the wild woods, and who left to hischildren and to posterity the wholesome advice that it is only safe to goahead when one is sure one is right in going. On this motto the DavyCrockett of the play always acts. He is in love with a young lady who ishis superior in station and education. Of his admiration he is notashamed, but in his simple, honest modesty he never dreams of winning thebelle of the county, or that there is anything in him that can attract arefined woman. It is his good fortune to save her life from Indians andfrom wolves at some risk of his own scalp, and with some damage to his ownperson. In a forest hut, while she nurses his wounds, she recites to himthe story of Young Lochinvar, upholding the course of the borderer ofother lands and other days, so faithful in love, so dauntless in war,telling of her own approaching marriage to a laggard in love and a[Pg 32]dastard in battle, into which her father would force her. On this hint hespeaks, sure he is right at last, and going ahead, like the young hero inMarmion, to win this old man’s daughter. He carries her away from the armsof the man she hates; one touch of her hand and one word in her ear isenough; through all the wide border his steed is the best; there is racingand chasing through Cannobie Lee, behind the footlights and in the wings,but Lochinvar Crockett wins his bride, the curtain falls on proud gallantand happy maiden, and the band plays “Home, Sweet Home.”

All this, of course, is the old, old story so often told on the stagebefore, and to last forever; but Mr. Murdoch seems to have told it betterthan any of his fellow-countrymen.

There is no doubt, however, thatDavy Crockett, likeMetamora, owesmuch of its success to the actor who plays its titular part. Mr. FrankMayo’s performance of this backwoods hero is a gem in its way. He is quietand subdued, he looks and walks and talks the trapper to the life, neveroveracts, and never forgets the character he represents. He first playedDavy Crockett in Rochester in November, 1873, producing it in New Yorkat Niblo’s Garden on the 9th of March, 1874, when he had the support ofMiss Rosa Rand as Eleanor Vaughn, the[Pg 33] heroine who looked down to blushand who looked up to sigh, with a smile on her lip and a tear in her eye,and who made in the part a very favorable impression. The play has neverbeen properly appreciated by metropolitan audiences. Free from tomahawkingand gun-firing, it does not attract the lovers of the sensational; utterlydevoid of emotional and harrowing elements, it does not appeal to theadmirers of the morbid on the stage; and, giving no scope for richness oftoilet, it has no charms for the habitual attendants upon matinéeentertainments.

[Pg 35]Its reception by the press was not cordial or kindly, and the severethings written about it had, it is said, such an effect upon its sensitiveauthor that he literally died of criticism in Philadelphia, November 13,1872. Frank H. Murdoch was a nephew of James E. Murdoch, the oldtragedian, and was himself an actor of some promise. His single play wasof so much promise that if there were an American Academy to crown suchproductions it might have won for him at least one leaf of the laurel.

The typical and accepted American of the stage, the most familiar figurein our dramatic literature, is a Jonathan, an Asa Trenchard, a Rip VanWinkle, a Solon Shingle, a Bardwell Slote, a Mulberry Sellers, and aJoshua Whitcomb; and even he does not always figure in the American playas it is here defined.

Jonathan, of whom something has already been said, is now extinct anddefunct. Asa Trenchard is the creation of an Englishman (Tom Taylor),brought to perfection by the genius of Mr. Jefferson. Rip Van Winkle, ashas been said before, is a Dutchman taken from the pages of Irving’sfamiliar tale, and so accentuated by the genius of this same Jefferson inthe present generation, that the fact that he had distinguishedpredecessors in the same character, but in other dramatizations of the[Pg 39]story, is almost forgotten now. Hackett was the original Rip in 1830.Of his performance Sol Smith wrote then: “I should despair of finding aman or a woman in an audience of five hundred who could hear Hackett’sutterance of five words in the second act, ‘But she vas mine vrow,’without experiencing some moisture in the eyes.” The second Rip Van Winklewas Charles Burke, a half-brother of Mr. Jefferson who considers Burke’sthe best Rip Van Winkle of the trio. He was the author of his own versionof the play. Concerning his “Are we so soon forgot?” L. Clarke Davisquotes John S. Clarke as saying: “It fell upon the senses like theculmination of all mortal despair, and the actor’s figure, as the lowsweet tones died away, symbolized more the ruin of a representative of arace than the sufferings of an individual. His awful loss and lonelinessseemed to clothe him with a supernatural dignity and grandeur whichcommanded the sympathy and awe of his audience.” Mr. Clarke adds that insupporting Mr. Burke in this part night after night, and while perfectlyaware of what was coming, and even watching for it, when these lines werespoken his heart seemed to rise in his throat, and his eyes were wet withtears. TheRip Van Winkle which Mr. Jefferson has played so often onboth sides of the Atlantic is his own version of the story, somewhat[Pg 40]elaborated by Mr. Boucicault; and Mr. Jefferson’s Rip Van Winkle is RipVan Winkle himself.

It was Charles Burke who first discovered the possibilities lying dormantin the character of Solon Shingle, a sort of Yankee juvenile Paul Pry, ina two-act drama calledThe People’s Lawyer, by Dr. J. S. Jones. “Yankee”Hill and Joshua Silsbee—both admirable representatives of Yankeecharacter parts—played Solon Shingle as a young man, with all of the“Down-East” characteristics which distinguish stage Down-Easters; and itwas not until he fell into the hands of Burke that he became thesimple-minded, phenomenally shrewd old man from New England, with a soulwhich soared no higher than the financial value of a bar’l of apple-sass.Until Mr. Owens, the last of the Solon Shingles, died and took SolonShingle with him, the drivelling old farmer from Massachusetts was asperfect a specimen of his peculiar species as our stage has ever seen.

Judge Bardwell Slote may be called with justice “a humorous satire,” whichis the subtitle given by Benjamin Woolf to the play ofThe MightyDollar, in which he is found. He is a politician of the worst stamp, withmany amiable and commendable qualities. He is vulgar to an almostimpossible degree, personally offensive, and yet entirely delightful to[Pg 41]meet—on the stage, where Mr. Florence kept him for many hundreds ofsuccessive nights. If he never existed in real life—and it is to be hopedfor the sake of our national credit that he did not—Mr. Florence made himnot only possible but probable.

[Pg 43]The Senator, written by David Lloyd, and retouched by Sydney Rosenfeldfor Wm. H. Crane, is a native legislator of a somewhat different type. Heis an honest politician, who may perhaps be found in the Senate of one ofthe States of the nation, and even in the Upper House of the nationitself. He is a man of energy and of what is called “snap”; he is full ofengagements which he has no time to keep; he is loquacious, of course, forloquacity is part of his business capital; he is loud, self-made,self-educated, self-reliant, and not always refined. His humor ispeculiarly American, and in Mr. Crane’s hands he is very human.

Mr. Warner and Mr. Clemens, jointly with John T. Raymond, are responsiblefor the character of Colonel Mulberry Sellers, a stage American from theSouthern States. He is quite as much exaggerated as Slote, and quite asamusing. He can be found in part in all sections of the country, perhaps,but as a whole, happily for the country, he does not exist at all, exceptupon the stage.

The great charm of Joshua Whitcomb is that he[Pg 44] is a real man of real NewEngland flesh and blood, so true to the life that when Mr. Thompson tookhim to Keene, New Hampshire, not very far from Swanzey, his audienceswanted their money back, on the ground that they got nothing for it butwhat they saw, free of charge, all about them every day. “It warn’t noactin’; it was jest a lot of fellers goin’ around and doin’ things.” Themanner in which Mr. Thompson goes about inThe Old Homestead, and doesthings, is the perfection of art; and if he is not the best of his class,it is not because he is the least natural and the least lovable.

It is a curious commentary upon the rarity of typical stage Americans ofthe gentler sex that only two of any prominence have appeared of lateyears, and that these are everything but gentle, and are both played by aman. Mrs. Barney Williams and Mrs. Florence were very popular as “Yankeegals” with a previous generation; but to Neil Burgess must we turn now forthe only correct picture of the women who are fit to mate (upon the stage)with those heroes of the stage who fill our rural homesteads and ourlegislative lobbies. The Widow Bedott, and her friend ofThe CountyFair, most assuredly are worthy of equal rights with Joshua Whitcomb andBardwell Slote.

Drawn by Arthur Jule Goodman,
after a photograph by Falk.—From the
collection of Evert Jansen Wendell.

The number of plays based upon life in New York, all of which arestrangely similar in title and in plot, or what must pass for plot, andall of which have been seen upon the New York stage since the firstappearance ofMose, will surprise even those most familiar with ourtheatrical literature. Taken almost at random from various files of oldplay-bills, and from Mr. Ireland’sRecords, there wereA Glance at NewYork; orNew York in 1848;New York As it Is;First of May in NewYork;The Mysteries and Miseries of New York;Burton’s New YorkDirectory;The New York Fireman;Fast Young Men of New York;YoungNew York;The Poor of New York;New York by Gaslight;New York inSlices;The Streets of New York;The New York Merchant and hisClerks;The Ship-carpenter of New York;The Seamstress of New York;The New York Printer;The Drygoods Clerk of[Pg 48] New York, and many more,includingAdelle, the New York Saleslady, which last was seen on theBowery side of the town as late as 1879.

These were nearly all spectacular plays, and they were usually realisticto a degree in their representation of men and things in the lower walksof life. Rich merchants, lovely daughters, wealthy but designing villains,comic waiter-men, and pert chamber-maids with song and danceaccompaniment, were placed in impossible uptown parlors; but the poor buthonest printer set actual type from actual cases, and cruelly wronged buthumble maidens met disinterested detectives by real lamp-posts and realash-barrels, in front of what really looked like real saloons.

[Pg 51]The original of all these local dramas wasNew York in 1848, or, as itwas called during its long run of twelve weeks at the Olympic in thatyear,A Glance at New York. It was a play of shreds and patches,hurriedly and carelessly stitched together by Mr. Baker, the prompter ofMitchell’s famous little theatre, in order to cover the nakedness of theprogramme on the night of his own annual benefit. It had no literarymerit, and no pretensions thereto; and it would never have attractedpublic attention but for the wonderful “B’hoy” of the period, played by F.S. Chanfrau—one of those accidental but complete successes upon thestage which are never anticipated, and which cannot always be explained.He wore the “soap locks” of the period, the “plug hat,” with a narrowblack band, the red shirt, the trousers turned up—without which the genuswas never seen—and he had a peculiarly sardonic curve of the lip,expressive of more impudence, self-satisfaction, suppressed profanity, and“general cussedness” than Delsarte ever dared to put into any singlefacial gesture. Mr. Chanfrau’s Mose hit the popular fancy at once, andretained it until the Volunteer Fire Department was disbanded; andAGlance at New York was fol-lowed byMose in California,Mose in aMuss, and evenMose in China. Mr. Matthews, in an article contributedto one of the magazines a few years ago, records the fact that during oneseason Mr. Chanfrau played Mose at two New York theatres and in onetheatre in Newark on the same night.

The Mulligan Guards,The Skidmores, and their followers were thelegitimate descendants ofMose, and they came in with the steam-enginesand the salaried firemen, who took away the occupation and theopportunities of Sykesy and Jake. Harrigan and Hart began their theatricalmanagement at the Theatre Comique, opposite the St. Nicholas Hotel, in1876, and introduced what may be called the[Pg 52]Irish-German-Negro-Americanplay, illustrating phases of tenement-house life in New York, and amusingeverybody who ever saw them, from the Babies on our Block to Muldoonhimself, the Solid Man. Mr. Harrigan wrote his own plays; both he and Mr.Hart were inimitable in their peculiar line as actors, and they were wiseand fortunate in their selection of their company, which included Mrs.Annie Yeamans, “Johnny” Wild, and other equally talented artists, for whom“Dave” Braham, the leader of the orchestra, wrote original and catchingmusic, which was sung and whistled and ground out from one end of thecountry to the other. Mr. Harrigan is a close observer and a born manager,and his productions have been masterpieces in their way. He puts livingmen and women upon the stage. He has done for a certain phase of city lifewhat Denman Thompson has done for life upon a farm; and he is more to beenvied than Mr. Thompson, because no class of theatre-goers enjoy hisproductions more than do the living men and women whom his company, withreal art, represent. But, alas! his plays are not thegreat Americanplays for which the American dramatic critic is pining; although, likeThe Old Homestead, andShenandoah, andHorizon, andMetamora, andFashion they approach greatness, if only in the fact that they[Pg 53] haveintroduced, and preserved, a series of purely American types which are asgreat in their way as are the dramatic characters of other lands, andgreater and more enduring than many of the Americans to be found in otherbranches of American literature.

“Full of most excellent differences, of very soft society, and greatshowing.”—Hamlet, Act v. Sc. 2.

A few extracts from the prologue which Mr. Epes Sargent wrote for Mrs.Mowatt’sFashion, in 1845, will give a comparatively correct picture ofthe feeling which existed between native playwrights and the dramaticcritics of this country towards the end of the first half of the presentcentury, and will show how strong was the prejudice then existing againstdramatic works of home manufacture. The comedy was purely original; itswriter was an American, and a woman; its scenes were laid in the city ofNew York; andFashion was emphatically an American play.

At the rising of the curtain on the opening night Mr. Crisp was discoveredreading a newspaper; and[Pg 54] he spoke as follows, the italics being Mr.Sargent’s own:

“Fashion, a Comedy! I’ll go—but stay—
Now I read farther, ’tis anative play!
Bah! home-made calicoes are well enough,
But home-made dramasmust be stupid stuff.
Had it theLondon stamp ’twould do; but then
For plays we lack the manners and the men!
Thus speaksone critic—hearanother’s creed:
Fashion! What’s here? [Reads.] It never can succeed!
What! from awoman’s pen? It takes aman
To write a comedy—no woman can!
******
But, sir—but, gentlemen—you, sir, who think
No comedy can flow fromnative ink—
Are we suchperfect monsters, or suchdull,
That wit no traits for ridicule can cull?
Have we no follies here to be redressed?
No vices gibbeted? No crimes confessed?
******
Friends, from these scoffers we appeal to you!
Condemn thefalse, but, oh, applaud thetrue!
Grant thatsome wit may grow on native soil,
And Art’s fair fabric rise fromwoman’s toil!
While we exhibit but toreprehend
The social vices, ’tis foryou to mend!”

[Pg 57]The audience was long and loud in its applause of the prologue, but theplay was so well written, so well represented, and so deserving of successthat Mrs. Mowatt and Mr. Sargent might have spared themselves theirappeal to the sympathy of the general public. The critics, as a rule, werewell disposed, although Edgar Allan Poe, one of the sternest of them, saidthatFashion resembledThe School for Scandal, to which some of itsadmirers had likened it, as the shell resembles the living locust; astricture which was hardly just.Fashion created an excitement in thetheatrical world that had not been known for years before, and has hardlybeen equalled since. It was said, and with some truth, to have revived thedrama in this country, and to have reawakened a declining taste fordramatic representations of the higher and purer kind. It was almost thefirst attempt made to exhibit on our stage a correct picture of Americansociety and manners, and although it was a satire on a certainparvenuclass, conspicuous then as now in the metropolis, and always likely toexist here, it was a kindly, good-natured satire that did not intend towound even when it was most pointed. Several familiar New York types werefaithfully and cleverly represented: the millionaire merchant, vulgar,self-made, proud of his maker; and his wife, uneducated, pretentious,devoted to dress and display, seeking to marry her daughter to theadventurous foreigner who is not yet obsolete in the “upper circles” ofmetropolitan society. There were besides these, in the underplot, a richold[Pg 58] Cattaraugus farmer, his granddaughter (a dependant in the merchant’sfamily), a prying old maid, a black servant, a poet, and a fashionableselfish man of the world. All of these were well drawn and natural. Thesituations were probable, and had existed and do exist in real life, whilethe language was bright and pure. The dramatic critic of theAlbion,then a leading and influential journal, pronouncedFashion to be “thebest American comedy in existence, and one that sufficiently indicatedMrs. Mowatt’s ability to write a play that would rank among the first ofthe age.” Mrs. Mowatt, however, was the author of but one other successfuldrama,Armand, the Child of the People. It was first played at the ParkTheatre on September 27, 1847; whileFashion itself has not been putupon the stage here in many years, and is almost forgotten, although itsinfluence is still felt. Its popularity endured longer, perhaps, than thatof any of its contemporaries; it was played throughout the United States,and was well received by London and English provincial audiences. Theoblivion into which it has fallen now should by no means be ascribed toits want of merit, the fashion of the time having changed.

The comedy was produced at the Park Theatre on the 24th of March, 1845.TheHerald of the next day said it had one of the best houses ever seenin[Pg 59] New York; boxes, pit, and gallery were crowded; all of theliteratiof the city were present, with a tolerable sprinkling of theélite—theHerald’s distinction between theélite andliterati might havesuggested another satirical play—and the comedy was enthusiasticallyreceived. Its initial cast was a very strong one and worthy ofpreservation. William Chippendale played Adam Trueman, the farmer; WilliamH. Crisp, the elder, was Count Jolimaitre, the fraudulent nobleman; JohnDyott was Colonel Howard, of the United States Army, in love withGertrude; Thomas Barry was Tiffany, the wealthy merchant; T. B. De Walden,author ofSam,The Baroness, and other plays, was T. Tennyson Twinkle,a modern poet; John Fisher played Snobson, the confidential clerk, and Mr.Skerrett Zeke, a colored servant. None of these gentlemen are known to ourstage to-day, but without exception they were as great in the variouslines in which they were cast as could then be found in America. In theladies of its first representationsFashion was equally fortunate, andMrs. Mowatt herself, in herAutobiography, writes that she felt much ofthe great success of the play to be justly due to the cleverness of theplayers. Mrs. Barry—the first Mrs. Barry, who died in 1854—representedthe would-be lady of fashion; Miss Kate Horn (Mrs. Buckland), SeraphinaTiffany, her[Pg 60] daughter; Miss Clara Ellis, a young Englishwoman, whoremained but a few years in this country, was the Gertrude; Mrs. Dyott wasMillinette, the French maid; and Mrs. Edward Knight (Mary Ann Povey)played Prudence, the maiden lady of a certain age. The part of AdamTrueman, the blunt, old-fashioned, warm-hearted farmer, with hisunfashionable energy and sturdy common-sense, pointing homely morals andbursting social bubbles—“Seventy-two last August, man! Strong as ahickory, and every whit as sound”—was for many years a favorite with therepresentatives of “character old men” on our stage. Mr. Blake, theoriginal Adam in Philadelphia, was particularly happy in therôle,playing it many times in New York; and E. L. Davenport made a decided hitas Adam at the Olympic in London, in January, 1850, when the comedy wasfirst produced in England. Mr. Davenport on this occasion had the supportof his wife, who played Gertrude, and who was then still billed as MissFanny Vining.

There is no record of Mrs. Mowatt’s appearance inFashion, except on oneevening in Philadelphia, when she played Gertrude for the benefit of Mr.Blake, and once in New York—at the Park, May 15, 1846. She felt that thecharacter gave her no great opportunity, and she never attempted it again.

[Pg 63]Mrs. Mowatt’s career as an actress was very remarkable. She was one ofthe few persons of adult years who, going upon the stage without thesevere training and long apprenticeship so necessary even to indifferentdramatic success, display anything like brilliant dramatic qualities. Shewas an actress and a “star” born, not made. Her reasons for adopting theprofession were as remarkable as the triumphs she won; her success as aplaywright encouraging her, she said, to attempt to achieve like favor asa player. Every one familiar with the history of the theatre since it hashad a history knows well how great is the distinction between producer andperformer, and how few are the actors who have written clever plays, howfew the authors who have become distinguished as actors upon the stage.The popularity of Miss Elizabeth Thompson’s battle pictures would notencourage her to attempt to lead armies in the field; gun-makers areproverbially poor marksmen; and Von Bülow would never succeed were he toattempt the construction of a grand-piano.

Mrs. Mowatt, however, had stronger inducements than those given in herAutobiography for the step she took. In looking back upon her life, shefelt that all of her tastes, studies, and pursuits from childhood hadcombined to make her an actress. She had exhibited a passion fortheatrical entertainments[Pg 64] when she was little more than an infant; shehad written plays, such as they were, before she had seen the inside of atheatre, and she had played in an amateur way before she had ever seen aprofessional performance. Above and beyond all of these things she was awoman of uncommon intelligence and grace, almost a genius. She had, withsome success, given public readings. She felt the stage to be her destiny.She determined that her destiny should be fulfilled, and she became a goodactress if not absolutely a great one, and seemingly with little effortand few rebuffs. The pleasant account she has given of her own theatricalexperiences, and her touching and beautiful defence of those women whomake their living on the stage, have encouraged many ladies who have feltthemselves gifted with similar talents, and possessed of like ambitionsand aspirations, to make the same attempts, and generally to fail.

There have beendébutantes enough in New York since thedébut of Mrs.Mowatt to fill to overflowing the auditorium of any single city theatre,could they be gathered under one roof to witness the first effort of thenext aspirant, whoever she may be. During the season of 1876-77 alone, notless than seven ladies—Mrs. Louise M. Pomeroy, Miss Bessie Darling, MissAnna Dickinson, Mrs. J. H. Hackett, Miss Minnie[Pg 65] Cummings, Miss MarieWainwright, and Miss Adelaide Lennox—in leading parts made their firstbows to metropolitan audiences, without training or experience; and theseason was not considered a particularly strong one indébutantes atthat. For much of this Mrs. Mowatt, unconsciously and unwittingly, wasresponsible. Her sudden success turned many heads, while the equallysudden failures, not recorded, but very many in number, have been quiteforgotten, and will be still ignored as long as there are new Camilles andnew Juliets to achieve greatness at one fell swoop, and as long as thereare unwise friends and speculative managers to encourage them. The careersof these candidates for dramatic fame, as they are familiar to the world,are certainly not inspiring to their foolish sisters who would followthem. A few still in the profession are filling, creditably butingloriously, humble positions; a very small proportion have by thehardest of work become prominent and popular; but the great majority,dispirited and disheartened, have gone back to the private life from whichthey sprung, without song, without honor, and without tears, except themany tears they have shed themselves.

Mrs. Mowatt was never behind the scenes of a theatre until she was takento witness a rehearsal ofFashion the day before its first production.Her[Pg 66] second passage through a “stage door” was when she had her singlerehearsal ofThe Lady of Lyons, in which she made herdébut, and shebecame an actress, and a triumphant one, three weeks after herdetermination to go upon the stage was formed. Her house was crowded, theapplause was genuine and discriminating, and one gentleman, whollyunprejudiced and of great experience, publicly pronounced it “the bestfirst appearance” he ever saw.

The performance took place at the Park Theatre, New York, on the 13th ofJune, 1845, less than three months after the production of her comedy. Theoccasion was the benefit of Mr. Crisp, who had given her the littleinstruction her limited time permitted her to receive, and who playedClaude to her Pauline, Mrs. Vernon representing Madame Deschapelles. Whileshe writes candidly in herAutobiography of her hopes, her experiences,and her trials, she modestly says but little of the decided praise fromall quarters which she certainly received, the account of her success heregiven being taken from current journals and from the recollections of oldtheatre-goers, not from her own story of her theatrical life.

On the 13th of July of the same year (1845) Mrs. Mowatt appeared atNiblo’s Garden, playing a very successful engagement of two weeks,supported by[Pg 67] Messrs. Crisp, Chippendale, E. L. Davenport, Thomas Placide,Nickinson, John Sefton, and Mrs. Watts, afterwards Mrs. Sefton. Here sheassumed her secondrôle, that of Juliana in theHoneymoon, and morethan strengthened the favorable impression she had made as Pauline.

During the first year she was upon the stage she acted more than twohundred nights, and in almost every important city in the United States,playing Lady Teazle, Mrs. Haller inThe Stranger, Lucy Ashton in theBride of Lammermoor, Katherine in theTaming of the Shrew, Julia,Juliet, and all of the then most popular characters in the line ofjuvenile tragedy and comedy. The amount of labor, physical and mental, sheendured during this period must have been enormous; and the intellectualstrain alone was enough to have destroyed the strongest mentalconstitution. In the history of the stage in all countries there is nosingle instance of a mere novice playing so many important parts so manynights, before so many different audiences, and winning so much and suchmerited praise, as did this lady during the first twelve months of hercareer as an actress.

Mrs. Mowatt went to England in the autumn of 1847, where her success wasas marked as in her own country, and more, perhaps, to her professional[Pg 68]credit. She had to contend with a certain prejudice against hernationality, which still existed in Britain; she was compared with theleading English actresses of long experience in their own familiarrôles, and she could not depend upon the social popularity and personalgood-will which were so strongly in her favor at home. Her Englishdébutwas made in Manchester a few weeks after her arrival. Her first appearancein London was at the Princess’s Theatre on the 5th of January, 1848; Mr.Davenport, who had played opposite characters to her during her Americantours, giving her excellent support during her English engagements. Shereturned to America in the summer of 1851, greatly improved in herpersonal appearance and in her art. Her subsequent career here, as long asshe remained upon the stage, was marked with uniform success, thereputation she had acquired on the other side of the water establishingeven more strongly her claims on this.

Mrs. Mowatt, after nine years of experience as an actress, took herfarewell of the stage at Niblo’s Garden on the evening of the 3d of June,1854. As herAutobiography was published during the preceding year herreason for this step is not given, unless it was her marriage to Mr.Ritchie a few days later. The occasion was very interesting. Atestimonial[Pg 69] signed by many of the leading citizens, and highlyeulogistic, was presented to her, and her last appearance created as greatan excitement in the dramatic and social world as did her first. The playselected wasThe Lady of Lyons, the same in which she made herdêbut.Old play-goers who still remember her consider her one of the mostsatisfactory Paulines who have been seen in this country, and the part wasalways a favorite of her own. On the last play-bill which contains hername are found as her support the names of Walter G. Keeble, who playedClaude; of George H. Andrews, then a favorite “old man,” who playedColonel Damas; of T. B. De Walden, who played Glavis; and of Mrs. Mann,who played Madame Deschapelles. Mrs. Mowatt never again appeared here, orelsewhere, in any public capacity.

Anna Cora Ogden was born in Bordeaux, France, during a visit of herparents to that country in 1819. She married James Mowatt, a young lawyerof New York, when she was only fifteen years of age. Her first appearanceas a public reader was made in Boston in 1841—Mr. Mowatt’s financialtroubles leading her to seek that means of contributing to her ownsupport. During this same year she gave readings in the hall of the oldStuyvesant Institute in New York. In 1845, as has been shown above,[Pg 70] shebecame an actress. Mr. Mowatt died in London in the spring of 1851. On the7th of June, 1854, she was married (on Staten Island) to William F.Ritchie, of the RichmondEnquirer, and she died in the little Englishvillage of Henley-on-the-Thames in the month of July, 1870, Mr. Ritchiesurviving her some years, and dying in Lower Brandon, Virginia, on the24th of April, 1877.

Mrs. Mowatt is described, by those who remember her in the first flush ofher youth and her success, as “a fascinating actress and accomplishedlady; in person fragile and exquisitely delicate, with a face in whosecalm depths the beautiful and pure alone were mirrored, a voice ever soft,gentle, and low, a subdued earnestness of manner, a winning witchery ofenunciation, and a grace and refinement in every action”; and it was feltby her admirers that she would have become, had she remained longer in theprofession, a consummate artist—one of the greatest this country has everproduced.

After her retirement, and until the breaking out of the civil war, herhome in Richmond, Virginia, was the centre of all that was refined andcultured in the Southern capital. She devoted herself to literature and toher social and family cares, writing during this period herMimic Life;or, Before and Behind the Curtain, in which she spoke so many[Pg 71] kind andencouraging words of her sisters in the profession, particularly of theballet girls and the representatives of small and thankless parts, whocontribute in their quiet way so much to the public amusement, and who toooften, by authors and public, are entirely ignored. Among her moreimportant works, other than those already mentioned here, written in heryouth and later life, wasGulzara; or, The Persian Slave, a play withoutheroes, the scenes of which were laid within the walls of a Turkish harem,and which was chiefly remarkable from the fact that the only malecharacter in thedramatis personæ was a boy of ten years.

Marion Harland, in herRecollections of a Christian Actress, printed afew years ago, has paid the highest tribute to the personal worth of Mrs.Mowatt. What she accomplished during her professional life has, in amanner, been shown here. She was a representative American woman of whomAmerican women have every reason to be proud; and as the writer of thefirst absolutely American society play, she must be forgiven the harm herbrilliant and easy success as an actress has, by its example, since doneto the American stage.

Very few of our earlier native dramatists followed the fashion set by Mrs.Mowatt in writing original plays of American social life. “Plays ofcontemporaneous[Pg 72] society,” as they were called, were popular and fairlysuccessful here; but they were the charming home comedies of men likeByron or Robertson, thoroughly English in character and tone, or they weretaken from the French and the German, with purely foreign incidents andscenes. Some of these were “localized,” and thus became cruel libels uponAmerican men and manners, except upon such Americans as are influenced bythe worship ofThe Mighty Dollar, or such as are to be found only inOur Boarding-houses, andUnder the Gas-light. The New York play-goerof thirty years since looked in vain upon the stage for the domesticstories of American city and country life which he found in the then newnovels of Theodore Winthrop, or in the then familiar poems of Dr. Holland.Until Joshua Whitcomb appeared we saw no American Peter Probity in anAmericanChimney Corner; and until Bronson Howard and David Lloyd andBrander Matthews and Edgar Fawcett began to write American plays we saw noAmerican Haversack in an AmericanOld Guard—not even an American PeterTeazle or an American John Mildmay; while we could not help feeling thatStill Waters Run as Deep in this country as they run in the old, andthat theSchool for Scandal in real life has as many graduates andundergraduates in the United States as it has anywhere else.

[Pg 75]If an American character was drawn at all, he was too apt to be a SolonShingle or a Mose; if an American play was written at all, its scenes werelaid onSandy Bars, or in the false and unhealthful atmosphere ofSaratoga orLong Branch. While London managers presentedOrangeBlossoms andTwo Roses, the managers of New York and Boston setDiamonds andPearls. The English flowers were fresh and fragrant; theAmerican jewels, although they had a certain sparkle, were too oftenpaste. The exotics flourished and bloomed on our soil for a time, it istrue; but if they had been native buds they would have withered in a week,or else, like so many other indigenous plants, have been left to wastetheir sweetness in the pigeon-holes of managers’ desks. So strong was thisunnatural prejudice against the production of an American picture ofAmerican home-life upon the American stage, that in one of the brightestAmerican comedies ever taken from the French Mr. Hurlburt was forced to goabroad with his characters, and to place hisAmericans in Paris.

All this is not so true of the stage of to-day as it was at the beginningof the second century of our national drama. Scores of native writers,during the past decade or two, have presented American plays which havebeen clean and clever, even if[Pg 76] they have not yet become classic. But itis a striking fact that the first three original “society plays” whichwere in any way successful upon the American stage were from the pens ofwomen—Mrs. Mowatt’sFashion, Mrs. Bateman’sSelf, and Miss Heron’sThe Belle of the Season—and that since their production the name of awoman has very rarely appeared upon the bills as the author of a play.

During the ten years which followed the first performance ofFashion ithad a few rivals—comedies and dramas, satirical or otherwise—whichtreated, or pretended to treat, of that which asserts itself to be “thehigher stratum of American society.” Among the longer lived of these wereExtremes, a local New York play, which ran for three weeks at theBroadway Theatre in 1850; a dramatization of Mr. Curtis’sPotipharPapers, brought out at Burton’s Theatre in 1854, in which Charles Fishermade a great hit as Creamcheese; and Mr. De Walden’sUpper Ten and LowerTwenty, also at Burton’s, in 1854, in which Mr. Burton himself, asChristopher Crookpath, a serious part, was a genuine surprise to hisaudience, and created a profound impression.Extremes, by a Baltimoregentleman, was never repeated here; the version of Mr. Curtis’swork—happily calledOur Best Society—was merely an adaptation; Mr. DeWalden was not a[Pg 77] native writer; and only one of these productions, andthat one the least successful, was an original American play.

[Pg 79]“Self, an original New York comedy in three acts,” by Mrs. H. L.Bateman, was seen for the first time in New York at Mr. Burton’s ChambersStreet house on the 27th of October, 1856. The plot was slight, and theplay was long and a trifle dull. It was the story of a young girl (Mrs. E.L. Davenport) with a few thousands of dollars of her own, which both ofher parents were determined to possess. She gave the money to her father(Charles Fisher); the mother (Mrs. Amelia Parker) instigated the son (A.Morton) to forge a check for the amount; the forgery was discovered; thegirl, to save her mother and her brother, confessed the crime which shedid not commit, and was turned out-of-doors in ignominy and disgrace, Mr.Burton, the traditional stage uncle, rescuing and righting her in the end.All of this was not new, was not cheerful, and, it is to be hoped, was not“society”; but it was received with great praise, and it took its place inpopular favor by the side of Mrs. Mowatt’s comedy.Self was frequentlyrepeated in New York, notably at Wallack’s Theatre, now the Star, in theSummer of 1869, when it introduced John E. Owens as Unit, and where it ranfor three weeks, Miss Effie Germon playing the heroine,[Pg 80] and playing itwell. Mr. Owens made of Unit what is called a “star part.” It gave him anopportunity for the display of his peculiar comedy powers, and hepresented it with a variety and force of expression which was not alwaysto be seen in his acting. In it he appealed more to the hearts of hisaudiences than in Solon Shingle; and, next to his Caleb Plummer, his Unitis the pleasantest and most perfect picture he has left in the memory ofhis friends.

Mrs. Bateman was the daughter of Joseph Cowell, a well-known theatricalmanager in the South and West, who came to this country from England in1821, and whoseThirty Years Among the Players is known to allcollectors of dramatic books. She went upon the stage at New Orleans in1837 or 1838, but did not long remain an actress. She was successful as amanager; and she was the author ofGeraldine, a tragedy, and of adramatization of Longfellow’sEvangeline. For many years she was knownonly as the mother of the Bateman Children.

At Winter Garden, on the evening of March 12, 1862, Miss Matilda Heronproduced for the first timeThe Belle of the Season, advertised as “anew and original home play,” and as written by Miss Heron herself. Itsscenes were laid in the parks of Niagara and in Fifth Avenuedrawing-rooms, but[Pg 81] it suggested too many familiar plays ofThe Lady ofLyons school to be altogether free from the suspicion of imitation. Thatit came from Miss Heron’s own brain and pen, however, there could belittle doubt; it had, as a literary effort, many of the faults and virtuesand strong characteristics so curiously blended in the acting of itsauthor. The production, as a whole, was what is termed “emotional,” thepart of the heroine being peculiarly so. Unquestionably Miss Heron wroteit to fit herself, and unquestionably it did not fit her so well as didCamille, upon which so much of her fame as an actress now rests. She hadall of an author’s fondness for the part and for the play. She consideredboth her greatest works. She produced the comedy many times in many citiesof the Union, not always to the benefit of her purse or of herprofessional reputation, and when urged by her business manager towithdraw it altogether, she is said to have replied, with characteristicdetermination, thatThe Belle of the Season she wanted to play,TheBelle of the Season she would play, and that when she died she wishednothing placed over her grave but the epitaph, “Here liesThe Belle ofthe Season!”

[Pg 84]Matilda Heron was one of the most remarkable actresses our stage has everproduced. With an intensity and passion in her performances which, attimes, were magnificent and carried everything before them, she displayedprofessional shortcomings and infirmities which were often glaring andunpardonable; but she made and held, by the force of her own genius—andgenius she certainly possessed—a position which few modern actresses haveever reached. Her personal faults were of the head rather than of theheart, and may they now rest lightly on her!

Miss Heron’s immediate successors as native playwrights of society dramaswere Miss Olive Logan, withSurf; or, Summer Scenes at Long Branch, atDaly’s Theatre in 1870; Bronson Howard, withSaratoga in 1870-71, withDiamonds in 1873, and withMoorcroft in 1874; James Steele Mackaye,withMarriage in 1873; and Andrew C. Wheeler, withTwins, and Mr.Marsden, withClouds, in 1876.

Anything like an enumeration of the original American society playswritten and produced here during the last ten or fifteen years is notpossible within the limits of a single chapter. They have been very many,and of all degrees of merit, the best and most creditable perhaps beingYoung Mrs. Winthrop,Old Love Letters,A Gold Mine,Esmeralda,Conscience, andThe Charity Ball; but how long these are to live, andhow they are to be regarded by the next generation—if the nextgeneration[Pg 85] has ever a chance to regard them at all—of course remains tobe seen.Fashion, the first of the lot, survives only in its printedform, and the shell of the locust gives but a faint dry rattle, while thelocust itself is as much alive as whenThe School for Scandal was firstseen in America over a century ago. Have we a Sheridan among us? or is hestill twenty years away?

ACT II.
THE AMERICAN STAGE NEGRO.

Bottom: “I have a reasonable good ear in music: let’s have the tongsand the bones.”—Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act iv. Sc. 1.

Shakspere’s Moor of Venice was one of the earliest of the stage negroes,as he is one of the best. If theAccount of the Revels be not a forgery,he appeared before the court of the first English James in 1604, and hecertainly was seen at the Globe Theatre, on the Bankside, on the 30th ofApril, 1610. Othello is hardly the typical African of the modern drama,although Roderigo speaks of him as having thick lips, and notwithstandingthe fact that he himself is made to regret, in the third act of thetragedy, that he is “black, and has not those soft parts of conversationthat chamberers have.” Shakspere unquestionably believed that the Moorswere negroes; and as he made Verges and Dogberry cockney watchmen, andaltered history, geography, and chronology to suit himself and therequirements of the stage, so he meant to invest his Moorish hero with allof the personal attributes, as well as with all of the moral[Pg 90]characteristics, of the negroes as they were known to Englishmen inShakspere’s day.

Othello was followed, in 1696, byOroonoko, a tragedy in five acts, byThomas Southerne. The real Oroonoko was an African prince stolen from hisnative kingdom of Angola during the reign of Charles the Second, and soldas a slave in an English settlement in the West Indies. Aphra Behn saw andbecame intimate with him at Surinam, when her father wasLieutenant-General of the islands, and made him the hero of the tale uponwhich the dramatist based his once famous play. With the more humbleslaves by whom he was surrounded, the stage Oroonoko spoke in the stiltedblank-verse of the dramatic literature of that period, and without any ofthe accent or phraseology of the original West Indian blacks. Mr. Pope wasthe creator of Oroonoko; and the part was a favorite one of the elder Keanin England and of the elder Booth in this country. It has not been seenupon either stage in many years. Oroonoko, of course, had a black skin andwoolly hair. When Jack Bannister, who began his career as a tragic actor,said to Garrick that he proposed to attempt the hero of Southerne’s drama,he was told by the great little man that, in view of his extraordinarilythin person, he would “look as much like the character as a chimney-sweepin consumption!” It was[Pg 91] to Bannister, on this same occasion, thatGarrick uttered the well-known aphorism, “Comedy is a very serious thing!”

[Pg 93]Mungo was a stage negro of a very different stamp, and the first of hisrace. He figured inThe Padlock, a comic opera, words by IsaacBickerstaffe, music by Charles Dibdin, first presented at Drury Lane in1768. Mungo was the slave of Don Diego, a West Indian planter. It waswritten for and at the suggestion of John Moody, who had been inBarbadoes, where he had studied the dialect and the manners of the blacks.He never played the part, however, which was originally assumed by Dibdinhimself. Mungo sang:

“Dear heart, what a terrible life I am led!
A dog has a better that’s sheltered and fed.
Night and day ’tis the same;
My pain is deir game;
Me wish to de Lord me was dead!
Whate’er’s to be done
Poor black must run.
Mungo here, Mungo dere,
Mungo everywhere;
Above and below,
Sirrah, come, sirrah, go;
Do so, and do so.
Oh! oh!
Me wish to de Lord me was dead!”

[Pg 94]This is a style of ballad which has been very popular with Mungo’sdescendants ever since. It may be added that Mungo got drunk in the secondact, and was very profane throughout.

The great and original Mungo in America was Lewis Hallam, the younger, whofirst played the part in New York, and for his own benefit, on the 29th ofMay, 1769, at the theatre in John Street. Dunlap says, “InThe PadlockMr. Hallam was unrivalled to his death, giving Mungo with a truth derivedfrom the study of the negro slave character which Dibdin, the writer,could not have conceived.” Mungo is never seen in the present time. IraAldridge, the negro tragedian, played Othello and Mungo occasionally onthe same night in his natural skin; but Mungo may be said to havevirtually died with Hallam, and to have gone to meet Oroonoko in that landof total oblivion to which Othello is destined to be a stranger for manyyears to come.

In 1781 a pantomime entitledRobinson Crusoe was presented at DruryLane. It was believed by the editor of theBiographia Dramatica to havebeen “contrived by Mr. Sheridan, whose powers, if it really be hisperformance, do not seem adapted to the production of such kind ofentertainments. The scenery, by Loutherbourg, has a very pleasing effect,but, considered in every other light, it is a truly insipid exhibition.”Friday, in coffee-colored tights and blackened face, was naturally aprominent figure. The pantomime was produced at the Theatre Royal, Bath,during the next year, when Mr. Henry Siddons appeared as one of thesavages. This gentleman, who played Othello on the same boards a fewseasons later, is only remembered now as having given his name to thegreatest actress who ever spoke the English tongue. This sameRobinson[Pg 96]Crusoe and Harlequin Friday was seen at the John Street Theatre, NewYork, on the 11th of January, 1786; while at the Park Theatre on the 11thof September, 1817, Mr. Bancker played Friday inThe Bold Buccaneers; or,The Discovery of Robinson Crusoe, a melodrama which was very popular inits day.

Charles C. Moreau, of New York, possesses a very curious and almost uniquebill of “The African Company,” at “The Theatre in Mercer Street, in therear of the 1 Mile Stone, Broadway.”Tom and Jerry was presented by anumber of gentlemen and ladies entirely unknown to dramatic fame, and theperformance concluded with the pantomime ofObi: or, Three Finger’dJack. Unfortunately the bill is not dated. Mr. Ireland believes this tohave been a company of negro amateurs who played in New York about 1820 or1821, but who have left no other mark upon the history of the stage; andthe historians know nothing of the “theatre” they occupied. Broadway atPrince Street is one mile from the City Hall, although the stone recordingthis fact has long since disappeared.

A number of stage negroes will be remembered by habitual theatre-goers,and students of the drama—two very different things, by-the-way, for theman who sees plays rarely reads them, andvice versa: Zeke, in Mrs.Mowatt’sFashion; Pete, inThe Octoroon; Uncle Tom; Topsy, whomCharles Reade called “idiopathic”; a cleverly conceived character inBronson Howard’sMoorcraft; and the delightful band of “Full Moons,” ledfor many seasons by “Johnny” Wild at Harrigan and Hart’s Theatre, who wereso absolutely true to the life of Thompson Street and South Fifth Avenue.

[Pg 99]In the absence of anything like a complete and satisfactory history ofnegro minstrelsy, it is not possible to discover its genesis, although itis the only branch of the dramatic art, if properly it can claim to be anart at all, which has had its origin in this country, while the melody ithas inspired is certainly our only approach to a national music. Scatteredthroughout the theatrical literature of the early part of the century areto be found many different accounts of the rise and progress of theAfrican on the stage, each author having his own particular “father ofnegro song.” Charles White, an old Ethiopian comedian and manager, givesthe credit to Gottlieb Graupner, who appeared in Boston in 1799, basinghis statement upon a copy of Russell’sBoston Gazette of the 30th ofDecember of that year, which contains an advertisement of a performance tobe given on the date of publication at the Federal Street Theatre. At theend of the[Pg 100] second act ofOroonoko, according to Mr. White, Mr.Graupner, in character, sang “The Gay Negro Boy,” accompanying the airwith the banjo; and although the house was draped in mourning for GeneralWashington, such was the enthusiasm of the audience that the performer hadto bring his little bench from the wings again and again to sing his song.W. W. Clapp, Jr., in hisHistory of the Boston Stage, says that the newsof the death of Washington was received in that city on the 24th ofDecember, and that the theatre remained “closed for a week;” and wasreopened with “A Monody,” in which “Mrs. Barrett, in the character of theGenius of America, appeared weeping over the Tomb of her Beloved Hero”;but there is no mention, then or later, of Mr. Graupner or of “The GayNegro Boy.”

Mr. White says further that “the next popular negro song was ‘The Battleof Plattsburg,’ sung by an actor vulgarly known as ‘Pig-Pie Herbert,’ at atheatre in Albany, in 1815”; but H. D. Stone, in a volume calledTheDrama, published in Albany in 1873, credits “a member of the theatricalcompany of the name of Hop Robinson” as the singer of the song; while“Sol” Smith, an eye-witness of this performance, gives still another andvery different account of it. According to Smith’sAutobiography[Pg 101]published by Messrs. Harper and Brothers in 1868, Andrew Jackson Allenproduced at the Green Street Theatre in Albany, in 1815, a drama calledThe Battle of Lake Champlain, the action taking place on real shipsfloating in real water. “In this piece,” says Smith, “Allen played thecharacter of a negro, and sang a song of many verses (being the firstnegro song, I verily believe, ever heard on the American stage).” Twoverses of this ballad, quoted by Smith “from memory,” will give a veryfair idea of its claims to popularity:

“Backside Albany stan’ Lake Champlain—
Little pond half full of water;
Plat-te-burg dar too, close ’pon de main:
Town small; he grow big, dough, herea’ter.

“On Lake Champlain Uncle Sam set he boat,
An’ Massa Macdonough he sail ’em;
While General Macomb make Plat-te-burg he home,
Wid de army whose courage nebber fail ’em.”

Andrew Allen was a very quaint character, and he deserves a paragraph tohimself. Born in the city of New York in 1776, he appeared, according tohis own statement, as a page inRomeo and Juliet at the theatre in JohnStreet in 1786, on the strength of which, as the oldest living actor, heassumed for[Pg 102] years before his death the title of “Father of the AmericanStage.” He was more famous as a cook than as a player, however, and he isthe subject of innumerable theatrical anecdotes, none of which are greatlyto his credit. He was called “Dummy Allen” because he was very deaf andexceedingly loquacious; he adored the hero of New Orleans, whose name heappropriated when Jackson was elected President of the United States; andhe was devoted to Edwin Forrest, whose costumer, dresser, and personalslave he was for many years. He invented and patented a silver leathermuch used in the decoration of stage dresses; and he kept a restaurant inDean Street, Albany, and later a similar establishment near the BoweryTheatre, New York, being a very familiar figure in the streets of bothcities. Mr. Phelps, in hisPlayers of a Century (Albany, New York,1880), describes him in his later years as tall and erect in person, withfirmly compressed features, an eye like a hawk’s, nose slightlyRomanesque, and hair mottled gray. He wore a fuzzy white hat, a coat ofblue with bright brass buttons, and carried a knobby cane. He spoke in asharp, decisive manner, often giving wrong answers, and invariablymistaking the drift of the person with whom he was conversing. He died inNew York in 1853, and Mr. Phelps preserves the inscription upon hismonument at Cypress[Pg 103] Hills Cemetery, which was evidently his owncomposition: “From his cradle he was a scholar; exceedingly wise,fair-spoken, and persuading; lofty and sour to them that loved him not,but to those men that sought him sweet as summer.”

Apropos of Allen’s association with Edwin Forrest, and of Smith’sassertion that Allen sang the first negro song ever sung on the Americanstage, it may not be out of place here to quote W. R. Alger’sLife ofForrest. Speaking of Forrest’s early and checkered experiences as astrolling player in the far West, Mr. Alger says that perhaps the mostsurprising fact connected with this portion of his career is “that he wasthe first actor who ever represented on the stage the Southern plantationnegro with all his peculiarities of dress, gait, accent, dialect, andmanner.” In 1823, at the Globe Theatre, Cincinnati, Ohio, under themanagement of “Sol” Smith, Forrest did play a negro in a farce by Smith,calledThe Tailor[Pg 104] in Distress, singing and dancing, and winning thecompliment from a veritable black in his audience that he was “nigger allober!” Lawrence Barrett, in hisLife of Forrest, quotes the bill of thisevening, which shows Forrest as a modern dandy in the first play, asCuffee, a Kentucky negro, in the second, and as Sancho Panza in thepantomime ofDon Quixote, which closed the evening’s entertainment.

Forrest was by no means the only eminent American actor who hid his lightbehind a black mask. “Sol” Smith himself relates how he became asupernumerary at the Green Street Theatre, in Albany, in his fourteenthyear, playing one of the blood-thirsty associates ofThree-fingered Jackwith a preternaturally smutty face, which he forgot to wash one eventfulnight, to the astonishment of his own family, who forced him to retire fora time to private life.

At Vauxhall Garden, in the Bowery, a little south of and nearly oppositethe site of Cooper Institute, a young lad named Bernard Flaherty, born inCork, Ireland, is said to have sung negro songs and to have danced negrodances in 1838 to help support a widowed mother, who lived to see himcarried to an honored grave in 1876, mourned by the theatre-goingpopulation of the whole country. In 1840, as Barney Williams, he made apalpable hit in the[Pg 105]character of Pat Rooney, inThe Omnibus, at theFranklin Theatre, New York. He certainly played “darky parts,” such asthey were, for a number of years before and after that date; and he isperhaps the one man upon the American stage with whom anything like negrominstrelsy will never be associated, not so much because of his high rankin his profession as on account of the Hibernian style of his later-dayperformances, and of the strong accent which always clung to him, andwhich suggested his native city rather than the cork he used to burn tocolor his face.

[Pg 106]In 1850, when Edwin Booth was seventeen, and a year after hisdébut asTressel at the Boston Museum, he gave an entertainment with John S.Clarke, a youth of the same age, at the court-house in Belair, Maryland.They read selections fromRichelieu andThe Stranger, as well as thequarrel scene fromJulius Cæsar, singing during the evening (withblackened faces) a number of negro melodies, “using appropriatedialogue”—as Mrs. Asia Booth Clarke records in the memoir of herbrother—“and accompanying their vocal attempts with the somewhatinharmonious banjo and bones.” Mrs. Clarke reprints the programme of thisperformance, and pictures the distress of the young tragedians when theydiscovered, on arriving in the town, that the simon-pure negro they hademployed as an advance agent had in every instance posted their billsupsidedown.

Mr. Booth, during his first San Francisco engagement, appeared more thanonce in the character of what was then termed a “Dandy Nigger;” and heremembers that his father, “some time in the forties,”[Pg 107] played Sam JohnsoninBone Squash at the Front Street Theatre, Baltimore, for the benefitof an old theatrical acquaintance, and played it with great applause.Lawrence Barrett’s negro parts, in the beginning of his career, wereGeorge Harris and Uncle Tom himself, in a dramatization of Mrs. Stowe’sfamous tale.

Among the stage negroes of later years, whom the world is not accustomedto associate with that profession, Ralph Keeler is one of the mostprominent. His “Three Years a Negro Minstrel,” first published in theAtlantic Monthly for July, 1869, and afterwards elaborated in hisVagabond Adventures, is very entertaining and instructive reading, andgives an excellent idea of the wandering minstrel life of that period. Hebegan his career at Toledo, Ohio, when he was not more than eleven yearsof age; and under the management of the celebrated Mr. Booker, the subjectof the once famous song, “Meet Johnny[Pg 108] Booker on the Bowling-green,” he“danced ‘Juba’” in small canton-flannel knee-breeches (familiarly known aspants) cheap lace, tarnished gold tinsel, a corked face, and a woolly wig,to the great gratification of the Toledans, who for several months, withpardonable pride, hailed him as their own particular infant phenomenon. Atthe close of his first engagement he received what was termed a “rousingbenefit,” the entire proceeds of which, as was the custom of the time,going into the pockets of his enterprising managers. During his shortalthough distinguished professional life he was associated with suchartists as “Frank” Lynch, “Mike” Mitchell, “Dave” Reed, and “Professor”Lowe, the balloonist, and he was even offered a position in E. P.Christy’s company in New York—the highest compliment which could then bepaid to budding talent. Keeler, a brilliant but eccentric writer, whoseVagabond Adventures is too good, in its way, to be forgotten so soon,was a man of decided mark as a journalist. He went to Cuba in 1873 asspecial correspondent of the New YorkTribune, and suddenly andabsolutely disappeared. He is supposed to have been murdered and throwninto the sea.

[Pg 111]Lynch, when Keeler first knew him, had declined into the fat and slipperedend man, too gross to dance, who ordinarily played the tambourine andthe banjo, but who could, and not infrequently did, perform everything inthe orchestra, from a solo on the penny trumpet to an obligato on thedouble-bass. He had been associated as a boy, in 1839 or 1840, underBarnum’s management, with “Jack” Diamond, who was “the best representativeof Ethiopian break-downs” in his day, and, according to P. T. Barnum, theprototype of the many performers of that sort who have entertained thepublic ever since. Lynch asserted that he and Barnum had appeared togetherin black faces; and Mr. Barnum, in hisAutobiography, called Mr. Lynch“an orphan vagabond” whom he had picked up on the road; neither statementseeming to be entirely true. Lynch was his own worst enemy, and, like somany of his kind, he died in poverty and obscurity, his most perfect“break-down” being his own!

It is a melancholy fact that George Holland joined Christy and Wood’sminstrels in 1857, playing female characters in a blackened face, anddividing with George Christy the honors of a short season. He returned toWallack’s Theatre in 1858. This is a page in dramatic history which oldplay-goers do not like to read.

The name of John B. Gough, the temperance orator, occurs occasionally inthe reminiscences of old minstrels. He certainly did appear upon thestage[Pg 112] as a comic singer in New York and elsewhere during his early anddissipated youth, and even gave exhibitions of ventriloquism and the likein low bar-rooms for the sake of the few pennies he could gather to keephimself in liquor, as he himself describes; but there is no hint in hisAutobiography of his ever having appeared in a blackened face, and histheatrical life, if it may be so called, was very short.

Joseph Jefferson, the third and present bearer of that honored name, wasunquestionably the youngest actor who ever made his mark with a piece ofburnt cork. The story of his first appearance is told by William Winter inhis volume entitledThe Jeffersons. Coming from a family of actors, theboy, as was natural, was reared amid theatrical surroundings, and whenonly four years of age—in 1833—he was brought upon the stage by ThomasD. Rice himself, on a benefit occasion at the Washington Theatre. LittleJoe, blackened and arrayed precisely like his senior, was carried onto thestage in a bag upon the shoulders of the shambling Ethiopian, and emptiedfrom it with the appropriate couplet,

“Ladies and gentlemen, I’d have you for to know
I’s got a little darky here to jump Jim Crow.”

Mrs. John Drew, who was present, says that the boy[Pg 113]instantly assumedthe exact attitude of Jim Crow Rice, and sang and danced in imitation ofhis sable companion, a perfect miniature likeness of that long, ungainly,grotesque, and exceedingly droll comedian.

[Pg 115]Thomas D. Rice is generally conceded to have been the founder of Ethiopianminstrelsy. Although, as has been seen, it did not originate with him, hemade it popular on both sides of the Atlantic, and his image deserves anhonored niche in its cathedral. The history of “Jim Crow” Rice, as he wasaffectionately called for many years, has been written by many scribes andin many different ways, the most complete and most truthful account,perhaps, being that of Edmon S. Conner, who described in the columns ofthe New YorkTimes, June 5, 1881, what he saw and remembered of thebirth of Jim Crow. Mr. Conner was a member of the company at the ColumbiaStreet Theatre, Cincinnati, in 1828-29, when he first met Rice, “doinglittle negro bits” between the acts at that house, notably a sketch he hadstudied from life in Louisville the preceding summer. Back of theLouisville theatre was a livery-stable kept by a man named Crow. Theactors could look into the stable-yard from the windows of theirdressing-rooms, and were fond of watching the movements of an old anddecrepit slave who was employed[Pg 116]by the proprietor to do all sorts of oddjobs. As was the custom among the negroes, he had assumed his master’sname, and called himself Jim Crow. He was very much deformed—the rightshoulder was drawn up high, and the left leg was stiff and crooked at theknee, which gave him a painful but at the same time ludicrous limp. Hewas in the habit of crooning a queer old tune, to which he had appliedwords of his own. At the end of each verse he gave a peculiar step,“rocking de heel” in the manner since so general among the manygenerations of his imitators; and these were the words of his refrain:

“Wheel about, turn about,
Do jis so,
An’ ebery time I wheel about
I jump Jim Crow.”

Rice closely watched this unconscious performer, and recognized in him acharacter entirely new to the stage. He wrote a number of verses,quickened and slightly changed the air, made up exactly like the original,and appeared before a Louisville audience, which, as Mr. Conner says,“went mad with delight,” recalling him on the first night at least twentytimes. And so Jim Crow jumped into fame and something that looks almostlike immortality. “Sol” Smith says that the character was first seen in apiece by Solon Robinson, calledThe Rifle, and that he, Smith, “helpedRice a little in fixing the tune.”

Other cities besides Louisville claim Jim Crow. Francis Courtney Wemyss,in hisAutobiography, says he was a native of Pittsburg, whose name was[Pg 118]Jim Cuff; while Robert P. Nevin, in theAtlantic Monthly for November,1867, declares that the original was a negro stage-driver of Cincinnati,and that Pittsburg was the scene of Rice’s first appearance in the part—alocal negro there, whose professional career was confined to holding hismouth open for pennies thrown to him on the docks and the streets,furnishing the wardrobe for the initial performance.

Rice was born in the Seventh Ward of New York in 1808. He was asupernumerary at the Park[Pg 119]Theatre, where “Sam” Cowell remembered him inBombastes Furioso attracting so much attention by his eccentricitiesthat Hilson and Barnes, the leading characters in the cast, made a formalcomplaint, and had him dismissed from the company Cowell; adding that thisman, whose name did not even appear in the bills, was the only actor onthe stage whom the audience seemed to notice. Cowell also describes him inCincinnati, in 1829, as a very unassuming modest young man, who wore “avery queer hat, very much pointed down before and behind, and very muchcocked on one side.” He went to England in 1836, where he met with greatsuccess, laid the foundation of a very comfortable fortune, andprofessionally he was the Buffalo Bill of the London of half a centuryago. Mr. Ireland, speaking of his popularity in this country, says that hedrew more money to the Bowery Theatre than any other performer in the sameperiod of time.

Rice was the author of many of his own farces, notablyBone Squash andThe Virginia Mummy, and he was the veritable originator of thegenusknown to the stage as the “dandy darky,” represented particularly in hiscreations of “Dandy Jim of Caroline” and “Spruce Pink.” He died in 1860,never having forfeited the respect of the public or the good-will of hisfellow-men.

There were many lithographed and a few engraved portraits of Rice madeduring the years of his great popularity, a number of which are stillpreserved. In Mr. McKee’s collection he is to be seen dancing “Jim Crow”in English as well as in American prints—as “Gumbo Chaff,” on aflat-boat, and, in character, singing the songs “A Long Time Ago” and“Such a Gettin’ Up-stairs.” In the same collection, among prints of GeorgeDimond and other half-remembered clog-dancers and singers, is a portraitof John N. Smith as “Jim Along Josey,” on a sheet of music published byFirth & Hall in 1840; and,[Pg 121] more curious and rare than any of these, upona musical composition, “on which copyright was secured according to lawOctober 7, 1824,” is a picture of Mr. Roberts singing “Massa GeorgeWashington and Massa Lafayette” in a Continental uniform and with ablackened face. This would make James Roberts, a Scottish vocalist, whodied in 1833, the senior of Jim Crow by a number of years.

George Washington Dixon, whose very name is[Pg 122] now almost forgotten, alsopreceded Rice in this class of entertainment, but without Rice’s talent,and with nothing like Rice’s success. He sang “Coal Black Rose” and “TheLong-tailed Blue” at the old amphitheatre in North Pearl Street, Albany,as early as 1827, and he claimed to have been the author of “Old ZipCoon,” which he sang for Allen’s benefit in Philadelphia in 1834. Hebecame notorious as a “filibuster” at the time of the troubles in Yucatan,and he made himself particularly offensive to a large portion of thecommunity as the editor of a scurrilous paper called thePolyanthus,published in New York. He was caned, shot at, imprisoned for libel, andfinally forced to leave the city. He died in the Charity Hospital, NewOrleans, in 1861.

Mr. White says that in early days negro songs were sung from the backs ofhorses in the sawdust ring; that Robert Farrell, “a circus actor,” was theoriginal “Zip Coon,” and that the first colored gentleman to wear “TheLong-tailed Blue” was Barney Burns, who broke his neck on a vaulting boardin Cincinnati in 1838. When the historians disagree in this confusing way,who can possibly decide?

Rice very naturally had many imitators, and Jim Crow wheeled about thecountry with considerable success, particularly when the original was inother lands. In the collection of Mr. Moreau is a bill of “The Theatre”(the Park), dated May 4, 1833, in which Mr. Blakeley was announced to singthe “Comic Extravaganza of Jim Crow” between the comedy ofLaugh When YouCan, in which he played Costly, and the melodrama ofThe FloatingBeacon, and preceded by “Signora Adelaide Ferrero in a new ballet danceentitled ‘The Festival of Bacchus’;” the entertainments in those daysbeing varied and long. Thomas H. Blakeley was a popular representative ofwhat are called “second old men,” Mr. Ireland pronouncing him the bestSulky,[Pg 124] Rowley, and Humphrey Dobbin ever seen on the New York stage: andthe fact that such a man should have appeared at a leading theatre,between the acts, in plantation dress and with blackened face, showsbetter than anything else, perhaps, the respectable position held by thenegro minstrel half a century ago.

Mr. White, so frequently quoted here, is an old minstrel who was part andparcel of what he has more than once described in the public press, andupon his authority the following account of the firstband of negrominstrels is given. It was organized in the boarding-house of a Mrs.Brooks, in Catherine Street, New York, late in the winter of 1842, and itconsisted of “Dan” Emmett, “Frank” Brower, “Billy” Whitlock, and “Dick”Pelham—the name of the really great negro minstrel being always shortenedin this familiar way. According to Mr. White, they made their firstappearance in public, for Pelham’s benefit, at the Chatham Theatre, NewYork, on the 17th of February, 1843; later they went to other cities, andeven to Europe. This statement was verified by a fragment of autobiographyof William Whitlock, given to the New YorkClipper by his daughter, Mrs.Edwin Adams, at the time of Whitlock’s death. It is worth quoting here infull, although it contains no dates: “The organization[Pg 125] of the minstrels Iclaim to be my own idea, and it cannot be blotted out. One day I asked DanEmmett, who was in New York at the time, to practise the fiddle and thebanjo with me at his boarding-house in Catherine Street. We went downthere, and when we had practised Frank Brower called in by accident. Helistened to our music, charmed to his soul[!]. I told him to join with thebones, which he did. Presently Dick Pelham came in, also by accident, andlooked amazed.[Pg 126] I asked him to procure a tambourine, and make one of theparty, and he went out and got one. After practising for a while we wentto the old resort of the circus crowd—the ‘Branch,’ in the Bowery—withour instruments, and in Bartlett’s billiard-room performed for the firsttime as the Virginia Minstrels. A programme was made out, and the firsttime we appeared upon the stage before an audience was for the benefit ofPelham at the Chatham Theatre. The house was crammed and jammed with ourfriends; and Dick, of course, put ducats in his purse.”

Emmett, describing this scene, places the time “in the spring of 1843,”and says that they were all of them “end men, and all interlocutors.” Theysang songs, played their instruments, danced jigs, singly and doubly, and“did ‘The Essence of Old Virginia’ and the ‘Lucy Long Walk Around.’”Emmett remained upon the minstrel stage for many years; he was a member ofthe Bryant troupe from 1858 to 1865, and he was the composer of manypopular songs, including “Old Dan Tucker,” “Boatman’s Dance,” “Walk Along,John,” “Early in the Mornin’,” and, according to some authorities, he wasthe author of “Dixie,” which afterwards became the war-song of the South.

[Pg 129]Mr. White, according to a biographical sketch published in the New YorkClipper, was born in 1821. He played the accordion—when he was tooyoung to be held responsible for the offence—at Thalian Hall, in GrandStreet, New York, as long ago as 1843, and the next year organized what hecalled “‘The Kitchen Minstrels’ on the second floor of the corner ofBroadway and Chambers Street. The first floor was occupied by Tiffany,Young & Ellis, jewellers; the third by the renowned Ottignon as agymnasium. Here, where the venerable Palmo had introduced to delightedaudiences the Italian opera, and regaled them with fragrant Mocha coffeehanded around by obsequious waiters, he first came most prominently beforethe public.... In 1846 he opened the Melodeon at 53 Bowery.” Here, asusual, there is a decided confusion of dates and of facts.Valentine’sManual for 1865 says, “Palmo’s café, on the corner of Reade Street andBroadway, was a popular resort from 1835 to 1840, at which later period heabandoned his former occupation and erected the opera-house in ChambersStreet, afterwards Burton’s Theatre.” Joseph N. Ireland, in hisRecordsof the New York Stage, published in 1867, says—and Mr. Ireland isusually correct—“The fourth attempt to introduce the Italian opera in NewYork, and the second to give it an individual local habitation, was thisseason [1843-44], made by[Pg 130] Ferdinand Palmo, on the site long previouslyoccupied by Stoppani’s Arcade Baths, in Chambers Street (Nos. 39 and 41),and nearly opposite the centre of the building on the north end of thePark originally erected for the city almshouse, and afterwards used forvarious public offices.... Signor Palmo had been a popular and successfulrestaurateur in Broadway between the hospital and Duane Street....Palmo’s Opera-house was first opened by its proprietor on the 3d ofFebruary, 1844”; while Charles T. Cook, of Tiffany & Co., who has beenconnected with that house for over forty years, shows by its records thatTiffany, Young & Ellis did not move to 271 Broadway, on the southwestcorner of Chambers Street, until 1847, when they occupied the second flooras well as the first. That Sir Walter Raleigh, losing all confidence inthe infallibility of human testimony, should have thrown the second partof hisHistory of the World into the flames is not to be wondered at!

Mr. White, nevertheless, was prominently before the public for many yearsas manager and performer; he was associated with the “VirginiaSerenaders,” with “The Ethiopian Operatic Brothers” (Operatic BrotherBarney Williams playing the tambourine at one end of the line); with “TheSable Sisters and Ethiopian Minstrels;” with “The New York[Pg 131] Minstrels,”etc. He introduced “Dan” Bryant to the public, and has done other goodservices in contributing to the healthful, harmless amusement of hisfellow-men.

“Christy’s Minstrels, organized in 1842,” was the legend for a number ofyears upon the bills and advertisements of the company of E. P. Christy.This would give it precedence of the “Virginia Minstrels” by a few monthsat least. When the matter was called to the attention of Mr. Emmett, manyyears[Pg 132] later, he wrote from Chicago on the 1st of May, 1877, that afterhis own band had gone to Europe a number of similar entertainments weregiven in all parts of the country, and that Enam Dickinson, who had hadsome experience in that line in other companies, had trained Christy’stroupe in Buffalo in all the business of the scenes, Mr. Emmett believingthat Mr. Christy simply claimed, and with truth, that he was “the first toharmonize and originate the present style of negro minstrelsy,” meaningthe singing in concert and the introduction of the various acts, whichwere universally followed by other bands on both sides of the Atlantic,and which have led our English brethren to give to all Ethiopianentertainments the generic name of “Christy Minstrels,” as they call alltop-boots “Wellingtons” and all policemen “Bobbies.”

Christy’s Minstrels proper began their metropolitan career at the hall ofthe Mechanics’ Society, 472 Broadway, near Grand Street, early in 1846,and remained there until the summer of 1854, when Edwin P. Christy, theleader and founder of the company, retired from business. George Christy,who the year before had joined forces with Henry Wood at 444 Broadway,formerly Mitchell’s Olympic, took both halls after the abdication of theelder Christy, and rattled the bones at one establishment, “Billy”[Pg 133]Birch, afterwards so popular in San Francisco and New York, cuttingsimilar capers at the other, and each performer appearing at both houseson the same evening.

[Pg 135]Edwin P. Christy died in May, 1862. George Harrington, known to the stageas George Christy, died in May, 1868; while in April of the latter yearMechanics’ Hall, with which in the minds of so many old New-Yorkers theyare both so pleasantly associated, was entirely destroyed by fire, neverto be rebuilt for minstrel uses.

The contemporaries and successors of the Christys were numerous andvarious. The air was full of their music, and dozens of halls in the cityof New York alone echoed the patter of their clogged feet for years. Amongthe more famous of them the following may briefly be mentioned: Buckley’s“New Orleans Serenaders” were organized in 1843; they consisted of GeorgeSwayne, Frederick, and R. Bishop Buckley, and were very popular throughoutthe country. “White’s Serenaders” were at the Melodeon, 53 Bowery, perhapsas early as 1846, and certainly at White’s Athenæum, 585 Broadway,opposite the Metropolitan Hotel, as late as 1872. The Harrington Minstrelswere at Palmo’s Opera-house in 1847 or 1848. Bryant’s Minstrels, as theirold play-bills show, were organized in 1857, when they[Pg 136] occupiedMechanics’ Hall; they went to the Tammany Building on Fourteenth Street in1868, were at 730 Broadway the next year, and opened the hall onTwenty-third Street near Sixth Avenue in 1870, where they remained untilDan Bryant, the last of his race, died in 1875. Wood’s Minstrels were at514 Broadway, opposite the St. Nicholas Hotel, in 1862 and later. “Sam”Sharpley’s Minstrels were at 201 Bowery in 1864. “Tony” Pastor’s troupewere in the same building in 1865, where they remained two years; theywere upon the site of the Metropolitan Theatre—later Winter Garden—for afew seasons, and until they removed to their present cosey home nearTammany Hall. The San Francisco Minstrels were at 585 Broadway in 1865,and in 1874 went to the more familiar hall on Broadway, opposite theSturtevant House, Budworth’s Minstrels opened the Fifth Avenue Hall, wherethe Madison Square Theatre now stands, in 1866. Kelly and Leon, who wereon Broadway on the site of Hope Chapel in 1867, where they were creditedwith having “Africanized opéra bouffe,” followed Budworth to theTwenty-fourth Street house. Besides these were the companies of MorrisBrothers, of Cotton and Murphy and Cotton and Reed, of Hooley, of Haverly,of Dockstader, of Pelham, of Pierce, of Campbell, of Pell and Trowbridge,[Pg 137]of Thatcher, Primrose and West, of Huntley, and of very many more, to saynothing of the bands of veritable negroes who have endeavored to imitatethemselves in imitation of their white brethren in all parts of the land.Brander Matthews, in an article on “Negro Minstrelsy,” printed in theLondonSaturday Review in 1884, and afterwards published as one of thechapters of a volume ofSaturday Review essays, entitledThe New Bookof Sports (London, 1885), describes a “minstrel show” given by the negrowaiters of one of the large summer hotels in Saratoga a few summersbefore, in which, “when the curtains were drawn aside, discovering a rowof sable performers, it was perceived, to the great and abiding joy of thespectators, that the musicians were all of a uniform darkness of hue, andthat they, genuine negroes as they were, had ‘blackened up,’ the moreclosely to resemble the professional negro minstrel.”

The dignified and imposing Mr. Johnston has sat during all these years inthe centre of a long line of black comedians, which includes such artistsas “Eph” Horn, “Dan” Neil, and “Jerry” Bryant—whose real name wasO’Brien—Charles H. Fox, “Charley” White, George Christy, “Nelse”Seymour—Thomas Nelson Sanderson—the Buckleys, J. W. Raynor, Birch,Bernard, Wambold, Backus, “Pony” Moore, “Dan” Cotton, “Bob” Hart, “Cool”White, “Dan” Emmett, “Dave” Reed, “Matt” Peel, “Ben” Gardner, LukeSchoolcraft, James H. Budworth, Kelly, Leon, “Frank” Brower, S. C.Campbell, “Gus” Howard, “Billy” Newcomb, “Billy” Gray, Aynsley Cooke,“Hughey”[Pg 139]Dougherty, “Tony” Hart, Unsworth, W. H. Delehanty, “Sam” Devere,“Add” Ryman, George Thatcher, “Master Eugene,” “Ricardo,” “Andy” Leavitt,“Sam” Sanford, “Lew” Benedict, “Harry” Bloodgood, “Cal” Wagner, “Ben”Collins, and “Little Mac.”

Nothing like a personal history of any of these men, who have been soprominent upon the negro minstrel stage during the half-century of itsexistence, can be given here. They have all done much to make the worldhappier and brighter for a time by their public careers, and they haveleft a pleasant and a cheerful memory behind them. Their gibes, theirgambols, their songs, their flashes of merriment, still linger in our eyesand in our ears; and before many readers scores of quaint figures withblackened faces will no doubt dance to half-forgotten tunes all over thesepages, which are too crowded to contain more[Pg 140] than the mere mention oftheir names.

How much of the wonderful success and popularity of the negro minstrel isdue to the minstrel, how much to the negro melody he introduced, and howmuch to the characteristic bones, banjo, and tambourine upon which heaccompanied himself, is an open question. It was certainly the song, notthe singer, which moved Thackeray to write years ago: “I heard a humorousballadist not long since, a minstrel with wool on his head, and an ultraEthiopian complexion, who performed a negro ballad that I confessmoistened these spectacles in a most unexpected manner. I have gazed atthousands of tragedy queens dying on the stage and expiring in appropriateblank-verse, and I never wanted to wipe them. They have looked up, be itsaid, at many scores of clergymen without being dimmed, and behold! avagabond with a corked face and a banjo sings a little song, strikes awild note, which sets the heart thrilling with happy pity.”

This ballad perhaps was “Nelly Bly,” or “Nelly was a Lady,” or “LucyLong,” or “Oh, Susanna,” or “Nancy Till,” or, better than any of these,Stephen Foster’s “Way Down upon the Swanee River,” a song that has touchedmore hearts than “Annie Laurie” itself; for, after all, “The Girl We LeftBehind Us” is not more precious in our eyes than “The Old Folks at Home;”and the American has sunk very low indeed of whom it cannot be said that“he never shook his mother.” Foster is utterly[Pg 142] unappreciated by hisfellow-countrymen, who erect all their monuments to the men who make theirlaws. He was the author of “Massa’s in the Cold, Cold Ground,” “Old DogTray,” “Old Uncle Ned,” “Old Folks at Home,” “Old Kentucky Home,” “Willie,We have Missed You,” and “Come where My Love lies Dreaming.” He died as hehad lived, in 1864, when he was but thirty-seven years of age, and his“Hard Times Will Come Again No More.”

Joel Chandler Harris, who is one of the best friends the plantation negroever had, and who certainly knows him thoroughly, startled the wholecommunity by writing to theCritic, in the autumn of 1883, that he hadnever seen a banjo or a tambourine or a pair of bones in the hands of thenegroes on any of the plantations of middle Georgia with which he isfamiliar; that they made sweet music with the quills, as Pan did; thatthey played passably well on the fiddle, the fife, the flute, and thebugle; that they beat enthusiastically on the triangle; but that they knewnot at all the instruments tradition had given them. That Uncle Remus,cannot “pick” the banjo, and never even heard it “picked,” seems hardlycredible; but Mr. Harris knows. Uncle Remus, however, is not a travelleddarky, and the existence of the banjo in other parts of the South has beenclearly proved. Mr. Cable[Pg 143]quotes a creole negro ditty of before the warin which “Musieu Bainjo” is mentioned on every line. Maurice Thompson saysthe banjo is a common instrument among the field hands in North Georgia,Alabama, and Tennessee; and he describes a rude banjo manufactured by itsdusky performer out of a flat gourd, strung with horse-hair; while wefind in Thomas Jefferson’sNotes on Virginia, printed in 1784, thefollowing statement: “In music they [the blacks] are more generally giftedthan the whites with accurate ears for tune and time, and they have beenfound capable of imagining a small catch.” In a foot-note Jefferson adds,“The instrument proper to them is the banjar, which they brought hitherfrom Africa.”

The negro minstrel will give up his tambourine, for it is as old as thedays of the Exodus, when Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, tooka timbrel in her hand, and all the women went out after her with timbrelsand with dances; and he will give up the bones, for Miss Olive Logan, inHarper’s Magazine for April, 1879, traces them back to the reign of FouHi, Emperor of China, 3468B.C., while Shakspere’s King of the Fairies,who made an ass of the hard-handed man of Athens, also treated Bottom tothe melody of the bones. He will hang up his fiddle and his bow when thetime comes, cheerfully enough, for Nero, according to tradition, fiddledfor the dancing of the flames that consumed Rome nineteen hundred yearsago. None of these are exclusively his own; but it would be very cruel totake from him his banjo, which he evolved if he did not invent, andwithout which he can be and can do nothing.

ACT III.
THE AMERICAN BURLESQUE.

The burlesque among serious writers has a bad reputation. George Eliot, inTheophrastus Such, says that it debases the moral currency; and GeorgeCrabb, in hisEnglish Synonymes, thus dismisses it: “Satire and ironyare the most ill-natured kinds of wit; burlesque stands in the lowestrank.”

Burlesque, from the Italianburlare, “to joke,” “to banter,” “to play,”has been defined as “an expression of language, a display of gesture, animpression of countenance, the intention being to excite laughter.” In artcaricature is burlesque, in literature parody is burlesque, in the dramacomic pantomime, comic opera, travesty, and extravaganza are burlesque.All dramatic burlesque ranges under the head of farce, although all farceis not burlesque. Burlesque is the farce of portraiture on the[Pg 148] stage;farce on the stage is the burlesque of events. Bret Harte’sCondensedNovels and George Arnold’sMcArone Papers are representative specimensof burlesque in American letters; Arthur B. Frost’s famous domestic cat,who supped inadvertently upon rat poison, is an excellent example ofburlesque in American art. What America has done for burlesque on thestage it is the aim of the following pages to show.

Hipponax, of Ephesus, who lived in the latter half of the sixth centurybefore Christ, is credited with having been “The Father of BurlesquePoetry.” He was small and ill-favored physically, and his natural personaldefects were the indirect cause of the development of his satirical powersand of his posthumous fame. Two sculptors of Chios caricatured him grosslyin a statue publicly exhibited, and he, in return, fired his muse with thetorch of hatred, and burned them in effigy with terrible but cleverridicule. He parodied theIliad, in which he made Achilles an Ionianglutton; he did not spare his own parents; he poked fun at the godsthemselves; he impaled Mrs. Hipponax with a couplet upon which she isstill exhibited to the scoffers, and he is only to be distinguished fromhis long line of successors by the curious fact that he does not seem tohave spoken with derision of his[Pg 149] mother-in-law! His tribute to matrimonyis still preserved in choice iambics, roughly translated as follows:“There are but two happy days in the life of a married man—the day of hismarriage, and the day of the burial of his wife.” From this it will beseen that twenty-five centuries or more look down upon the Benedict of themodern burlesque, who leaves his wife at home when he travels forpleasure!

Aristophanes, the comic poet of Athens, who wrote fifty-four comediesbetween the years 427 and 388B.C., may be termed “The Father of theBurlesque Play.” He satirized people more than things, or than other men’stragedies, and to his school belong Brougham’sPocahontas andColumbus, rather than the same author’sDan Keyser de Bassoon, orMuch Ado About a Merchant of Venice. The plots of Aristophanes are asoriginal as his wit. InThe Wasps he caricatured the fondness of theAthenians for litigation; inThe Birds his object was to convince theAthenians of the advantages of a clean political sweep; inThe FemaleOrators he satirized the Sorosis and the women suffragists of his time;inThe Feast of Ceres he pointed out how useful and ornamental woman isin her own sphere; and inPeace, written to urge the close of thePeloponnesian war, he reached the sublimity[Pg 150] of burlesque in creating astage heroine who never utters a word. The argument ofThe Knights willgive a very fair idea of the plots of his plays. Athens is represented asa private house, whose master, Demos (the people), has more servants andmore servants’ relations than he can comfortably wait upon or decentlysupport. Nicias and Demosthenes are his slaves, and Cleon, a politicalboss of the period, is his butler and confidential valet. Demos isirritable, superstitious, inconstant in his pursuits, and dull incharacter. Agoracritus, a sausage-seller, subverts the plots and the plansof the demagogue Cleon—originally played by Aristophanes himself—showsthe householder that his favorite servant is utterly unworthy of thepublic trust, and brings the entertainment to a close with thediscomfiture of the Ring and the relief of the taxpayers. Demos is said tohave been the prototype of “John Bull,” the personification of theEnglishman, as he was first exhibited by Dr. Arbuthnot in the early partof the eighteenth century, andThe Knights is regarded as “an historicalpiece of great value, because it furnishes a faithful picture of thenation and of its customs.” What curious ideas of American life andmanners will posterity gather fromAdonis andEvangeline!

Classical critics credit Aristophanes with being[Pg 151] distinguished for theexuberance of his wit, for his inexhaustible fund of comic humor, and forthe Attic purity and great simplicity of his language; while at the sametime he is accused of introducing, when it suits his purpose, everyvariety of dialect, of coining new words and expressions as occasionoffers, and of making bad puns, whether occasion offers or not; in all ofwhich his disciples persistently and consistently follow him.

Samuel Foote, who lived in an age of epithets, was called “The BritishAristophanes.” He respected no person and no thing. He satirized everysubject, sacred or profane, which struck his fancy, from Chesterfield’sLetters to the Stratford Jubilee; and he caricatured everybody, fromWhitfield to the Duchess of Kingston. His serious attempt at Othello, inthe beginning of his career as an actor, was considered a master-piece ofunconscious burlesque, only inferior, in its extravagance and nonsense, tohis Hamlet, and he failed in every legitimate part he undertook to play.As a mimic, however, in dramatic productions of his own writing, he metwith immense success; and as a writer of stage burlesque he ranks veryhigh. He made Italian opera ridiculous in hisCat Concert; he gaveserious offence to a hard-working, respectable trade inThe Tailors, aTragedy for Warm Weather; he attacked the medical[Pg 152] profession inTheDevil on Two Sticks; he parodied sentimental romance of thePamelaschool in hisPiety in Pattens; and he offended all right-thinkingpersons, heterodox as well as orthodox, inThe Minor, a travesty uponthe methods of Wesley and his Church.

The Most Lamentable Comedy and Most Cruell Death of Pyramus and Thisbie,originally published in the year 1600, if not the earliest burlesque inthe English language, is certainly the model upon which are based allsubsequent productions of the same class which have been written for theBritish or American theatre. Stevens believes the title to have beensuggested to Shakspere by Dr. Thomas Preston’sLamentable Tragedy MixedFul of Pleasant Mirth—Conteyning the Life of Cambises, King of Percia.The story of Pyramus and Thisbe is to be found in the fourth book ofOvid’sMetamorphoses; and a volume calledPerymus and Thesbye wasentered on the Stationers’ Register in 1562-63. Arthur Golding’stranslation of Ovid was published in 1567, and several other versions ofthe tale were extant before the birth of Snout or Bottom, the incidents,of course, being the same in all. Shaksperean scholars find traces ofother works in the different speeches of the hard-handed men of Athens,but the general impression is that the author’s purpose[Pg 153] was to travestythe verse of Golding. Limander and Helen are intended for Leander andHero; Shafalus and Procrus for Cephalus and Procris, and Ninny for Ninus;a form of verbal contortion displayed by the modern burlesquer inSamParr forZampa, andThe Roof Scrambler forSonnambula; while thelines—

“Whereat, with blade, with bloody, blamefull blade,
He brauely broacht his boiling bloody breast,”

read like the blank-verse mouthed by the deep tragedians of the negrominstrel stage of to-day.

The Midsummer-Night’s Dream, with Mr. Hilson as Snout and Mr. Placide asBottom, was performed, “for the first time in America,” at the ParkTheatre, New York, on the 9th of November, 1826, when the stage in thiscountry was upwards of three-quarters of a century old, and had aliterature of its own, comparatively rich in comedy and tragedy, and whenits burlesque, such as it was, undoubtedly felt the influence ofPyramusand Thisbe.

The second great burlesque upon the British stage wasThe Rehearsal, byGeorge Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, in the reign of the Second Charles,first acted in 1672. It was original in design and brilliant in execution.It introduced a popular author, John Dryden, engaged in superintendence ofa rehearsal[Pg 154] of one of his own tragedies—the tragedy in this instanceconsisting of clever parodies of portions of all the dramas then in vogue.The Rehearsal does not seem to have been produced in this country,althoughThe Critic of Sheridan, obviously based upon it, was performedat the John Street Theatre, New York, November 24th, 1788, when PresidentWashington honored the entertainment with his presence. The cast has notbeen preserved, although William Winter believes Mr. Wignell to haveplayed Puff, Mr. Ryan Whiskerandos, and Mrs. Morris (the second wife ofOwen Morris) Tilberina.The Critic still survives, as Mr. Daly’saudiences well remember.

Burlesque upon the American stage, although not yet American burlesque,dates back to the very beginning of the history of the theatre in thiscountry, whenThe Beggar’s Opera, by John Gay, “written in ridicule ofthe musical Italian drama,” was presented at the theatre in Nassau Street,New York, on the 3d of December, 1750, with Thomas Kean as CaptainMacheath.The Beggar’s Opera was first acted at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in1727, and took the town by storm. The Archbishop of Canterbury preached asermon against it; Sir John Fielding, the police-justice, officiallybegged the manager not to present it onSaturday evenings, as itinspired the idle apprentices of London, who saw it on their[Pg 155] night off,to imitate its hero’s thieving deeds; and a certain critic condemned it as“the parent of that most monstrous of all absurdities, the comic opera.”Nevertheless it was immensely popular, and enjoyed an unusually long run.As a literary production it is distinguished for its combination ofnature, pathos, satire, and burlesque. It brought fame to its author, and,indirectly, something like wealth; and it made a duchess of LaviniaFenton, who was the original Polly. As that monstrous absurdity the comicopera is without question the parent of that still more monstrousabsurdity the burlesque proper, Polly Peachum and Captain Macheath may beconsidered the very Pilgrim Parents of burlesque in the New World. Theywere followed almost immediately (February 25, 1751) byDamon andPhillada, a Ballad Farce, by Colley Cibber. Their Plymouth Rock very soonbecame too small to hold them; their descendants have taken possession ofthe whole land, and everyMayflower that crosses the Atlantic to-daybrings consignments of British blondes to swell their number. Before theRevolution Fielding’sTom Thumb; or, The Tragedy of Tragedies, a clevertravesty, with Mrs. Hallam (Mrs. Douglas) as Queen Dollalolla, and KaneO’Hara’sMidas, “a burlesque turning upon heathen deities, ridiculousenough in themselves, and too absurd for[Pg 156] burlesque,” had taken out theirnaturalization papers.The Critic, as has been shown, declared hisintentions very shortly after the establishment of peace; andBombastesFurioso became a citizen of New York as early as 1816.

As Satan in the proverb builds invariably a chapel hard by the house ofprayer, so does the demon of burlesque as surely erect his hovel next doorto the[Pg 157] palace of the legitimate tragedian. He spoils by his absurdarchitecture every neighborhood he enters; he even cuts off the views fromthe Castle of Elsinore, and disfigures the approaches to the royal tombsof the ancient Danish kings. John Poole’s celebrated travesty ofHamlet,one of the earliest of its kind, was first published in London in 1811.George Holland, afterwards so popular upon the American stage for manyyears, presented Poole’s play on the occasion of his first benefit in thiscountry, March 22, 1828, appearing himself as the First Grave-digger andas Ophelia. This was about the beginning of what, for want of a betterterm, may be styled “legitimate burlesque” in the United States. Itinspired our managers to import, and our native authors to write,travesties upon everything in the standard drama which was serious andought to have been respected; and it led to burlesques ofAntony andCleopatra,Douglas,Macbeth,Othello,Romeo and Juliet,Manfred,The Tempest,Valentine and Orson,Richard the Third,TheHunchback, and many more; and between the years 1839, when WilliamMitchell opened the Olympic, and 1859, when William E. Burton made hislast bow to the New York public, was laid out and built between ChambersStreet and the site of Brougham’s Lyceum, on Broadway, corner of BroomeStreet, that[Pg 158] metropolis of burlesque upon the ruins of which the dramaticantiquary, whose name is Palmy Days, now loves to sit and ponder.

The titles of its half-forgotten streets and buildings, collected atrandom from its old directories, then known as the bills of the play, willrecall pleasant memories and excite gentle wonder. There were, amongothers,A Lad in a Wonderful Lamp,The Bohea Man’s Girl,Fried Shots[Freischütz],Her Nanny,Lucy Did Sham Her Moor, andLucy Did LammHer Moor,Man Fred,Cinder Nelly,Wench Spy,Spook Wood,Buy ItDear,’Tis Made of Cashmere [Bayadere; or, The Maid of Cashmere],The Cat’s in the Larder, or, The Maid with the Parasol [La Gazza Ladra;or, The Maiden of Paillaisseau],The Humpback,Mrs. Normer, andRichard Number Three.

Of this metropolis William Mitchell was the first Lord Mayor. He was theinaugurator, if not the creator, of an entirely new school of dramaticarchitecture, which was as general, and sometimes as absurd, as the stylewhich has since spread over the country at the expense of the reputationof good Queen Anne; and he led the popular taste for a number of years, tothe great enjoyment of his clients, if not to their mental profit. WilliamHorncastle, a good singer and a fair actor, and Dr. William K. Northallwere his assistants in dramatic construction, and the authors of many ofhis extravagant productions. One of his earliest and most popularburlesques was entitledLa Mosquito. It was based uponThe Tarantulaof Fanny Elssler, and was presented at the close of his first season.[Pg 160] Anextract from the bill will give a fair idea of the quality of the fooling:

“First time in this or any other country, a new comic burlesque ballet,entitledLa Mosquito, in which Monsieur Mitchell will make his firstappearance asune Première Danseuse, and show his agility in a varietyof terpsichorean efforts of all sorts in the genuineBolerocachucacacavonienne style.... The ballet is founded on thewell-known properties of the mosquito, whose bites render the patientexceedingly impatient, and throws him into a fit of slapping andscratching and swearing delirium, commonly termed the ‘CacoethesScratchendi,’ causing the unfortunate being to cut capers enough for aconsiderable number of legs of mutton. The scene lies in Hoboken,” etc.

Concerning Mitchell’s performance, Dr. Northall writes, inBefore andBehind the Curtain: “We shall long remember the comic humor with which heburlesqued the charming and graceful Fanny. The manner of his exit fromthe stage at the conclusion of the dance was irresistibly comic, and theserious care with which he guided himself to the side scenes, to secure apassage for his tremendous bustle, was very funny.”

Mr. Mitchell’s other famous burlesque parts were Man Fred, Hamlet, WillyWalters (inThe Humpback),[Pg 161] Sam Parr, Jap (inLoves of the Angels),Antony, and Richard Number Three. Very few portraits of this old actor,either in character or otherwise, are known to the collectors. Theaccompanying print is from a drawing made by Charles Parsons while seatedin the pit of the old Olympic half a century ago, when the draughtsman—amere lad—was beginning his professional career. The original sketch wasgiven to Mr. Mitchell by the young artist, who received in return a passto the theatre—the highest ambition of the boys of that period.

[Pg 162]Mitchell was forced to retire from the mayoralty before the close of hislast season at the Olympic, in 1849-50, having been deposed the previousyear by William E. Burton at the Chambers Street house. As Lester Wallacksaid in hisMemories, Burton did everything that Mitchell did, and didit in a better way, with better players and better plays. His firstburlesque was a cruel treatment of the opera ofLucia, followedimmediately by a heartless travesty of Dibdin’sValentine and Orson.These were succeeded byThe Tempest, in which Mrs. Brougham (MissNelson), a lady of enormous physical size, played Ariel. A little whilelater Mr. Brougham played Macbeth to the Macduff of Thomas B. Johnstone,the Banquo of Oliver B. Raymond, and the Lady Macbeth of Burton himself.Mark Smith made a fascinating Norma, Leffingwell played the Stern ParientinVillikens and his Dinah, and Charles Fisher, in white tights, atunic, gauze wings, and a flowing wig, pirouetted with Mrs. Skerrett in aproduction calledSt. Cupid, in which Mr. Burton appeared as Queen Bee,a Gypsy Woman.

It would be an easy matter to fill many of these pages with stories of thehumorous productions and the laughable performances of Burton and Broughamon the Chambers Street boards. The literature of the American theatreoverflows with anecdotes[Pg 164] of their quarrels and their reconciliations uponthe stage, their jokes upon each other, their impromptu wit, theirunexpected “gags”—which were always looked for—the liberties they tookwith their authors, their audiences, and themselves, and, above all, withtheir incomparable acting in every part, whether it was serious orfrivolous.

The last, and in many respects the greatest, of the trio of actors,authors, and managers who may be considered the founders of Americanburlesque, began his brilliant but brief reign at the Lyceum, at BroomeStreet, late in 1850, about the time of the retirement of Mitchell, andlong before his later rival, Burton, was ready to lay down his sceptre. IfAmerica has ever had an Aristophanes, John Brougham was his name. HisPocahontas andColumbus are almost classics. They rank among the best,if they are not the very best, burlesques in any living language. Theirwit is never coarse, they ridicule nothing which is not a fit subject forridicule, they outrage no serious sentiment, they hurt no feelings, theyoffend no portion of the community, they shock no modesty, they neverblaspheme; and, as Dr. Benjamin Ellis Martin has happily expressed it,their author was “the first to give to burlesque its crowning comicconceit of utter earnestness, of solemn seriousness.”

[Pg 165]The Lyceum was opened on the 23d of December, 1850, with “an occasionalrigmarole entitledBrougham, and Co.,” which introduced the entirecompany to the public. The next absurdity wasA Row at the Lyceum, withMr. Florence in the gallery, Mr. Brougham himself in the pit, and the restof thedramatis personæ upon the stage; and shortly before the abruptclose of Mr. Brougham’s management he presentedWhat Shall We Do forSomething New? in which Mrs. Brougham appeared as Rudolpho, Mrs. Skerrettas Elvino, and Mr. Johnstone as Amina, in a travesty uponLa Sonnambula.

Upon the same stage, on Christmas Eve, 1855, but under the management ofthe elder Wallack, Brougham produced his “Original, Aboriginal, Erratic,Operatic, Semi-civilized, and Demi-savage Extravaganza ofPocahontas.”The scenery, as announced, was painted from daguerreotypes and otherauthentic documents, the costumes were cut from original plates, and themusic was dislocated and reset, by the heads of the different departmentsof the theatre. Charles Walcot played John Smith, “according to thisstory, but somewhat in variance with his story”; Miss Hodson played thetitular part, and Mr. Brougham represented “Pow-Ha-Tan I., King of theTuscaroras—a Crotchety Monarch, in fact a Semi-Brave.” At the close ofthe opening song (to[Pg 166] the air of “Hoky-poky-winky-wum”) he thus addressedhis people:

“Well roared, indeed, my jolly Tuscaroras.
Most loyal corps, your King encores your chorus;”

and until the fall of the curtain, at the end of the second and last act,the scintillations of wit and the thunder of puns were incessant andstartling. “May I ask,” says Col-o-gog (J. H. Stoddart), “in the wordlie, what vowel do you use, sir,i ory?”

“Y, sir, or I, sir, search the vowels through,
And find the one most consonant to you.”

“Sergeant-at-arms, say, what alarms the crowd;
Loud noise annoys us; why is it allowed?”

“I visited his Majesty’s abode,
A portly savage, plump and pigeon-toed;
Like Metamora, both in feet and feature,
I never met-a-more-a-musing creature.”

[Pg 169]In a more serious but not less happy vein is the apostrophe to tobacco,by the smoking, joking Powhatan, as follows:

“While other joys one sense alone can measure,
This to all senses gives ecstatic pleasure.
Youfeel the radiance of the glowing bowl,
Hear the soft murmurs of the kindling coal,
Smell the sweet fragrance of the honey-dew,
Taste its strong pungency the palate through,
See the blue cloudlets circling to the dome,
Imprisoned skies up-floating to their home—
I like a dhudeen myself!”

And so he joked and smoked his way into a popularity which no stagemonarch has enjoyed before or since.Pocahontas ran for many weeks, andwas frequently repeated for many years. The story of the sudden departureof the original Pocahontas one night without a word of warning, and thesuccessful performance of the piece by Brougham and Walcot, with no one toplay the titular part at all, is as familiar in the theatrical annals asthe sadder stories of Woffington’s last appearance, and the death ofPalmer on the stage; and no doubt it will be remembered long afterPocahontas itself, despite its cleverness, is quite forgotten.

“Columbus el Filibustero, a New and Audaciously Original,Historico-plagiaristic, Ante-national, Pre-patriotic, and Omni-localConfusion of[Pg 170]Circumstances. Running through Two Acts and Four Centuries,”was first performed at Burton’s Theatre (Broadway, opposite Bond Street,afterwards the Winter Garden) on the 31st of December, 1857; Mark Smithplaying Ferdinand, Lawrence Barrett Talavera, Miss Lizzie Weston DavenportColumbia, and Mr. Brougham himself Columbus. It is a more seriousproduction thanPocahontas; the satire is more subtle, and the thoughtmore delicate. It contains no play upon words, is not filled withstartling absurdities, and is pathetic rather than uproariously funny.WhilePocahontas inspires nothing but laughter,Columbus excitessympathy, and oftentimes he has moved his audiences to the verge of tears.He is a much-abused, simple, honest old man, full of sublime ideas, andlong ahead of his times. He dreams prophetic dreams, and in his visions he

“sees a land
Where Nature seems to frame with practised hand
Her last most wondrous work. Before him rise
Mountains of solid rock that rift the skies,
Imperial valleys with rich verdure crowned
For leagues illimitable smile around,
While through them subject seas for rivers run
From ice-bound tracks to where the tropic sun
Breeds in the teeming ooze strange monstrous things.
He sees, upswelling from exhaustless springs,
Great lakes appear, upon whose surface wide
The banded navies of the earth may ride.
He sees tremendous cataracts emerge
From cloud-aspiring heights, whose slippery verge
Tremendous oceans momently roll o’er,
Assaulting with unmitigated roar
The stunned and shattered ear of trembling day,
That, wounded, weeps in glistening tears of spray.”

[Pg 173]In short, he sees so much that is beyond the comprehension of the ordinaryplay-goer, that for thirty years he has been left in absolute retirementin that Forrest Home for good old plays which is styledFrench’s MinorDrama.

One of Brougham’s last burlesque productions was hisMuch Ado About aMerchant of Venice, presented March 8, 1869, at the little theatre onTwenty-fourth Street, New York, which has since borne so many names, andnow, rebuilt, is known as the Madison Square. He played Shylock, MissEffie Germon Lorenzo, and Mrs. J. J. Prior Portia. This was his finaleffort at theatrical management. He appeared inPocahontas as late as1876, but Shylock was his last original burlesque part which is worthy ofserious mention.

Francis Talfourd’sShylock; or, The Merchant of Venice Preserved, aJerusalem Hearty Joke, is a much older production than Brougham’stravesty of the same play, with which it should not be confounded.[Pg 174]Frederic Robson was the original Shylock in London, Tom Johnstone in NewYork (at Burton’s, October 9, 1853). M. W. Leffingwell gave an admirableperformance of Talfourd’sShylock in September, 1867, on the stage ofthis same little Twenty-fourth Street theatre, assisted by Miss Lina Edwinas Jessica. Mr. Leffingwell was a very versatile actor although heexcelled in burlesque and broadly extravagant parts. He will be rememberedas Romeo Jaffier Jenkins, inToo Much for Good Nature, and in travestiesofCinderella andFra Diavolo. In the last absurdity, as Beppo, madeup in very clever imitation of Forrest as the Gladiator, and enormouslypadded, he strutted about the stage for many moments, entirely unconsciousof a large carving-fork stuck into the sawdust which formed the calf ofhis gladiatorial leg. His look of agony and his roar of anguish—perfectreflections of Forrest’s voice and action—when his attention was calledto his physical suffering, made one of the most ludicrous scenes in thewhole history of American burlesque. Mr. Forrest is said to have remarkedof a lithograph of Leffingwell in this part, that while the portrait ofhimself was not so bad, the characteristics were somewhat exaggerated!Leffingwell was, no doubt, the original of the full length, life-sizedeffigy of Forrest which serves as the sign for a cigar store on one ofthe leading thoroughfares of New York to-day.

[Pg 177]Madame Tostée, in 1867, with theGrand Duchess, and Miss Lydia Thompson,the next season, withIxion—although neither of these can be consideredAmerican burlesques—gave new life to burlesque in America; and for anumber of years burlesque was rampant upon the American stage; manyleading comedians of later days, who will hardly be associated with thatstyle of performance by the theatre-goers of the present generation,devoting themselves to travestie and extravaganza. Among the mostsuccessful of these may be mentioned William J. Florence, Stuart Robson,James Lewis, and Harry Beckett. The last gentleman was exceedingly comic,and at the same time always refined and artistic in such parts as MinervainIxion, Hassarac inThe Forty Thieves, the Widow Twankey inAladdin, Maid Marian inRobin Hood, and Queen Elizabeth inKenilworth long before he became the established low comedian of Mr.Lester Wallack’s company, and won such well-merited popularity by hisclever representations of characters as divergent as Tony Lumpkin, HarveyDuff, inThe Shaughraun, and Mark Meddle.

In January, 1869, Mr. and Mrs. Florence played an engagement ofextravaganza at Wood’s Museum—now[Pg 178] Daly’s Theatre—on Broadway, nearThirtieth Street, presentingThe Field of the Cloth of Gold, in whichMr. Florence assumed the character of Francis First, Louis Mestayer HenryEighth, Mrs. Florence Lady Constance, Miss Lillie Eldridge La Sieur deBoissy, and Miss Rose Massey (her first appearance in America) LordDarnley. The feature of this performance, naturally, was the grandtournament upon the plain between Ardres and Guisnes, in which the rivalmonarchs fought for the international championship with boxing gloves inthe roped arena, and according to the rules of the prize-ring, the policefinally breaking up the match and carrying both combatants into theignominious lockup. Older play-goers will remember Mr. Florence yearsbefore this as Eily O’Conner, in a burlesque ofThe Colleen Bawn, and asBeppo “a very Heavy Villain of the Bowery Drama in Kirby’s days,” inFraDiavolo, Mrs. Florence making a marvellous Danny Mann in the formerpiece.

While Mr. Florence was taking gross liberties with the personality ofFrancis First at Wood’s, Mr. Lewis was doing cruel injustice to thecharacter of Lucretia Borgia at the Waverley Theatre, 720 Broadway, underthe management of Miss Elise Holt, who played Gennaro. The palace of theBorgias was “set” as a modern apothecary’s shop, where poison[Pg 179]was soldin large or small quantities, and Mr. Lewis excited roars of laughter as aquack doctress, with great capabilities of advertising herself and hernostrums. During the same engagement Mr. Lewis played Rebecca inIvanhoe, and Œnone inParis; but he joined Mr. Daly’s company a fewmonths later, and the legitimate has since marked him for its own.

[Pg 181]At the Fifth Avenue Theatre, and afterwards at Wallack’s, in this samesummer of 1869, Stuart Robson made a great hit as Captain Crosstree, in F.C. Burnand’s travesty ofBlack-eyed Susan, a part originally played inthis country during the previous season by Mark Smith. Mr. Robson had thesupport of Harry Pearson as Doggrass, of Miss Kitty Blanchard as William,and of Miss Mary Cary as Susan. The entertainment, as a whole, wasunusually good, full of exquisite drollery and grotesque fancy, althoughCaptain Crosstree eclipsed every other feature. His “make up” was a marvelof absurdity, his naturally slight figure was literally blown to anenormous size, the contrast between his immense physical rotundity and histhin, inimitably squeaky little voice being exceedingly ludicrous.

During this season the Lydia Thompson troupe was in the full tide of itssuccess; William Horace Lingard and Miss Alice Dunning were playingPluto[Pg 182] andOrpheus in New York; every negro minstrel and varietyperformer was burlesquing some person or some thing every night in theweek, and opera-bouffe had taken possession of half of the theatres in theland.

[Pg 184]The most successful burlesque of those times, and the entertainment whichis most fresh in the memory, was “The New Version of Shakspere’sMasterpiece ofHamlet, as arranged by T. C. De Leon, of Mobile, forGeorge L. Fox,” and first presented in New York at the Olympic (formerlyLaura Keene’s) Theatre, on Broadway, February 14, 1870. Although not animprovement upon the original acting version of the tragedy, it was animprovement upon the general run of burlesques of its generation; it didnot depend upon lime-lights or upon anatomical display, and it did notharrow up the young blood of its auditors by its horrible plays uponunoffending words. It followed the text of Shakspere closely enough topreserve the plot of the story; it contained, as well, a great deal thatwas ludicrous and bright, and it never sank into imbecility or indelicacy,which is saying much for a burlesque. Mr. Fox, one of the few really funnymen of his day upon the American stage, was at his best in this travestyofHamlet. Quite out of the line of the pantomimic clown by which he isnow[Pg 185] remembered, it was as supremely absurd, as expressed upon his faceand in his action, as was hisHumpty Dumpty. It was perhaps more aburlesque of Edwin Booth—after whom in the character he played anddressed—than of Hamlet, and probably no one enjoyed this more thoroughly,or laughed at it more heartily, than did Mr. Booth himself. While Fox attimes was wonderfully like Booth in attitude, look, and voice, he wouldsuddenly assume the accent and expression of Fechter, whom hecounterfeited admirably, and again give a most intense passage in thewonderfully deep tones of Studley, at the Bowery. To see Mr. Fox pacingthe platform before the Castle of Elsinore, protected against the eagerand the nipping air of the night by a fur cap and collar, and with mittensand arctic overshoes, over the traditional costume of Hamlet; to see thewoful melancholy of his face as he spoke the most absurd of lines; towatch the horror expressed upon his countenance when the Ghost appeared;to hear his familiar conversation with that Ghost, and his untraditionalprofanity when commanded by the Ghost to “swear”—all expressed, now inthe style of Fechter, now of Studley, now of Booth—was as thoroughly andridiculously enjoyable as any piece of acting our stage has seen sinceBurton and Mitchell were at their[Pg 186]funniest, so many years before. He wasstartling in his recommendation of a brewery as a place of refuge forOphelia, and in the church-yard his “business” was new and quite original,particularly the apostrophe to the skull of Yorick, who, he seemed tothink, was laughing now on the wrong side of his face. Fox was one of theearliest Hamlets to realize that the skull even of a jester, when it haslain in the earth three-and-twenty years, is not a pleasant object totouch or smell, although very interesting in itself to point a moral, orfor its association’s sake; and the expression of his face, as he threwthe skull of the dead jester at the quick head of the First Grave-digger,was more suggestive to the close observer of the base uses to which we mayall return than any “Alas, poor Yorick!” ever uttered.

Hamlet at the Olympic was played for ten consecutive weeks. The generalcast was not particularly strong or remarkable, except in the Ophelia ofMiss Belle Howett. She was serious, and surprisingly effective in the madscene, and often the superior of many of the representatives of Ophelia inthe original tragedy, who unwittingly have burlesqued what the burlesqueactress, perhaps as unwittingly, played conscientiously and well.

The travesty ofHamlet by Mr. Fox is dwelt upon particularly here asbeing in many respects one of the best the American stage has ever seen,and as giving the present writer an opportunity of paying just tribute tothe memory of an actor who, like so many of his professional brethren, wasnever properly appreciated during his life, and who never before—not[Pg 188]even in William Winter’s usually completeBrief Chronicles—has receivedmore than a passing notice in the long records of the stage he did so muchto adorn.

George L. Fox was not always the clown and pantomimist of theHumptyDumpty absurdity in which he is now remembered. He excelled in burlesque,as his Hamlet and Richelieu and Macbeth have shown. As a Shakspereancomedian his Bottom ranks among the best within the memory of men stillliving, while in standard low comedy, melodramatic, and even in tragedyparts, he had no little experience and some decided success. He made hisfirst appearance in 1830 at the Tremont Street Theatre, in Boston, when hewas but five years of age. The play wasThe Children of the Alps, andthe occasion a benefit to Charles Kean. He played Phineas Fletcher, in thedrama ofUncle Tom’s Cabin, during its famous run of so many nights atthe National Theatre, New York, in 1853-54. He excelled as Mark Meddle, asTrip, as Jacques Strop, inRobert Macaire, as Tom Tape, inSketches inIndia, as Box, as Cox, and as Sundown Bowse, inHorizon.

[Pg 191]Bottom was his most finished and artistic assumption, Hamlet probably hismost amusing, and Humpty Dumpty his most successful. He played the latterpart some fifteen hundred times in New York and elsewhere. It was thelast part he ever attempted to play, and only as a clown does he exist inthe minds of the men of to-day who think of him at all. He first appearedin New York at the National Theatre, in 1850; he was last seen at Booth’sTheatre on the 25th of November, 1875—the saddest clown who ever chalkedhis face. After twenty years of constant, faithful service as publicjester—shattered in health, broken in spirit, shaken in mind—hedisappeared forever from public view. Alas, poor Yorick!

One of the most popular as well as the longest lived of the contemporaryburlesques isEvangeline, in the construction or reconstruction of whichMr. Brougham is known to have had a share. As a travesty upon a purelyAmerican subject, originally treated, of course, in all seriousness by anillustrious American, Mr. Longfellow, and at the suggestion of an Americanequally illustrious, Mr. Hawthorne,Evangeline may surely claim to be anaboriginal production; it merits its success, and with a certain degree ofnational pride it may be recorded here that it has been repeated upon theAmerican stage over five thousand times. In it, at the Fifth AvenueTheatre, in Twenty-eighth Street, New York, during the summer of 1877,Miss Eliza Weathersby, as Gabrielle, made a pleasant impression, William[Pg 192]H. Crane appeared as Le Blanc, George H. Knight gave a series of wonderfulimitations of the Hero of New Orleans, N. C. Goodwin came prominentlybefore the public, and Harry Hunter, although not the original in thepart, created a decided sensation as the Lone Fisherman, one of thedrollest dramatic conceptions of modern times. He had no connectionwhatever with the play, had not a word to say, was entirely unnoticed byhis fellow-players, paid no attention to anybody, but was alwayspresent—the first to enter, the last to leave every scene. With hisridiculous costume, his palm-leaf fan, his fishing-rod, his camp-stool, hepervaded everything, was ever prominent, never obtrusive, and exceedinglymirth-provoking. It may be added that Henry Dixey, whose Adonis is one ofthe best of modern burlesque performances, made, during the long run ofEvangeline, his New Yorkdébut as the fore-legs of the heifer!

Amusement seekers in the metropolis will remember with pleasure WillieEdouin, Mrs. James Oates, and scores of other burlesque actors, excellentin many ways, whom it will not be possible even to mention here. N. C.Goodwin burlesqued a burlesque at Harrigan and Hart’s first theatre, whenhe played Captain Stuart Robson-Crosstree to the Dame Hadley of Mr.Harrigan and the Black-eyed Susan of Mr. Hart; at the same house G. K.Fortescue played Lousqueeze to Mr. Hart’s Hungry-Yet and Mr. Harrigan’sPierre, in a play styledThe Two Awfuls. The San Francisco Minstrels atthe same time presentedThe Four Orphans and the Big Banana, a burlesqueupon two dramas of great popularity and no little merit.

[Pg 195]The subject of American burlesque can hardly be dismissed here withoutsome brief allusion to a number of very clever parodies seen of late yearsupon the amateur stage. The poets of the various college associations haveturned their muse in the direction of travesty, and with considerablesuccess; one of the best and most popular of the entertainments of theHasty Pudding Club, theDido and Æneas of Owen Wister, the grandson ofFanny Kemble, being a production worthy of professional talent. John K.Bangs has written for amateur companiesKatherine,The Story of theShrew, andMephistopheles, a Profanation. In the first the tamer ofShakspere finds the tables turned, and is himself tamed; while in thelatter Faust’s mother-in-law, the good fairy of the piece, outwits theevil genius and frustrates his designs; a power of invention on the partof Mr. Bangs which proves him to be, perhaps, the only true son of theFather of Burlesque, Hipponax himself.

But to return to the “palmy days of burlesque,” before the period ofopera-bouffe, and the coming of the English blondes. When stock companieswere the rule, and Mitchell and Burton controlled the stock, singing anddancing were as much a part of every actor’s education as elocution andgesture; and it was not considered beneath the dignity of the Rip VanWinkle or the Hamlet of one night to travesty parts equally serious thenext. Mr. Booth, early in his career, appeared in such entertainments asBlue Beard; and Mr. Jefferson was enormously popular as Beppo, Hiawatha,Pan (inMidas), the Tycoon, and Mazeppa—old play-bills recording hisappearance as Granby Gag to the Jenny Lind of[Pg 197] Mrs. John Wood, “with hisoriginal grape-vine twist and burlesque break-down.” His performance ofMazeppa at the Winter Garden in 1861 is still a pleasant memory in manyminds. In it he sang “his celebrated aria, ‘The Victim of Despair’”; andhis daring act upon the bare back of the wild rocking-horse of thetoy-shops was, perhaps, the most remarkable performance of its kind everwitnessed by a danger-loving public. During his several engagements at theWinter Garden Mr. Jefferson was supported by Mrs. John Wood (particularlyas Ivanhoe to his Sir Brian), one of the best burlesque actresses ourstage has known. Her Pocahontas was never excelled. She played it atNiblo’s to the Powhatan of Mark Smith in March, 1872; and almost her lastappearance upon the New York stage was made at the Grand Opera-house inNovember of the same year, in John Brougham’s burlesqueKing Carrot,when that humorist remarked, although not of Mrs. Wood, that he wassupported by vegetable “supes.”

That burlesque “came natural” to Mr. Jefferson is shown in the wonderfulsuccesses of his half-brother, Charles Burke, in burlesque parts. Mr.Burke’s admirers, even at the end of thirty-five years, still speakenthusiastically of his comic Iago, of his Clod Meddlenot (inThe Lady ofthe Lions), of his Mr.[Pg 200] MacGreedy (Mr. Macready), of his Kazrac (inAladdin), and of his Met-a-roarer, in which he gave absurd imitations ofMr. Forrest as the Last of the Wampanoags.

No history of American burlesque could be complete without some mention ofthe name of Daniel Setchell. His Leah the Forsook, and Mark Smith’sMadeline are remembered as pleasantly in New York as his Macbeth and EdwinAdams’s Macduff are remembered in Boston. William H. Crane places theMacduff of Adams—he dressed in the volunteer uniform of the first year ofthe war, and read lines ridiculous beyond measure with all of themagnificent effect his wonderful voice and perfect elocution could givethem—as the finest piece of burlesque acting it has ever been hisgood-fortune to see. But the stories told by the old comedians of theextravagant comedy performances of their contemporaries in other days, ifthey could be collected here, would extend this chapter far beyond thelimits of becoming space.

[Pg 203]Whether the burlesque of the present is comparable with the burlesque ofthe past is an open question, much debated. Mr. Wilson in theOolah, Mr.Hopper as Juliet, Mr. Powers inThe Marquis, Mr. Goodwin inLittle JackSheppard, Mr. Burgess as the Widow Bedott—if she can be considered aburlesque part—and other men and women who burlesque women and men andthings to-day, are, without question, very clever performers; the laughsthey raise are as hearty and prolonged as any which paid tribute to thetalents of the comedians who went before them; and it is unjust, perhaps,to judge them by high standards which live only in the memory, and growhigher as distance lends enchantment to[Pg 204] their view. As Lawrence Barretthas said, “the actor is a sculptor who carves his image in snow.” Theburlesque which has melted from our sight seems to us, as we look back atit, to be purer and cleaner than the frozen burlesque upon which the sunas yet has made no impression; and the figure of Pocahontas, gone with thelost arts, seems more beautiful than the Evangeline of the modern school.When the Adonis of the present counterfeits the deep tragedian he isguilty of imitation, and of clever imitation, but nothing more; when herepresents the clerk in the country store he gives an admirable piece ofcomedy acting; but he never rises to the sublime heights of Columbus, asColumbus is remembered by those who saw him before Hoolah Goolah was born.

If American burlesque did not die with John Brougham, it has hardly yetrecovered from the shock of his death; and he certainly deserves acolossal statue in its Pantheon.

ACT IV.
INFANT PHENOMENA OF AMERICA.

While the “Grand Spectacle of theBlack Crook” was enjoying its fourthsuccessful run at Niblo’s Garden, New York, in the season of 1873, aprecociously bright little musician of some six or seven years of age, soadvertised in the bills, and to all appearances no older, preternaturallylarge in head and small in person, won the affection and the sympathy ofall those who witnessed his performances. During his very short career hewas one of the chief attractions of that attractive variety show, for theBlack Crook in its later years was nothing more than a varietyentertainment; and when, so soon after the close of his engagement here,the news of his death came from Boston, few of the established favoritesof many years have been so sincerely mourned as was this unfortunatelittle James G. Speaight.

Scarcely larger than the violin he carried, dressed[Pg 210] in a bright courtsuit of blue satin, with powdered wig and silken hose and buckled shoes,like a prince in a fairy tale, he seemed the slightest mite of a performerwho ever stood behind the foot-lights. His hands were scarcely big enoughto grasp his instrument; his arms and his legs were not so thick as hisbow; a bit of rosin thrown at him would have knocked him down; and hecould have been packed away comfortably in the case of his own fiddle. Asa musician he certainly was phenomenal. It was said of him that when onlyfour years of age, and after a single hearing, he could play by ear themost difficult and complicated of musical compositions, and that he couldremember an air as soon as he could utter an articulate sound. Before hewas five years old he was sole performer at concerts given under hisfather’s management in some of the provincial towns of England; and whenhe first appeared in this country he not only played solos upon hisviolin, displaying decided genius and technical skill, but he conductedthe large orchestra standing on a pile of music-books in the chair of theleader, that he might be seen of the musicians he led.

[Pg 213]The grace and ease of the little artist, his enthusiasm and vivacity,could not fail to interest and amuse his audiences, while at the same timeit saddened the most thoughtful of them, who realized how unnatural andhow cruel to the child the whole proceeding must of necessity be. That hewas passionately fond of his art there could be no doubt, or that he livedonly in and for it, and in the excitement and applause his publicappearances brought him; but that his indulgence of his passion withoutproper restraint was the cause of the snapping of the strings of hislittle life, and of the wreck of what might have been a brilliantprofessional career, was plainly manifest to every physician, and to everymother who saw and heard and pitied him.

Until within a very few months of his death he played only by ear. When hebegan to learn his notes, and to comprehend the immensity of music as ascience, and the magnificent future it promised him, his devotion tostudy, his ambition, and his own active mind were more than his feebleframe could endure, and his brief candle was suddenly extinguished. At theclose of this run of theBlack Crook, December 6, 1873, he was taken toBoston, where he played in theNaiad Queen, and led the orchestra of theBoston Theatre until the night of the 11th of January, 1874. After thematinée and evening performance of that date he was heard by his fatherto murmur in his troubled sleep, “O God, can you make room for a littlefellow like me?” and he was found dead by his father at daybreak.[Pg 214] With nosins of his own to answer for, surely the prayer was heard; and the comingof that little child was not forbidden.

The few musical prodigies who have succeeded Master Speaight in thiscountry have been blessed, happily, with stronger constitutions or withwiser guardians; and Munrico Dengremont, Josef Hofman, and Otto Hegner, sofar at least, have found the rest they need before it is too late. Thelittle Dengremont, a violinist, began his professional life at the age ofeight, and in 1875. He came of musical people, he had studied hard, and asa phenomenon he was very successful. He first appeared in New York in1881, when he was fourteen years of age, but he seems to have producednothing, and to have done nothing since he went back to Europe some yearsago.

The infant musician who of late years attracted the greatest attention inthis country, next to the “Child Violinist” noticed in the opening of thischapter, was unquestionably Josef Hofman; and he appealed particularly toa class of the community so high in the social scale, according to its ownideas, that it repudiated Niblo’s Garden and theBlack Crook as vulgar.It never heard of little Speaight until it heard of his death, and itknows nothing of him now, perhaps, except as the mythical hero ofcharming and sympathetic poems written in his memory by Thomas BaileyAldrich and Austin Dobson.

[Pg 217]Hofman was born in Cracow, in 1877. His mother was an opera-singer, hisfather a teacher of music. The child had a piano of his own before he wasfive years of age, and in six months he had acquired the principles ofmusical composition, and had written an original mazourka. He made hisfirst public appearance at a charity concert when he was six; at eight heplayed at a public concert at Berlin; and at ten he was drawing enormouscrowds to the largest theatre in New York. He was the subject of moreattention and of more newspaper notice, perhaps, than any musical childwho ever lived. Saint-Saëns, the French composer, is said to have declaredthat he had nothing more to learn in music, that everything in him wasmusic; and Rubinstein is said to have pronounced him the greatest wonderof the present age. All of this would have turned a bigger head than his;but notwithstanding his remarkable genius he was always a boy, who foundrelief in toy steamers and in tin soldiers; and his parents were sensibleenough and humane enough to shut up his piano, and to sacrifice theirambition for the good of their son. He is devoting his youth to naturalstudy, and his public career is still before him.

[Pg 218]The little Hegner, the latest prodigy, made his first appearance inAmerica in 1889, when he was twelve years of age; and he, too, came of amusical family. Like the Hofman infant, the piano is his instrument, andthose who know music speak enthusiastically of his “phrasing,” of his“interpretations,” of his “striking perceptions of musical form,” and thelike. All of these children have been compared with Mozart and Liszt, whoare, no doubt, innocently responsible for most of the infant musicalwonders who have been born since they themselves began, as babies, toperform marvels. There has been but one Mozart, and but one Liszt; and theyet unwritten history of their lives will show whether these lads of thepresent would not have grown up to be greater artists and happier men ifthey had in their youth played foot-ball instead of fiddles, and had paidmore attention to muscle than to music.

Between the musical wonder and the theatrical wonder there is thisdistinction: the baby musician never plays baby tunes, the infant actoralmost always plays child’s parts. Little Cordelia Howard, as Eva, manyyears ago, and Elsie Leslie and Thomas Russell, alternating in thecharacter of Little Lord Fauntleroy last season, were doing veryremarkable things in a charmingly natural way; but if they hadattempted to play Macbeth and Lady Macbeth they would only have done whatthe musical prodigies are doing when they attempt Mendelssohn’s D MinorConcerto or a mazourka by Chopin. The little actors are certainly the morerational, the more tolerable, and the more patiently to be endured.

[Pg 221]Of the class of prodigies represented by Mr. and Mrs. Stratton (“TomThumb” and Lavinia Warren), “Major” Stevens, “Commodore” Nutt, “BlindTom,” “Japanese Tommy,” and the “Two-headed Nightingale,” all of whom werepublicly exhibited in their childhood here, it is hardly necessary tospeak. They were certainly Infant Phenomena, but neither as infants nor asphenomena do they come within the proper scope of the present chapter; andthey occupy the same position in regard to the drama that the armlessyouth who cuts paper pictures with his toes occupies in regard topictorial art.

In no case is the Infant Phenomenon upon the stage—thespian,terpsichorean, harmonical, gymnastic, or abnormal—to be encouraged oradmired. How much of a nuisance the average prodigy is to his audiencesall habitual theatre-goers can tell; how much of a nuisance he is to hisfellow-playersNicholas Nickleby has effectively shown; and what abitter burden he is likely to become to himself, his own[Pg 222] experience—ifhe lives to have experience—will certainly prove. Loved by the gods—ofthe gallery—the Phenomenon (happily for the Phenomenon, perhaps,certainly happily for his profession) dies, as a rule, young.

He does not educate the masses; he does not advance art; he does nothingwhich it is the high aim of the legitimate actor to do; he does not evenamuse. He merely displays precocity that is likely to sap his very life;he probably supports a family at an age when he needs all of theprotection and support that can be given him; and, if he does not meet apremature death, he rarely, very rarely, fulfils anything like the promiseof his youth.

The career of Master Betty, the “Infant Roscius,” of the early part ofthis century, and unquestionably the most remarkable and successfulPhenomenon in the whole history of the stage, is ample proof of this. Bornin England, in 1791, he made his theatricaldébut in Dublin in 1803, andhe at once sprang into a popularity, there and wherever he appeared, whichseemed to know no limits.

The excitement he created was marvellous. People were crushed in theirefforts to enter the theatres in which he played. The receipts at thebox-offices were considered fabulous in those days. His own fortune wasmade in a single season. Lords[Pg 223] and ladies, and peers of the realm, wereamong his enthusiastic admirers. Royal dukes were proud to call himfriend, and the Prince of Wales entertained him regally at Carlton House.He was pronounced greater than Garrick himself in Garrick’s own parts; hewas petted and praised, and almost idolized, by an entire country; andeven Parliament itself, on a motion made by Mr. Pitt, adjourned to see the“Infant Roscius” play Hamlet at Drury Lane; than which no highercompliment could have been paid by England to mortal man!

[Pg 225]This mania over the boy actor continued for two or three seasons, when hispopularity by degrees decreased, and he retired from the stage to enterthe University of Cambridge. In 1812, however, he returned to theprofession a young man of twenty-one, but his prestige was gone. He didnot draw in London; in the provinces he was regarded as nothing but a fairstock actor; and when he was a little more than thirty years of age heretired entirely into private life. He died in London, August 24, 1874, aman of eighty-three, having outlived his glory by at least fifty years. Ifsuch was the lot of the most marvellous of prodigies, what better fate canthe managers of the lesser juvenile stars expect for their child wonders?

The career of Macready, a contemporary of Master[Pg 226] Betty’s during his laterefforts, as compared with that of the Phenomenon, shows in a marked degreethe difference between the natural and the forced systems of dramaticeducation. Macready, after years of careful, conscientious study andtraining, went upon the stage a young man, but one mature in experience.By hard work he made his way up to the top of the ladder of professionalfame, and he died full of years, honored as the most finished actor of hisday in his own land. Betty, at whom as a child he had wondered, and whomas a young man he had supported, surviving him a month or two, was carriedto his grave by a few personal friends, almost unnoticed by the world whoat one time had worshipped his genius, but to whom for half a century hehad been absolutely dead. Macready, a fixed star, shining brightly andbravely, gave a lasting, steady, truthful light. Betty, streaming like ameteor in the troubled air, eclipsing for a moment all of the planets inhis course, plunged into a sea of oblivion and left only a ripple behind.

Two precocious youths, whose careers upon the American stage were notunlike that of Master Betty in England, were Master Payne and MasterBurke. John Howard Payne is remembered now as the author of “Home SweetHome”; he is almost forgotten as the writer of the tragedy of[Pg 227]Brutusand some sixty other plays; and he is forgotten entirely as a verysuccessful child actor in the highest range of parts. He made hisdébutas Young Norval inDouglas at the Park Theatre, New York, in 1809, whenhe was but seventeen years of age. He was called “the favorite child ofThespis,” and his performance was declared to be exquisite, oneenthusiastic gentleman giving fifty dollars for a single ticket at hisbenefit in Baltimore. He supported Miss O’Neill in the British provinces,and Mrs. Duff in New York; but as soon as he was billed asMister Payne,notMaster Payne, his popularity ceased, and, except as a playwright,the stage knew him no more.

[Pg 229]Master Burke was a more unusual wonder, for he was a musical as well as atheatrical Phenomenon. Born in Ireland, Thomas Burke made hisdébut inCork as Tom Thumb, when he was five years of age. He made his firstappearance in America at the Park Theatre, New York, in 1830, before hewas twelve. Mr. Ireland preserves a list of characters he played, whichincludes Richard III., Shylock, Norval, Sir Abel Handy, Sir GilesOverreach, and Doctor Pangloss. He also led the orchestra in operaticovertures, played violin solos, and sung humorous songs; and “as aprodigy, both in music and the drama,” Mr. Ireland believes that “he hasbeen[Pg 230] unapproached by any child who has trodden the American stage.” As aman, he was considered one of the most perfect violinists of his time, andhe was last heard here in public at the concerts of Jenny Lind, Jullien,and Thalberg, many years ago.

The cynical remark of Richard to the young Prince of Wales that “so wiseso young, they say, do ne’er live long,” does not always apply to stagechildren. The Batemans, Miss Mary McVicker, Miss Matilda Heron, Miss ClaraFisher, Miss Jean Margaret Davenport (from whose early career Dickens isbelieved to have drawn the character of Miss Crummles), and other juvenilewonders, lived to achieve more enduring greatness as men and women thanwas ever thrust upon them in their childish days—while many of thepresent veterans in the profession were on the stage as actors before theywere old enough to read or write. Miss Fanny Davenport and Miss SusanDenin made their dramaticdébuts as children inThe Stranger,Pizarro,Metamora, or other of the standard plays of their youth; Mr.Jefferson, at the age of six, engaged in a stage combat with broadswordswith one Master Titus, at the Park Theatre, for the benefit of the latteryoung gentleman; and Madame Ristori, carried upon the stage in a basket atthe age of two months, was at the age of four years playing[Pg 231]children’sparts in her native Italy. Miss Lotta began her professional career aPhenomenon when eight years old; but Lotta, to be measured by no knowndramatic rules, is an Infant Phenomenon still. Miss Mary Taylor, than whomno lady in her maturity enjoyed greater popularity in New York, sang as achild in concerts, and even before she reached her teens was a greatfavorite in the choruses of the National Theatre on Church Street, NewYork; and there are to-day, among collectors of such things, rare prints,highly prized, of Miss Adelaide Phillips and of Miss Mary Gannon as childwonders; the latter young lady having been an actress before she was threeyears old.

[Pg 234]Evidences of such early dramatic experiences might readily be multiplied;but a decided distinction should be made between the phenomenal youngactor or actress who walks upon the stage in leading parts, a childRichard or an infant Richmond, and the youthful artist, born of dramaticparents, who, never attempting what is beyond his years or his station,plays Young York or Young Clarence to support his father, says his fewlines, gets his little bit of applause, is not noticed by the critics, andgoes home like a good child to his mother and to his bed. It is as naturalfor the child of an actor to go upon the stage as it is for the son of asailor to follow the sea; but while the young mariner before the mast istaught the rudiments of his profession by the roughest of experiences andthe hardest of knocks, the young Roscius too frequently is given commandof his dramatic ship before he can box the dramatic compass, or can tellthe difference in the nautical drama betweenBlack-eyed Susan andTheTempest.

Miss Clara Fisher (Mrs. James G. Maeder) was regarded in her youth as aprodigy second only to Master Betty; but, unlike Master Betty, she morethan realized the best hopes of her early admirers, and lived to beconsidered one of the most perfect and finished actresses ever known toour stage. Born in England in 1811, she appeared in Drury Lane, London,the scene of Master Betty’s earliest successes, when she was only sixyears of age, and at once she won the most decided triumphs. It was[Pg 237]said of her that she clearly understood, even at that early age, herauthor and his meaning, entered thoroughly and enthusiastically into allof her parts, and displayed in every scene not only acuteness ofintellect, but a temperament fully in unison with the profession of herchoice. Cast in plays with actors of the regulation age and size, insteadof being dwarfed by the contrast with them, she made the rest of thedramatis personæ appear entirely out of proportion, and carried away allof the honors. Her Americandébut was made September 12, 1827, at thePark Theatre, New York. In the seventeenth year of her age she couldscarcely rank among the Infant Phenomena, however, and she is only knownin this country, where the rest of her professional life has been spent,as a leading lady, justly celebrated, but not wonderful, out of allwhooping, as an Infant Roscia.

Mrs. Maeder comes of a theatrical race, and one which seems to matureearly. Her sister, Jane Marchant Fisher, the good old Mrs. Vernon ofWallack’s, went upon the stage in London a child of ten; Frederick G.Maeder, her son, made his first appearance at the age of eighteen; andAlexina Fisher (Mrs. A. F. Baker) and Oceana Fisher, daughters of PalmerFisher, and members of the same family, played here as children half acentury ago.

[Pg 241]The most remarkable and most successful of the Infant Phenomena of moderntimes in America have been the Bateman Children, the Marsh JuvenileTroupe, and the Boone and the Holman Children. On the 10th of December,1849, E. A. Marshall, manager of the Broadway Theatre, introduced on theboards of that house, for the first time to New York audiences, Kate andEllen Bateman, whose united ages were not ten years. Kate made herdébutas Richmond, and Ellen, the younger, as Richard, in scenes fromShakspere’sRichard III. The announcement of the coming of theinfantile Thespians was not favorably received by the regular attendantsof the Broadway; the appearance of prodigies of any kind being a departurefrom the ways of that traditional home of the legitimate drama, and therewas a prejudice formed against these young stars which nothing but theabsolute cleverness of their performances was able to overcome. After Mr.Hackett as Falstaff, and Miss Cushman as Lady Macbeth, it was scarcelynatural that unknown children in the same and kindred parts should satisfythe critical audiences of the Old Broadway. The popularity of theBatemans, however, was quickly established; those who came to scoff on thefirst night returned to praise; the whole town, young and old, petted andapplauded the children; while still the wonder grew, during the singleweek of their engagement, how the two small heads could carry all theyknew. It seemed incredible that an infant of four years like Ellen Batemancould present anything approaching an embodiment of such characters asShylock, Richard, or Lady Macbeth; or that a child of six, as was Kate atthat time, should be able to play Richmond, Portia, or the Thane with thecorrectness of elocution, the spirit, and the proper comprehension of thelanguage and the business which she displayed. The simple task of[Pg 242]committing to memory the text of so many parts was in itself a marvellouseffort for children of their tender age, but to be able to speak theselines as set down for them with correct emphasis and gesture, and withevery appearance of a thorough conception of the character sustained, asthe little Batemans are said to have done, certainly warranted all thepraise that was bestowed upon them. Every fresh character they undertookwas a surprise, and was considered more clever than any that had precededit. Lady Macbeth was, perhaps, the most successful of Ellen’s assumptions,while Kate read Portia with amazing skill and propriety; her delivery ofthe familiar lines was finished, and her carriage throughout was that ofan experienced artist.

After appearing in Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and other Americancities, the Bateman Children were taken to England by P. T. Barnum, in thesummer of 1851, making their first appearance there at the St. James’sTheatre, London, on the 23d August, asThe Young Couple, and meetingwith decided success. They returned to the Old Broadway November 15, 1852,and opened in a comedietta entitledHer Royal Highness, writtenexpressly for them. They were quite as popular here as when they firstappeared, and before they left New York Mayor Kingsland, “on behalf of acommittee of[Pg 243] leading citizens,” presented to each of the children a tinygold watch.

In 1856, no longer juveniles, though still most acute, voluble, and fullof grace, they retired from the stage. Miss Kate Bateman returned to it,however, in a few years, a young lady, and an actress of more thanordinary merit. Even if she had not since then made for herself, both inthis country and in England, a reputation as one of the strongest tragicand melodramatic artists on the English-speaking stage, the story of herearly career as told here is worthy of a place in dramatic history becauseof the precocious excellence of her acting as a child, and of thewonderful success which she everywhere won. She was a Phenomenon amongPhenomena in this respect, that she grew and advanced in her profession asshe grew in stature and advanced in years—one of the very few of theinfant prodigies who, in later life, became an ornament to the stage.

On the 10th of December, 1855, precisely six years after the firstappearance of the Bateman Children at the Broadway Theatre, the MarshJuvenile Troupe made their first appearance here at the same house, andmade, also, a very favorable impression even upon critics not predisposedto be attracted by any exhibition of prodigies. In their acting was aperceptible absence of that familiar, parrot-like, mechanical[Pg 244] repetitionof unfamiliar words, and of those studied and artificial attitudes sopainfully marked in juvenile players generally. Their impersonations werespirited and exact, and evinced unusual mental aptitude and training,their audiences being sometimes startled by the extraordinary precocitywith which some of the leading parts were filled. Their initialperformance consisted ofBeauty and the Beast, Miss Louisa Marshrepresenting the Beast, while little Mary Marsh, as Beauty, pleasantlyfilled all of the personal and mental requirements of thatrôle.Beautyand the Beast was followed byThe Wandering Minstrel, Master George H.Marsh playing Jem Baggs, “with the popular, doleful, pathetic,sympathetic, lamentable history of ‘Villikins and his Dinah.’” These weresupplemented later, during the Marshes’ engagement, withThe Rivals—Mr.Blake as Sir Anthony, Madame Ponisi as Julia—or withA Morning Call,Madame Ponisi playing Mrs. Chillington, and Augustus A. Fenno Sir Edward;the Juveniles, although attractive, being scarcely successful in fillingthe house by their sole exertions.

The Marsh Children, although generally announced by that name on thebills, were not members of one family, nor were they Marshes. George andMary, brother and sister, and both of them said to have been less thaneight years of age when they came[Pg 245] here first, were in private life Masterand Miss Guerineau—while the other leading lady, Louisa Marsh, wasproperly Miss McLaughlin. The entire company was composed of children. Asthey died—and the mortality among them was remarkable—or as they grewtoo large for the troupe, their places were filled by other precociousinfants, engaged by their clever manager in his strollings from town totown. Among the members of the company at different times were Miss AdaWebb, Miss Fanny Berkley, Miss Ada and Miss Minnie Monk, and LouisAldrich, all of whom, if not great, subsequently, in their profession, arestill not unknown to fame. Unlike the Batemans, however, none of the MarshJuveniles ever became stars of more than common magnitude, and none ofthem are shining very brilliantly on the stage to-day. George Marsh, thelow comedian, was very clever in his way, although not original in hisimpersonations. His powers of imitation were marvellous, and his Toodles,a miniature copy of Burton’s Toodles, in which all of the business andmany of the gags—even to the profanity at the mention of Thompson—wereretained, was almost as funny in its uproariousness as was Burton’sToodles itself, and certainly better than many of the imitations that havebeen seen since Burton’s day. Little Mary Marsh was an uncommonlyattractive child,[Pg 246] bright-eyed, graceful, fresh, and fair. The boy betweeneight and fifteen in her audiences who did not succumb to her lovelinesswas only fit for treason, stratagem, and spoils. Her name was to be foundwritten in some copy-book, her face sketched in some drawing-book in themale department of every school in New York, and in the averageschoolboy’s mind she was associated in some romantic way with all of thegood and beautiful women of his history or his mythology; she inhabitedall the salubrious and balmy isles in his geography; she was dreamed of inhis philosophy; and one particular lad, who is now more than old enough topay the school bills of boys of his own, when asked, in a chemistry class,by the master, “What is the symbol and equivalent of potassium?” answered,absently, but without hesitation, “Mary Marsh!”

The passion the child inspired in the breasts of her adorers was a pureone, and, except in the neglect of a prosy lesson or two, it did no harm.Her memory is still kept green in the hearts of many practical men ofto-day, who unblushingly confess to a filling of their boyish eyes and aquivering of their boyish lips when the sad story of her untimely anddreadful death was told here. While playing in one of the Southern cities,her dress took fire from the footlights and she was fatally burned,[Pg 247]living but an hour or two after the accident occurred.

On the 3d of August, 1857, the Marshes playedBlack-eyed Susan at LauraKeene’s Theatre here, followed byThe Toodles. From the bill of this,their opening night, the following casts are copied:

This was probably the last season of the Marsh Juveniles in New York, andsince their exit no startling troupe of Phenomena have appeared here. TheBoone and the Holman Children were clever, but not so successful as theMarshes. The Worrell Sisters were popular, but, although young girls, theywere in their teens, and scarcely came under the head of infant players.They made their New Yorkdébut at Wood’s Theatre, 514 Broadway,afterwards[Pg 248] the Theatre Comique, under the management of George Wood, in aburletta calledThe Elves, April 30, 1866, Miss Sophie Worrell, theeldest of the three sisters, being at that time fully eighteen years ofage.

Among the occasional companies of children who have appeared in New Yorkwere “The Mexican Juvenile Troupe.” They occupied Mr. Daly’s Fifth AvenueTheatre during the summer season of 1875, remaining two weeks, andappearing at the Lyceum Theatre, on Fourteenth Street, from the 1st to the13th of November in the same year. Their performances were conducted inthe Spanish language, and their specialty was opera-bouffe. They were welltrained in voice and action, but the music in their childish treble wasweak; and, personally, the troupe ran to legs and arms and hands and feet,and the general angular and awkward undevelopment characteristic of theirage and size. The bit of aprima donna who sang La Grand Duchesse and LaBelle Hélène in the titular parts, and who was known to fame as SignorinaCarmen Unda y Moron, was made up carefully after Tostée, whom, in certainactions and gestures and expression of face, she much resembled. Shedisplayed all of the vim andabandon andchic of the veteran actress,and tossed her head, and switched her train, and ogled and leered, andcapered like the very Tostée herself, as[Pg 249] seen through the reverse of anopera-glass. The child acted with spirit, or something that was like it,and seemed to have a morbid enjoyment and comprehension of the indelicateparts she played. The spectacle was far from being a pleasant one, andprobably shocked more persons than it amused. Little Carmen was certainlynot more than eight years old, and barely as tall as the table in herstage parlor, while none of the company reached in height the backs of thechairs of ordinary size with which, in strange incongruity, the stage ofthe Lyceum was always set.

During the past fifteen or twenty years there have appeared upon the NewYork stage, generally unheralded, several little actors and actresses whohave shown decided ability for the profession, while claiming nophenomenal talent, and in whom certainly there seemed to be fair promiseof a brilliant future. Among these have been little Minnie Maddern, whoappeared at the French Theatre on Fourteenth Street, May 30, 1870, asSibyl Carew, in Tom Taylor’sSheep in Wolf’s Clothing, supporting MissCarlotta Leclercq as Anne. Her knowledge of stage business, her generalcarriage, and the careful delivery of her lines throughout the play wereremarkable for a child of her years; and hers was considered one of themost satisfactory representations[Pg 250] in the piece. The pleasant reputationshe made there was sustained at Booth’s Theatre in the month of May, 1874,when she played Arthur inKing John, with Junius Brutus Booth, Jr., inthe titular part, Mrs. Agnes Booth as Constance, and John McCullough asthe Bastard—a good cast. A more pretentious Arthur—an older, not abetter one—was that of Master Percy Roselle, who played it in one act ofKing John at amatinée benefit given to Miss Matilda Heron, January17, 1872.

Miss Jennie Yeamans wasalmost a Phenomenon, although, fortunately forherself, she was never subjected by her managers to the forcing process.As Joseph in a burlesque ofRichelieu, at the Olympic, in February,1871, she was very good, second only to George Fox as the Cardinal-Duke,whom, with a piece of chalk, she assisted in drawing the awful circle ofthe Tammany Ring around the form of Miss Lillie Eldridge as Julie. Thesolemnity of the entire performance on the child’s part, her wonderfulcommand of her features, and her display of a dry, apparently unconscioushumor, all in the true spirit of burlesque, were delightful tocontemplate. She was equally good and amusing in a part of an entirelydifferent nature, Notah, the Little Pappoose, in Augustin Daly’sHorizon, a little later in the same season at the same house.Representing an[Pg 251] Indian child who had no knowledge of the English tongue,and who united to the natural mischievousness of childhood all of theuntamed viciousness of the Indian nature, she was captured on the plainsby the Hon. Sundown Bowse (G. L. Fox), and she made that gentleman’s stageexistence more than a burden to him through several acts. When CharlesFisher played Falstaff at the Fifth Avenue Theatre she was an excellentWilliam Page.

Miss Mabel Leonard, apparently some five years old, supported H. J.Montague at Wallack’s Theatre in the month of October, 1874, when theRomance of a Poor Young Man was produced, playing with a good deal ofskill a little Breton peasant girl. The same young lady and Bijou Heronwere the children in Miss Morris’s version ofEast Lynne, calledMissMulton, at the Union Square Theatre in November, 1876. Their judicioustraining, and the careful acting of their not unimportant parts, addedmuch to the general completeness of the drama, and will be still vividlyremembered by all now living who were play-goers years ago.

Of all the children who have appeared upon the stage during the pasttwenty years, Bijou Heron was one of the brightest and most promising. Inface refined, intelligent, and attractive, in voice pleasant andsympathetic, in figure neat, graceful,[Pg 252] andpetite even for her years,she had all the personal requirements of success in her profession,combined with careful training, quick comprehension, tact, intelligence,and love for her art. As the only child, and as the hope and idol of aonce favorite actress, whose popularity was of so comparatively recent adate that she had not passed out of the memory of the theatre-goers of herdaughter’s time, she was kindly and affectionately received in New Yorkfor Matilda Heron’s sake, even before she had won for herself, and by herown exertions, so many friends here.

After long preparation she made her first appearance on any stage atDaly’s Fifth Avenue Theatre, Twenty-eighth Street, on April 14, 1874, in aplay entitledMonsieur Alphonse, from the French of the younger Dumas,by Mr. Daly, and first presented that evening in this country. It wasprobably one of the most thoroughly successfuldébuts witnessed here inmany years. Aside from the shyness and constraint so natural to thedébutante, and without which no true actor ever stepped for the firsttime before a critical public, she bore herself naturally, simply, andwith charming grace. The part is long and difficult, not one of thecommonplace, childishrôles usually intrusted to infant players, nor oneof the[Pg 253] high tragedy starrôles sometimes inflicted upon juvenileprodigies, but a bit of leading juvenile business requiring more thanordinary intelligence and skill upon the part of its representative. Manyactresses who have been years upon the stage, and who are consideredbeyond the average in their playing, would have played it with lessappreciation and success.

Of the juvenile actors of the present time something has already beensaid. As a rule they belong to the legitimate branches of the profession,and they are as rational, perhaps, as is the drummer-boy of the army, theelevator-boy of society, or the cash-boy of trade. Alice in Wonderlandadorns a charming tale, Prince and Pauper and Little Lord Fauntleroy pointa pretty moral, even Editha’s Burglar may have his uses; but, take them asa whole, it is a difficult matter to determine the exact position of theInfant Phenomena upon the stage. They occupy, perhaps, the neutral groundbetween the amateurs and the monstrosities, without belonging to eitherclass, or to art. As professional performers, although in embryo, theycannot share exemption from the severe tests of criticism with those whoonly play at being players; and as human beings, although undeveloped,they cannot be judged[Pg 254] as leniently as are the learnèd pigs and thetrained monkeys from whom some of Mr. Darwin’s disciples might believethem to be evolved. The public demands them, however, and dramatists makethem; therefore let them pass for stars!

ACT V.
A CENTURY OF AMERICAN HAMLETS.

Hamlet, in his wholesome advice to the players, in his command to thegarrulous old gentleman who would have been his father-in-law had Hamletbeen a low comedy instead of a high tragedy part, that the players be wellbestowed, and in his bold assertion that the play’s the thing, showedplainly how great was his interest in the drama, and how keen hisappreciation of what the Profession ought to be. Hamlet has done much forthe players, but the players have cruelly wronged Hamlet. They havemouthed him, and strutted him, and bellowed him, have sawn him in the airwith their hands, and have torn his passions to tatters, till it werebetter for Hamlet often that the town-crier himself had spoken his lines.A very few of our tragedians of the city have had enough respect for thecharacter of Hamlet to let him alone. Others have done full justice toHamlet, and as Hamlet have reflected[Pg 258] credit upon Hamlet and uponthemselves; but there have been players that I have seen play, and heardothers praise, and that highly, who, not to speak it profanely, havingneither the accent of Christians nor the gait of Christian, pagan, or man,have made nights andmatinées hideous with the part, and have donemurder most foul to Hamlet.

There can be no question that New York is the dramatic metropolis of theUnited States—and despite the absence of anything like State aid—ascertainly as Paris is the capital of France, and as surely as London isthe centre of Great Britain. A New York success is of as much importanceto the new play and to the young player as is the crown of the Academy tothe new book, or the degree to the young doctor; and a history ofHamletin New York, therefore, is virtually a history ofHamlet in America.

The tragedy has been played here during the last century and a quarter inmany languages, by actors of all ages and of both sexes, in blond wigs andin natural black hair, with elaborate scenery and with no scenery at all,by almost every tragedian in the country, and on the stage of almost everytheatre in the city with the exception of Wallack’s last theatre, nowPalmer’s. It has been burlesqued, and sung as an opera; and itsrepresentatives have been good, bad, and very, very indifferent. Somuch is there to be said aboutHamlet in New York that the greatdifficulty in preparing this sketch of its career is the proper andnatural selection of what not to say.

[Pg 261]Hamlet was first presented in the city of New York on the evening of the26th of November, 1761, and at the “New Theatre in Chappel Street”—nowBeekman Street—near Nassau, the younger Lewis Hallam, the original Hamletin America (at Philadelphia, in the autumn of 1759), playing the titularpart. Hallam was a versatile actor, who was on the stage in this countryfor over fifty years, and always popular. Concerning his Hamlet verylittle is now known, except the curious statement in theMemoirs ofAlexander Graydon, published in 1811, that Hallam once ventured to appearas Hamlet in London—“and was endured!” He was the acknowledged leadingtragedian of the New York stage until his retirement in 1806, and he isknown to have played Hamlet as late as 1797, when he must have been closeupon sixty years of age. Mr. Ireland is of the impression that JohnHodgkinson, a contemporary of Hallam’s, who appeared as Hamlet inCharleston, South Carolina, early in the present century, concededHallam’s rights to the character in the metropolis, and never attempted ithere.

[Pg 262]The first Hamlet in New York in point of quality, and perhaps the secondin point of time, was that of Thomas Abthorpe Cooper, who played the partat the John Street Theatre on the 22d of November, 1797, although Mr.Ireland believes that he was preceded by Mr. Moreton at the theatre onGreenwich Street, in the summer of the same year, as he had played theGhost to Moreton’s Hamlet in Baltimore a short time before. William Dunlapspeaks in the highest terms of Cooper’s Hamlet, and John Bernard ranks itwith the Hamlet of John Philip Kemble himself.

James Fennell, a brilliant but uncertain English actor, who came toAmerica in 1794, was the next Hamlet worthy of note to appear in New York.He was at the John Street Theatre as early as 1797, but he does not seemto have undertaken the character of the Dane until 1806, when he was atthe Park for a few nights. He was an eccentric person, who figures in allof the dramatic memoirs of his time, and who published in 1841 a veryremarkable book, called anApology for his own life. Educated for theChurch, he became in turn—and nothing long—an actor in the provinces ofEngland, a teacher of declamation in Paris, a writer for the press inLondon, and a salt-maker, a bridge-builder, a lecturer, an editor, aschool-master, and again and again an actor in America. John Bernardspeaks of him as that “whirligig-weathercock-fellow Fennell,” and as “themaddest madman I ever knew.” He was excellent as Othello and Iago, and,according to Mr. Ireland, “beyond all competition as Zanga,” butconcerning his Hamlet history is silent.

[Pg 265]John Howard Payne enjoys the distinction of being the first AmericanHamlet who was born in America, and he had been born but seventeen yearswhen he played Hamlet at the Park Theatre in May, 1809. Two years later,on the 5th of April, 1811, he introduced the tragedy to Albany audiences,and his Hamlet, naturally, was as immature and as amateur as it waspremature.

Other juvenile tragedians followed Master Payne upon the stage when theyshould have been in bed, notably Master George F. Smith, who played Hamletat the Park Theatre on the 28th of March, 1822, and, very notably, MasterJoseph Burke, who played in Dublin in 1824, when he was five years old,and who was recognized as a star inHamlet in the United States when hewas twelve.

But to leave the pygmies and return to the giants. Play-goers in New Yorkbetween the years 1810 and 1821 were blessed, as play-goers have neverbeen blessed before, in being able to enjoy and to compare theperformances of three of the greatest[Pg 266] actors it has ever been the lot ofany single pair of eyes to see or of any single pair of ears to hear: towit, Cooke, Kean, and Booth. George Frederick Cooke arrived in America in1810, and remained here until his death in 1812. Setting at defiance allthe laws of nature, society, and art, he was in nothing more remarkablethan in the fact that in the whole history of the drama in this country heis the only really great tragedian, old or young, who never attempted toplay Hamlet here. His diary records his failure in the part in Londonyears before; and Leigh Hunt, who praises him highly in other lines, saysthat he could willingly spare the recollection of his Hamlet, and that“the most accomplished character on the stage he converted into anunpolished, obstinate, sarcastic madman.”

Edmund Kean first played Hamlet in New York in the month of December,1820, Junius Brutus Booth in the October of the following year. Concerningthese men and their rivalry volumes have been written; each had hisenthusiastic admirers, and the Hamlet of each has become a matter ofhistory. That Kean believed in his own Hamlet in his younger days therecan be no question now, and he gave to it the closest study until thewidow of Garrick induced him to alter his reading of the “closet scene,”and to adopt the manner of her[Pg 269]band; an innovation which left him everafter dissatisfied with himself in that part of the tragedy. Hazlittconsidered Kean’s kissing of Ophelia’s hand, in the famous scene betweenthem in Act III., “the finest commentary that was ever made onShakspere.... The manner in which Mr. Kean acted in the scene of the playbefore the King and Queen,” he adds, “was the most daring of any, and theforce and animation which he gave it cannot be too highly applauded. Itsextreme boldness bordered ‘on the verge of all we hate,’ and the effect itproduced was a test of the extraordinary powers of this extraordinaryactor.” The younger Booth, writing of the elder Kean, defends his father’sfoe in the following noble words: “The fact that Kean disliked to actHamlet, and failed to satisfy his critics in that character, is no proofthat his personation was false. If it was consistent with his conception,and that conception was intelligible, as it must have been, it was true.What right have I, whose temperament and mode of thinking are dissimilarto yours, to denounce your exposition of such a puzzle as Hamlet? He isthe epitome of mankind, not an individual: a sort of magic mirror in whichall men and all women see the reflex of themselves, and therefore has hisstory always been, is still, and will ever be the most popular of stagetragedies.”

[Pg 270]That Edwin Booth should not have written concerning the Hamlet of hisfather in the same charming vein is greatly to be regretted. There are menstill living who recollect the elder Booth in the part—he played it forthe last time in New York in 1843—and to these it is one of the mostdelightful of memories. Thomas R. Gould, writing in 1868, sums up asfollows his own ideas of the Hamlet of this great man: “The totalimpression left by his impersonation at the time of its occurrence, andwhich still abides, was that of a spiritual melancholy, at once acute andprofound. This quality colored his tenderest feeling and his airiestfancy. You felt its presence even when he was off the stage.”

This famous decade of the New York stage saw other great actors and othergreat Hamlets, some of whom in point of time preceded Kean and Booth.Joseph George Holman played Hamlet at the Park Theatre in September, 1812,James William Wallack, on the same stage, in September, 1818, RobertCampbell Maywood in 1819, John Jay Adams in 1822, William Augustus Conwayin 1824, Thomas Hamblin in 1825, and last, but not least, William CharlesMacready in October, 1826.

[Pg 273]Of the Hamlet of John R. Duff there is, strange to say, no record in NewYork, although he played here occasionally between the years 1814 and1827. He was very popular in Boston and Philadelphia, and a writer in theBostonCentinel, in the autumn of 1810, does “not hesitate to say, thatin some of the scenes [ofHamlet], and those of no ordinary grade ofdifficulty, he has never been excelled on the Boston boards.” His wife isstill considered by certain old play-goers to have been the best Opheliaever seen in the United States, and no account of the tragedy in thiscountry can be complete without mention of her name. As Ophelia, in NewYork and elsewhere, she supported the elder Booth, the elder Kean, theelder Conway, Cooper, Payne, Wallack, and other stars; and Mr. Booth wroteto George Holland in 1836 that he considered her “the greatest actress inthe world.”

Mr. Macready was the first of a trio of remarkable Hamlets who came tothis country from England at about the same period. Charles Kean was thesecond, in 1830, Charles Kemble the third, in 1832. Of Macready’s Hamlethe says himself, in hisReminiscences: “The thought and practice I havethrough my professional career devoted to it, made it in my own judgmentand in those [sic] of critics whom I had most reason to fear andrespect, one of the most finished, though not the most popular, in myrepertoire.”

[Pg 274]In Cole’sBiography of Charles Kean, inspired by its subject and writtenunder his direction, if not at his dictation, is the following account ofhis first attempt at Hamlet: “The new Hamlet was received with enthusiasm.From his entrance to the close of the performance the applause wasunanimous and incessant. The celebrated ‘Is it the King?’ in the thirdact, produced an electrical effect. To use a favorite expression of hisfather’s, ‘The pit rose at him.’”

Concerning the Hamlet of Charles Kemble, his daughter wrote, in 1832: “Ihave acted Ophelia three times with my father, and each time in thatbeautiful scene where his madness and his love gush forth together, like atorrent swollen with storms that bears a thousand blossoms on its turbidwaters, I have experienced such deep emotion as hardly to be able tospeak.... Now the great beauty of all my father’s performances, butparticularly of Hamlet, is a wonderful accuracy in the detail of thecharacter which he represents,” etc.

All of this would seem to beex parte evidence, but it is interestingnevertheless; and neither Mr. Macready, Mr. Kean, nor Miss Kemble,perhaps, was very far astray. On the other hand, George Henry Lewes (OnActors and the Art of Acting) says that “Macready’s Hamlet was, in hisopinion, bad, due[Pg 275] allowance being made for the intelligence itdisplayed. He was lachrymose and fretful; too fond of a cambricpocket-handkerchief to be really effective.... It was ‘a thing of shredsand patches,’ not a whole.” The flourishing of this handkerchief justbefore the play scene gave great offence to Forrest, who had the bad tasteto hiss it in Edinburgh; and thus began the wretched feud which nearlyconvulsed two continents, and ended in bloodshed at Astor Place, New York.

[Pg 277]Confessing that the elder Kean could not have surpassed the younger incertain melodramatic parts, Lewes adds that it was never an intellectualtreat to see him (Charles Kean) play any of Shakspere’s heroes; and theauthor ofThe Actor says: “Charles Kean’s Hamlet has many beauties, buthe is physically disqualified to do justice to any character intragedy.... Nature has given him a most unmelodious voice, the sound ofwhich seems to flow rather through his nose than its appropriate organ, aface altogether unsuited to the character he attempts, and we doubt if sheever intended him for an actor.” Apropos of Kean’s difficulties in theutterance of certain of the consonants, particularlym andn, theLondonPunch acknowledged his antiquarian researches, and thanked himfor having proved Shylock to be a vegetarian by his reading of thefollowing lines:

Macready described Charles Kemble as a first-rate actor in second-rateparts, and said that “in Hamlet he was Charles Kemble at his heaviest,”while other critics dismiss his Hamlet as “passable.” Thus do the doctorsof criticism disagree.

It was said of Forrest, many years ago, that “his Hamlet seemed like somephilosophical Hercules rather than the sad, unhappy youth of Denmark.” Ifthis was true of him when first spoken, it was much more true of him inhis representation of the part during the later years of his life, and ashe is only remembered by the large majority of the play-goers of thepresent. Forrest was too great an artist to play badly any part he everundertook, but his Hamlet certainly was the least pleasing of all hisShaksperianrôles. Physically, he was altogether too robust. His too,too solid flesh was bone and muscle. The soul of Hamlet, as drawn by hiscreator, and as conceived by every thorough Shaksperian student sinceShakspere’s day, could hardly have existed in a frame so magnificent asthat which nature had given Edwin Forrest. No subtle mind, wily as wasHamlet’s, whether it were sound or unsound, was ever found in so sound abody. Forrest,[Pg 279] when he was young enough to play Hamlet, never knew whatnerves or indigestion were. He gave to the part no little thought, and nodoubt he understood it thoroughly; but that it did not suit himphysically, and that he realized the fact, seemed often manifest when hewas playing it. He presented the tragedy at Niblo’s Garden in 1860, EdwinBooth—at the Winter Garden—appearing in the same part at the same time;and the contrast between the powerful robustious figure, deep chest tones,and somewhat ponderous action of the elder actor, and the lithe, poetic,romantic, melancholy rendition of the younger, was very marked.

[Pg 281]Forrest first played Hamlet in New York at the Park Theatre, in the monthof October, 1829, when he was but twenty-three years of age; and at hislast public appearance here, November 22, 1872, he read portions of thetragedy at Steinway Hall. Mr. Eddy, Mr. Studley, and other tragedians ofMr. Forrest’s “school of acting” were not more satisfactory in the part ofHamlet than was Mr. Forrest himself. John McCullough, however, a pupil ofForrest’s, and his leading man for a number of years, met with moresuccess. Although a native of Ireland, his professional life was begun andalmost entirely spent in America, and he may be considered a nativeHamlet, to this manor born. His voice and action[Pg 282] in certain scenes whereloud declamation is demanded by the text were quite after the manner ofForrest, but as a whole he excelled his master in the part. He was freefrom mannerisms, his figure was manly and striking, he was neither toopuny nor too burly, his sentiment was not mawkish, nor was his honestybrutal.

George Vandenhoff made his first appearance in America at the ParkTheatre, New York, on the 21st of September, 1842, in the character ofHamlet, when Miss Sarah Hildreth, afterwards the wife of Gen. Benjamin F.Butler, was the Ophelia. The Polonius was Henry Placide, whom Mr.Vandenhoff, in hisLeaves from an Actor’s Note-Book, called “the bestPolonius and the best actor in his varied line in this country”; the Ghostwas William Abbott, a superior actor in the higher range of parts; theGrave-digger was John Fisher, very popular and very able; the Horatio wasThomas Barry, who won for himself in later years no little distinction inNew York and in Boston in the highest tragedyrôles; and the first Mrs.Thomas Barry, an actress of some ability, was Mr. Vandenhoff’s PlayerQueen.

[Pg 285]The Hamlet of Edward L. Davenport was never so popular as it should havebeen, nor was Mr. Davenport himself properly appreciated as an actorduring the last years of his life. He was out of the fashion so longthat until a far-sighted management engaged him to play the part ofBrutus, during the famous run ofJulius Cæsar at Booth’s Theatre in1875-76, he was only known to the younger generation of theatre-goers,when he was known at all, as Miss Fanny Davenport’s father! That Mr.Davenport, at the close of his long career, should have been banished tothe Grand Opera-house, and to Wood’s Museum, in upper Broadway, is astronger argument in favor of the alleged degeneracy of the drama in thiscountry than is the unhealthy popularity of the current variety shows, andthe emotional plays from the French.

The faithful band of Mr. Davenport’s friends who followed him to the westside of the town, during his occasional visits to the metropolis, foundnothing in his acting to wean them from their allegiance, while he mademany new and enthusiastic friends among the gods of the gallery, thosekeen and appreciative critics whose verdict, although not always thegeneral verdict, is ever, in an artistic way, the most valuable andpleasing to the actor. But galleries, alas! do not fill managers’ pockets,nor do they lead the popular taste; and Mr. Davenport, at one time auniversal favorite in New York with galleries, boxes, and pits, lived tofind himself,[Pg 286] through no fault of his own, and to the lasting discreditof metropolitan audiences, neglected and ignored.

Hamlet was not Mr. Davenport’s greatest part, as it is not the greatestpart of many of the popular Hamlets of the present; his Sir GilesOverreach, his Bill Sikes, his Brutus, and his William, inBlack-eyedSusan, were as fine as his Hamlet, if not finer; nevertheless it was asingularly complete conception of the character—scholarly, finished, andprofound. In his younger days he played the part many times, and with someof the “finest combinations of talent” which the records of the stage canshow. On the 16th of October, 1856, at Burton’s Theatre, New York, MarkSmith was the Polonius, Burton and Placide the Grave-diggers, CharlesFisher the Ghost, and Mrs. Davenport the Ophelia to his Hamlet—acombination of strength in male parts almost unequalled. At Niblo’sGarden, in 1861, Mrs. Barrow was his Ophelia, William Wheatley hisLaertes, Thomas Placide his First Grave-digger, James William Wallack,Jr., his Ghost, and Mrs. Wallack the Queen; and at the Academy of Music,on the 21st of January, 1871, he played one act ofHamlet to the Opheliaof Miss Agnes Ethel, on the occasion of the famous Holland Benefit, whenthe audience, as large as the great house would hold, was the onlyaudience to which Mr. Davenport played Hamlet in many years that was atall worthy of the actor or his part. Miss Ethel was a perfect picture ofthe most beautiful Ophelia. It was her first attempt at anything like alegitimate tragedy part, and was decidedly successful.

[Pg 289]The several engagements of Mr. and Mrs. Davenport after this were in noway remarkable, except sadly remarkable that so great an actor should havebeen forced, in the greatest city of the Union, to play Hamlet to suchpoor houses and with such uncongenial surroundings.

On the evening of August 30, 1875, Mr. Davenport appeared as Hamlet in theGrand Opera-house, New York. On the same evening Barry Sullivan, under themanagement of Jarrett & Palmer, made his appearance at Booth’s Theatre inthe same part. The comparison invited by the presentation of these rivalHamlets was not favorable to the Irish tragedian. He was extensivelyadvertised, and his reception by his own countrymen was affectionate andsincere. The Irish regiment, the famous Sixty-ninth, was present on theopening night, and the house was crowded with our Irish citizens. Theperformance was superior to the general run of Hamlets, but it was notsuperlative. Mr. Sullivan had had great experience on the British stage,and was[Pg 290] skilled in his profession, but his Hamlet was melodramatic, harshat times, occasionally overacted, and in all respects totally differentfrom the quiet, tender Hamlet of Mr. Davenport. Much of his business wasbelieved to be new, and some of his novelties were effective, if notaltogether according to the text of the tragedy. It was a Hamlet thatappealed to the taste of the audiences of the Bowery rather than to thoseof the west side of the town. It is only just to say that Hamlet was notMr. Sullivan’s strongest part in America. As Richard III., as Beverly, inThe Gamester, and as Richelieu, he appeared to advantage, although hissuccess in this country was not as great as his reputation at home wouldhave warranted. This was his second appearance in America. His first wasmade at the Broadway Theatre, New York, and in the character of Hamlet, onthe 22d of November, 1858.

The student of dramatic history in America must have been struck with theirregularity of the appearance of Hamlet upon our boards during the lasthundred years. In Joseph Norton Ireland’sRecords of the New York Stage,published in 1866-67, and the best and most complete work of its kind inthis country, and perhaps in any country, there are seasons andsuccessions of seasons in which there is to be found no hint of itsproduction; in other seasons some domestic or imported star was seen inthe tragedy, for a night or two at most, on its meteoric flight fromhorizon to horizon, while, on the other hand, for months togetherHamletwas of weekly if not of nightly occurrence at some of the theatres of themetropolis.

[Pg 293]Probably at no period in the history ofHamlet, since the early dayswhen Shakspere himself, according to tradition, played havoc with theGhost, has any town witnessed such an epidemic ofHamlet as passed overthe city of New York in the years 1857 and 1858. McKean Buchanan and BarrySullivan appeared as Hamlet at the Broadway, James Stark and the elderWallack at Wallack’s, Edward Eddy at the Bowery, and John Milton Hengler,a rope-dancer, played Hamlet, “for one night only,” at Burton’s, followedat that house by Charles Carroll Hicks, James E. Murdoch, Edward L.Davenport, and Edwin Booth.

The Hamlet of Edwin Booth, without doubt, is the most familiar and themost popular in America to-day. He has played the part in every importanttown in the Union, many hundreds of nights in New York alone, and tohundreds of thousands of persons, the warmest of his admirers and mostconstant attendants at his performances being men and women who areemphatically non-theatre-goers, and who[Pg 294] never enter a play-house exceptto see Mr. Booth, and Mr. Booth in a Shaksperian part. He has done verymuch more than any other actor to educate the popular taste to a properunderstanding of Hamlet, and to a proper appreciation of the beauties ofthe tragedy. He is the ideal Hamlet of half the people of the country whohave any idea of Hamlet whatever.

In many minds Boothis Hamlet, and Hamlet is Booth; any conception ofHamlet that is not Booth’s, any picture of Hamlet which does not resemblethe familiar features of Booth, any representation of Hamlet on the stagewhich is not an imitation of Booth’s Hamlet, is considered no Hamlet atall. If the very Hamlet of tradition himself—the Amleth of the old Danishlegend from which Shakspere drew, no doubt, the facts and fancies of hisplay—were to return to earth and walk the boards of an American theatre,he would find no followers if he walked not, looked not, spoke not afterthe manner of Edwin Booth.

Mr. Booth’s Hamlet is original in many respects; it is intellectual,intelligent, carefully studied, complete to the smallest details, andgreatly to be admired. Nature has given him the melancholy, romantic face,the magnetic eye, the graceful person, the stately carriage, the poetictemperament, which are in so marked a degree characteristic of Hamlet,while his genius in many scenes of the tragedy carries him far above anyof the Hamlets this country has seen in many generations of plays.

[Pg 297]He first assumed the part in New York, and under Mr. Burton’s management,at the Metropolitan Theatre, in the month of May, 1857. The engagement wasshort, andHamlet was presented two or three times. Even then, however,it created no little excitement, and was considered a very remarkable andfinished representation in a young man but twenty-four years of age. InMr. Burton’s company that season were Charles Fisher, Mark Smith, ThomasPlacide, Sarah Stevens, Mrs. Hughes, and Mr. Burton himself, by whom theyoung tragedian was ably supported.

Mr. Booth next appeared in New York on the 26th of November, 1860, at thesame theatre—then called the Winter Garden—under the management ofWilliam Stuart. He opened as Hamlet, and had the support of Miss AdaClifton as Ophelia, of Mrs. Duffield as the Queen, and of Mr. Davidge andJ. H. Stoddart as the Grave-diggers. This was his first genuinemetropolitan success in the part, although it was presented but five timesduring an engagement of four weeks. A year or two later he played Hamletto the Ophelia of Mrs. Barrow; in[Pg 298] 1863 he was supported by LawrenceBarrett, Humphrey Bland, “Dolly” Davenport, Vining Bowers, and MissClifton; and still at the Winter Garden he appeared as Hamlet from the26th of November, 1864, until the 24th of March, 1865, one hundredconsecutive nights! This was an event entirely unprecedented in thehistory ofHamlet in any country, and probably the longest run that anytragedy whatever had at that time enjoyed. It was before the days ofRosedale andLed Astray—before managers dared to present a singleplay during an entire season, when changes of bill were of weekly if notof nightly occurrence, and when Mr. Booth himself, during an engagement offifteen or eighteen nights, had played twelve or fifteen parts. “Onehundred nights” of any production is no novelty now, sinceAdonis andErminie have, with such little merit, drawn such full houses for so manymonths; but that one man should have played but this one part, and thattoo in a drama so decidedly a one-man play thatHamlet with Hamlet leftout has become a proverb wherever English is known, was a quarter of acentury ago certainly a magnificent achievement. It moved Mr. Booth’s manyfriends in New York to present to him on the 22d of January, 1867, thecelebrated “Hamlet Medal,” the most complimentary and well-meritedtestimonial that any young actor, no matter how brilliant his career,has ever received from the American public in the history of its stage.During this famous engagement he was associated with Thomas Placide asGrave-digger; with Charles Kemble Mason, an admirable Ghost; with CharlesWalcot, Jr., as Horatio; with Owen Fawcett as Osric; with Mrs. James W.Wallack, Jr., as the Queen; and with Mrs. Frank Chanfrau as Ophelia—asstrong a combination of talent as the tragedy has often seen.

[Pg 301]It is not possible to tell here the story of Mr. Booth’s many productionsofHamlet in New York, nor to do more than barely enumerate the ladiesand gentlemen who have supported him. Among his Ophelias, not mentionedabove, have been Miss Effie Germon (in 1866), Mme. Scheller, Miss BlancheDe Bar, Miss Bella Pateman, Miss Jeffreys-Lewis, Miss Eleanor Carey, Mrs.Alexina Fisher Baker, Miss Clara Jennings, Miss Minna Gale, and Mme.Helena Modjeska. He has snubbed and stabbed John Dyott, David C. Anderson,Charles Fisher, and George Andrews, as Polonius. His Grave-diggers havebeen Robert Pateman, Charles Peters, and Owen Fawcett. Newton Gothold, J.H. Taylor, David W. Waller, H. A. Weaver, Charles Barron, Charles KembleMason, and Lawrence Barrett have been his Ghosts, and Mrs. Marie Wilkins,Miss Mary[Pg 302] Wells, Mrs. Fanny Morant, and Miss Ida Vernon, in their turn,have been the mothers who his father had much offended.

Lawrence Barrett, now so intimately associated with Mr. Booth throughoutthe United States, has played every male part inHamlet with theexception of Polonius and the First Grave-digger. His earliest appearancein the tragedy was in Newcastle, Pennsylvania, in 1855, when herepresented the leading character in a version of the play announced onthe bills as “The Grave Burst; or, The Ghost’s Piteous Tale of Horror, byW. Shakspere, Esqr.” The elaborate title was supposed to be more takingwith the theatre-going population of that particular town than the simplename by which it is usually known to Shaksperian students; but it is notrecorded that the representation was popular, or that box receipts were inproportion to the outlay. Mr. Barrett played Laertes to the Hamlet of MissCushman, in Boston, some years later; he has been the Ghost to the Hamletof Edwin Booth and Edward L. Davenport; and he has supported BarrySullivan, Mr. Murdoch, and other leading tragedians at different seasons,taking the part of Horatio to Mr. Murdoch’s Hamlet, John McCullough’sGhost, and Miss Clara Morris’s Queen, at the famous festival at Cincinnatia few years ago. The fact that Mr. Barrett rarely plays Hamlet in NewYork is much to be regretted. In other cities, where he is better known inthe part, he is greatly liked, and next to his Cassius it is perhaps thebest thing he does. That it is a highly intellectual performance goeswithout saying, but it has other merits as well. It is vigorous,consistent, and unfailingly tender.

[Pg 305]Mr. Bandmann played Hamlet in German, and of course with a German company,at the Stadt Theatre in the Bowery, just at the close of the first centuryofHamlet in New York. He attracted a great deal of attention among theGerman population of the city, and was so successful in it that it temptedhim to study for the English-speaking stage. He presented considerablebusiness that was new here, but well known in his father-land, bringinghis Ghost from beneath the stage, introducing a manuscript copy of thespeeches of the actors in the play scene, and turning its leaves back andforth in a restless way to hide the nervousness of Hamlet. This wassubsequently noticed here in the performances of Mr. Fechter. Mr. Bandmannalso drew from his pouch tablets upon which he set down the some dozen orsixteen lines to be introduced by the First Actor in the incident of themurder of Gonzago; and at the end of the scene he fell back into the armsof Horatio in a state of complete[Pg 306] collapse. His acting throughout waseffective and powerful.

The Hamlet of Salvini is powerful but not effective. It is not the Hamletof tradition, nor does it overtop the traditional Hamlet in novelty andoriginality. If Salvini had played nothing but Hamlet here he never couldhave sustained the magnificent reputation he brought from foreigncountries, and which he more than fulfilled in other parts. The man whoexcels as Ingomar, is superb as Samson, supreme in Othello, and, in theentirely opposite character of Sullivan (David Garrick), displays suchmarked comedy powers, can hardly be expected to shine as the melancholyDane.

Rossi’s Hamlet is effective if not powerful. In his first interview withthe Ghost he betrays no fear, because he sees in it only the image of alamented and beloved father, while in the scene with the Queen, when theGhost appears, he crouches behind his mother’s chair in abject terror,because, as he explains it, the phantom is then an embodiment ofconscience, the Ghost of a father whose mandate he has disobeyed.

[Pg 309]Unquestionably the imported Hamlet that has excited the greatest interestin New York in very many seasons is the Hamlet of Charles Fechter. Theacting of no man, native or foreign, in the whole history of theAmerican stage has been the subject of so much or of such varied criticismas his. There was no medium whatever concerning him in public opinion.Those who were his admirers were wildly enthusiastic in his praise; thosewho did not like him did not like him at all, and were unsparing in theircondemnation and their ridicule; but no one was wholly indifferent to hisacting. He came to this country endorsed by the strongest of letters fromCharles Dickens, who was his friend, and weighted by the wholesale andimpolitic puffery of his managers; the result was that, in the judgment ofthe majority of those who saw him, he did not and could not sustain themagnificent reputation claimed for him in his advance advertisements. Onthe other hand, while he was in a manner snubbed by New York, he washailed in Boston as the Roscius of the nineteenth century. His Hamlet,although very uneven and unequal, was certainly a marvellous performance,and while by reason of date it does not come within the scope of thepresent chapter, it is too important in many ways to be omitted. It wasthoroughly untraditional. He gave to the Prince of Denmark the fair Saxonface and the light flowing hair of the Danes of to-day; in his own portlyform he made the too, too solid flesh of Hamlet a real rather than anideal feature of Hamlet’s person:[Pg 310] and much of his business, if notoriginal with him, was at least unfamiliar to American play-goers. He waspeculiarly “intense” in everything he did, while in what are called theintense scenes of the tragedy he was often more subdued and natural eventhan Mr. Davenport, who was remarkably free from emotional acting. His“rest, perturbèd spirit,” was excellent and effective by reason of itsvery quietness, and during all of the scene with the Ghost his acting wasconspicuous by the absence of the conventional quivering, trembling,teeth-chattering agony which is so apt to be the result of the coming ofthe apparition. In the “rat-trap” and closet scenes, in which Mr. Booth isso good, so very excellent good, Mr. Fechter lacked dignity and repose;and in his advice to the players, while his reading was less distinct andintelligent than Mr. Booth’s, his facial expression was wonderful andbeyond all praise. He was inferior to Booth in the soliloquies, althoughcharmingly tender in his intercourse with Ophelia. With the Queen in “thecloset scene” he was almost brutal in his conduct, seeming to forgetentirely—what Mr. Booth never overlooks—that Gertrude, although sinning,is still a woman and his own mother. He stabbed poor Polonius with aferocity that destroyed all sympathy for Hamlet. His reading, apart fromthe accentuations and inflections which were natural to him at alltimes, was peculiar; his enunciation was frequently so rapid that itbecame unintelligible; he hurried through some of the finest passages at agallop, and lost some of the finest points; but his Hamlet as a whole wasimpressive and magnetic, the oftener seen the better liked. Mr. Fechtermade his first appearance in America as Ruy Blas at Niblo’s Garden, NewYork, on the 10th of January, 1870, under the management of Jarrett &Palmer; and he played Hamlet for the first time on the 15th of Februarythe same year.

[Pg 313]Among the purely exotic Hamlets of the New York stage Salvini, Bandmann,Bogumil-Dawison, Rossi, Barnay, and Hasse have been the most prominent.But while the performance of each was excellent in its own fashion, eachlabored under the great disadvantage of playing a most familiar part (andin a play decidedly an English classic) in a foreign tongue.

It is not possible, of course, in the limits of a single chapter to speakat any length of all the hundreds of Hamlets who have appeared upon theNew York stage between the years 1761 and 1861, or to refer to the scoresof men who have played the part in other cities. The followingalphabetical list of those who have been seen upon the metropolitan stageis compiled from Mr. Ireland’sRecords,[Pg 314] and from many files of oldplay-bills in various collections, and is felt to be fairly complete. Itdoes not include the tragedians whose performances have been noticedelsewhere in the text of the present chapter, or those who have playedHamlet in other cities of the Union but not in New York; and the dateappended is that of the player’s first recorded appearance in the parthere:

William Abbott, April 9, 1836; Augustus A. Addams, November 13, 1835; J.R. Anderson, September 3, 1844; George J. Arnold, 1854; Mr. Barton, March9, 1831; Mr. Bartow, May 26, 1815; John Wilkes Booth, March, 1861;Frederick Brown, March 9, 1819; McKean Buchanan, June 10, 1850; SamuelButler, November 4, 1841; John H. Clarke, November 8, 1822; Mr. Clason,November 10, 1824; G. F. Cooke (not the great George Frederick), October4, 1839; Mr. Dunbar, December, 1813; Edward Eddy, August 27, 1852; HenryI. Finn, September 12, 1820; W. C. Forbes, May 29, 1833; Richard Graham,October 29, 1850; H. P. Grattan, May 11, 1843; James H. Hackett, October21, 1840; Charles Carroll Hicks, December 13, 1858; Henry ErskineJohnstone, December, 1837; William Horace Keppell, November 17, 1831; H.Loraine, December 23, 1856; W. Marshall, February 3, 1848; J. A. J.Neafie, 1856; John R. Oxley, August 16, 1836; William Pelby, January 6,1827; Charles Dibdin Pitt, November 8, 1847; J. B. Roberts, May 17, 1847;John R. Scott, March, 1836; James Stark, September, 1852; John Vandenhoff,October 2, 1837; Henry Wallack, September 4, 1824; James William Wallack,Jr., July, 1844; Wilmarth Waller, June 30, 1851.

[Pg 317]As the limits of space here prevent more than the enumeration of the namesof many men who were excellent Hamlets during the first century of itshistory in New York, so does the very nature of the article preclude anymention of the excellent Hamlets who have appeared in the part since thecentury closed in 1862, and who may be still alive. These no doubt willreceive the attention of some later historian, who will do full justice tothe Hamlets of the present and the future, from Henry Irving to N. S.Wood.

When George Henry Lewes, in “An Epistle to Anthony Trollope,” made thebold assertion that “no actor has been known utterly to fail as Hamlet,”he forgot four classes of actors whom perhaps he did not consider actorsat all. These are, first, the infant prodigies; second, the ladies whoattempt the part; third, the men who burlesque it; and fourth, the men whofail not only as Hamlet but as everything else. Of the first, somethinghas[Pg 318] already been said; of the second, something is yet to be said; of thethird, William Mitchell, William E. Burton, and George L. Fox knew no suchword as fail; and of the fourth, George the Count Johannes, in his laterdays, was a brilliant example. His occasional productions ofHamlet forhis own benefit, a few years ago, were the source of much silly amusementand rude horse-play upon the part of audiences not wise enough toappreciate the mental condition of the unfortunate star, or their own wantof taste in encouraging his buffoonery even by their ridicule. Hissupport, composed entirely of amateurs, was without question the worstthat any Hamlet has ever known in this country; but his own performancewas neither good enough to be worthy of any notice whatever, nor badenough to be funny.

The connection of George Jones with the American stage as a professionalactor dates back to the early days of the Bowery Theatre. He made hisAmericandébut there as the Prince of Wales inHenry IV., on the 4thof March, 1831. He played Hamlet at the National Theatre in December,1836, and he repeated the part (before he became too mad to portray eventhe mad prince) many times, not only in this country but in England. Thelast occasion which merits even a passing word being at the Academy ofMusic, New York, on the 30th of April, 1864, when he was associated withMrs. Brougham (Robertson) as Ophelia, and Mrs. Melinda Jones as the Queen.

[Pg 321]The first record of any attempt to burlesque Hamlet in New York iscontained in the advertisements of the Anthony (Worth) Street Theatre,June 13, 1821, when Mr. Spiler was announced to play the Dane and Mrs.Alsop Ophelia, “in the original travestie.” Mrs. Alsop’s sudden deathbefore the opening night postponed the performance indefinitely, and it isnot known now when the travesty was produced, or if it was produced at allthat season. Mr. William Mitchell presented Poole’s absurd burlesque ofthe tragedy at the Olympic Theatre on the 13th of February, 1840, playingHamlet himself. This, by the graybeards who prate of the palmy days of thedrama—palmy meaning anything that is past—was said to have been a finerperformance than the burlesque Hamlet of George L. Fox thirty years later.At the New National Theatre—formerly the Chatham—Mr. Frank Chanfrauplayed Hamlet after the manner of Mr. Macready, October, 1848, in anentertainment calledMr. McGreedy. But the burlesqueHamlet which wasmost complete in all its parts, unquestionably, was that produced atBurton’s Theatre in the season of 1857-58,[Pg 322] when John Brougham playedHamlet with a brogue; Burton the Ghost; Dan Setchell Laertes; LawrenceBarrett Horatio; and Mark Smith Ophelia. Brougham had played the partpreviously at his own Lyceum in 1851, and at the Bowery in 1856, but neverwith such phenomenal support.

On the long file of the bills ofHamlet upon the New York stage the nameof a lady is occasionally found in the titular part. The most daring andsuccessful of these mongrel Hamlets was unquestionably Miss CharlotteCushman—but even the genius of a Cushman was not great enough to crownthe effort with success. In the early days of her career Miss Cushman hadplayed the Queen in the tragedy to the Hamlet of James William Wallack theyounger, at the National Theatre, New York, in April, 1837, and in theautumn of the same year to the Hamlet of Forrest at the Park. There is norecord of her appearance as Ophelia. She played Hamlet for the first timein New York at Brougham’s Lyceum, November 24, 1851, and she trod in thefootsteps of Mrs. Bartley, who was seen as Hamlet at the Park, March 29,1819; of Mrs. Barnes, who was seen in the same part on the same stage inJune of the same year; of Mrs. Battersby, who played it May 22, 1822; andof Mrs. Shaw—whose Ghost was Mr. Hamblin—in April, 1839.[Pg 323] Mrs.Brougham (Robertson) played Hamlet for her benefit in 1843, and so didMiss Fanny Wallack in 1849. This last lady frequently attempted the part,and at the Astor Place Opera-house, June 8, 1850, she had the support ofCharles Kemble Mason as the Ghost and Miss Lizzie Weston as Ophelia. Otherlady Hamlets have been Miss Marriott, Miss Clara Fisher, Mrs. Emma Waller,Miss Anna Dickinson, Mrs. Louise Pomeroy, Miss Rachel Denvil, Miss SusanDenin, Mrs. F. B. Conway, Miss Adele Belgarde, and finally Miss JuliaSeaman, an English actress of fine figure, who played the Devil in thespectacle ofThe White Fawn at Niblo’s Garden, and who succeeded indoing as much with Hamlet at Booth’s Theatre in 1874.

[Pg 325]The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history,pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, scene individable, orpoem unlimited, have been in Hamlet’s train upon the New York stage since“first from England he was here arrived,” so many years ago; but so muchhas been said of Hamlet that even the names of his most beautifulOphelias, his honest Ghosts, his gentle Guildensterns, his aunt-mothers,his uncle-fathers, his wretched, rash, intruding Polonii, or the absoluteknaves who have digged his Ophelia’s grave—and lied in it—for a hundredyears, cannot be[Pg 326]enumerated here, except when they have played Hamlethimself, or have done as somebody else some wonderful things to Hamlet.

William Davidge related in hisFootlight Flashes that during hisstrolling days in England, when companies were small, he had on the sameevening done duty for Polonius, the Ghost, Osric, and the FirstGrave-digger; and Edwin Booth remembers Thomas Ward dying in sight of theaudience as the Player King, and being dragged from the mimic stage by theheels to enter immediately at another wing as Polonius, with a cry of“Lights! lights! lights!” Hamlet, in a “one-night town,” swearing that heloved Ophelia better than forty thousand brothers, has watched her throughan open grave packing her trunk in the place beneath, while the Ghost, herhusband, waited to strap it up! There are more things in Hamlet’sexistence—behind the scenes—than are dreamed of in the philosophy of allhis commentators and all his critics.

One of the most notable instances of a great actor assuming a small partwas on the occasion of Charles Kean’s first appearance as Hamlet inBaltimore, when at the Holiday Street Theatre, in 1831, the elder Booth,at that time at the very height of his fame and prosperity, for somereason now unknown, volunteered to play the Second Actor, the[Pg 327] mostinsignificant character in the tragedy. John Duff was the Ghost; Mrs. DuffQueen Gertrude; John Sefton Osric; Thomas Flynn First Grave-digger; andWilliam Warren, father of the William Warren for whom Boston mournsto-day, was Polonius. This was an exceedingly strong cast of the tragedy,and the Second Actor most certainly was never in better hands on anystage.

[Pg 329]The strongest cast ofHamlet, in all its parts, ever presented inAmerica, was that at the famous Wallack Testimonial in New York, on the21st of May, 1888, when Lawrence Barrett played the Ghost; Frank Mayo theKing; John Gilbert Polonius; Eben Plympton Laertes; John A. Lane Horatio;Joseph Wheelock the First Actor; Milnes Levick the Second Actor; HenryEdwards the Priest; Joseph Jefferson and William J. Florence theGrave-diggers; Miss Kellogg Gertrude; Miss Coghlan the Player Queen; andMadame Modjeska Ophelia to the Hamlet of Edwin Booth.

The first record of any performance ofHamlet in New York, as has beenshown, was at the theatre in Chappel Street, November 26, 1761. On the26th of November, 1861, Mr. Booth played the same part at the WinterGarden, on Broadway. The coincidence was not noticed at the time, and nodoubt was purely accidental. It was a very pleasant coincidence,[Pg 330]nevertheless, and it is certainly a happy fact that Edwin Booth shouldhave been selected by chance to celebrate upon the New York stage thecentenary ofHamlet in New York.

THE CAST OF CHARACTERS.

Abbott, William,282,314.

Adams, Edwin,200.

Adams, Mrs. Edwin,124.

Adams, J. J.,270.

Addams, Augustus A.,314.

Aldrich, Louis,245.

Aldrich, Thomas Bailey,217.

Aldridge, Ira,94.

Alger, Wm. R.,103.

Allen, Andrew J.,101-3,122.

Alsop, Mrs.,321.

Anderson, David C.,301.

Anderson, J. R.,314.

Anderson, Mary,5.

André, John,19-20.

Andrews, George H.,69,301.

Anne, Queen,158.

Arbuthnot, John,150.

Aristophanes,149-51,164.

Arnold, Benedict,19.

Arnold, George,148.

Arnold, George J.,314.

Arnold, John H. V.,xii.

Backus, Charles,138.

Baker, Mrs. (Alexina Fisher),238,301.

Baker, Thomas,48.

Bancker, Mr.,96.

Bandmann, Daniel,305-6,313.

Bangs, John Kendrick,195.

Bannister, John,90-3.

Barker, Jas. N.,10.

Barnay, Ludwig,313.

Barnes, John,119.

Barnes, Mrs. John,10,322.

Barnum, P. T.,111,242.

Barrett, Lawrence,5,104,107,170,204,298,301,302-5,322,329.

Barrett, Mrs. Giles L.,100.

Barron, Charles,301.

Barrow, Mrs. (Julia Bennett),286,297.

Barry, Thomas,14,59,282.

Barry, Mrs. Thomas (First),282.

Barry, Mrs. Thomas (Clara S. Biddles),59.

Bartley, Mrs. George,322.

Barton, Mr.,314.

Bartow, Mr.,314.

Bateman, Ellen,80,230,238-43.

Bateman, Kate,5,80,230,238-43.

Bateman, Mrs. H. L.,76,79,80.

Battersby, Mrs. (Mrs. Stickney),322.

Beckett, Harry,177.

Behn, Aphra,90.

Belgarde, Adele,325.

Benedict, Lew,139.

Bennett, Julia (Mrs. Barrow),286,297.

Berkley, Fanny,245.

Bernard, Bayle,25.

Bernard, John,262,265.

Bernard, Wm. H.,138.

Betty, W. H. W. (“Master” Betty),222-6,234.

Bickerstaffe, Isaac,93.
[Pg 334]
Birch, William,132-5,138.

Blake, Wm. R.,60,244.

Blakeley, Thos. H.,123-4.

Blanchard, Kitty (Mrs. McKee Rankin),181.

Bland, Humphrey,298.

“Blind Tom,”221.

Bloodgood, Harry,139.

Bogumil-Dawison,313.

Booker, John,107-8.

Boone Children,247.

Booth, Agnes,250.

Booth, Edwin,5,106,185,196,269,270,281,293-302,310,326,329-30.

Booth, Mrs. Edwin (Mary McVicker),230.

Booth, John Wilkes,314.

Booth, Junius Brutus,90,106-7,266,270,273,326.

Booth, J. B., Jr.,250.

Boucicault, Dion,6,40.

Bowers, Vining,298.

Bowman, Isa,239.

Bozzaris, Marco,23.

Braham, David,52.

Brougham, John,13,149,162-3,164-73,191,199,204,322.

Brougham, Mrs. John (Miss Nelson),162,165.

Brougham, Mrs. John (Mrs. Robertson),321,325.

Brower, Frank,124-6,138.

Brown, Frederick,314.

Bryant, Daniel,131,136,138.

Bryant, Jerry,138.

Bryant, Neil,138.

Bryant’s Minstrels,126,135-6.

Buchanan, McKean,293,314.

Buckingham, Duke of,153.

Buckland, Mrs. (Kate Horn),59.

Buckley, Frederick,135.

Buckley, George Swayne,135.

Buckley, R. Bishop,135.

Buckley’s Minstrels,138.

Budworth, J. H.,136,138.

“Buffalo Bill” (W. F. Cody),26,119.

Bunce, Oliver B.,20-3.

Burgess, Neil,44,203.

Burke, Charles,39,40,199,200.

Burke, John D.,19.

Burke, Joseph (“Master” Burke),226,229-30,265.

Burnand, F. C.,181.

Burnett, J. G.,20.

Burns, Barney,122.

Burton, Wm. E.,76,79,157,162-4,185,196,245,286,297,318,322.

Butler, Benjamin F.,192,282.

Butler, Samuel,314.

Byron, Henry J.,72.

Cable, Geo. W.,4,142.

Campbell, S. C.,136,138.

Carey, Eleanor,301.

Cary, Mary,181.

Chanfrau, F. S.,48-51,321.

Chanfrau, Mrs. F. S.,301.

Charles II.,90,153.

Chesterfield, Lord,151.

Chippendale, William,59,67.

Christy, E. P.,108,111,131,132,135.

Christy, George,111,132-3,135,138.

Cibber, Colley,155.

Clapp, W. W., Jr.,100.

Clarke, Constantia,10.

Clarke, John H.,10,314.

Clarke, John S.,5,39,106.

Clarke, Mrs. John S. (Asia Booth),106.

Clason, Mr.,314.

Clemens, Sam’l L. (“Mark Twain”),17,43.

Clifton, Ada,297,298.

Cody, W. F. (“Buffalo Bill”),26,119.

Coghlan, Rose,329.

Cole, John William,274.

Collins, Benjamin,139.

Columbus, Christopher,9.

“Commodore Nutt,”221.

Conner, E. S.,115-17.

Conway, Mrs. F. B.,325.
[Pg 335]
Conway, Wm. A.,270,273.

Cook, Charles T.,180.

Cooke, Aynsley,138.

Cooke, George Frederick,266.

Cooke, G. F.,314.

Cooper, Fenimore,4,17.

Cooper, T. A.,262,273.

Cotton, Daniel,138.

Cotton & Murphy,136.

Cotton & Reed,136.

Cowell, Joseph,80.

Cowell, Samuel,119.

Crabb, George,147.

Crabtree, Charlotte (“Lotta”),233.

Crane, Wm. H.,43,191-2,200.

Crisp, Wm. H. (Elder),53-4,59,66,67.

Crockett, David,31.

Cummings, Minnie,64-5.

Curtis, George William,76.

Cushman, Charlotte,5,13,241,302,322.

Custis, G. W. P.,10.

Daly, Augustin,5,6,26,84,154,181,248,250,252.

Darling, Bessie,64.

Darwin, Charles,254.

Davenport, Adolphus (“Dolly Davenport”),298.

Davenport, E. L.,60,67,68,282-9,290,293,302,310.

Davenport, Mrs. E. L. (Fanny Vining),60,79,286,289.

Davenport, Fanny,280,285.

Davenport, Jean M.,230.

Davenport, Lizzie Weston (Mrs. Charles Mathews),170,325.

Davidge, William,297,326.

Davies, John,8.

Davis, L. Clarke,39.

Dawison, Bogumil,313.

De Bar, Blanche,301.

Delehanty, W. H.,139.

De Leon, T. C.,182.

Delsarte, M.,51.

Dengremont, Munrico,214.

Denin, Kate,23.

Denin, Susan.23,230,325.

Denvil, Rachel,325.

Devere, Samuel,139.

De Walden, T. B.,59,69,76-9.

Diamond, John,111.

Dibdin, Charles,93,94,162.

Dickens, Charles,230,309.

Dickinson, Anna,64,325.

Dickinson, Enam,132.

Dimond, George,120.

Dixey, Henry E.,192,204.

Dixon, G. W.,121-2.

Dobson, Austin,217.

Dockstader, Lewis,136.

Dougherty, Hugh,138-9.

Douglas, Mrs. (Mrs. Hallam),155.

Drew, Mrs. John,112-15.

Dryden, John,153-4.

Duff, John R.,270-3,329.

Duff, Mrs. J. R.,229,273,329.

Duffield, Mrs.,297.

Dumas, Alexandre (Younger),252.

Dunbar, Mr.,314.

Dunlap, William,6,19,94,262.

Dunning, Alice,181.

Dyott, John,59,301.

Dyott, Mrs. John,60.

Eddy, Edward,281,293,314.

Edouin, Willie,192.

Edwards, Henry,329.

Edwin, Lina,174.

Eldridge, Lillie,178,250.

Eliot, George,147.

Ellis, Clara,60.

Elssler, Fanny,159,160.

Emerson, R. W.,4.

Emmett, Daniel,124,125-6,131-2,138.

Emmett, J. K.,5.

Ethel, Agnes,29,286-9.

Eugene, “Master.”139.

Evans, Mary Ann (“George Eliot”),147.

Farrell, Robert,122.
[Pg 336]
Fawcett, Edgar,72.

Fawcett, Owen,301.

Fechter, Charles,185,305,306-13.

Fennell, James,262-5.

Fenno, Augustus A.,244.

Fenton, Lavinia (Duchess of Bolton),155.

Ferrero, Adelaide,123.

Fielding, Henry,155.

Fielding, Sir John,154.

Finn, Henry I.,314.

Firth & Hall,120.

Fisher, Alexina (Mrs. Baker),238,301.

Fisher, Charles,76,79,162,251,286,297,301.

Fisher, Clara (Mrs. J. G. Maeder),230,234-8,325.

Fisher, Jane M. (Mrs. Vernon),10,66,238.

Fisher, John A.,10,59,282.

Fisher, Oceana,238.

Fisher, Palmer,238.

Fiske, John,4.

Flaherty, B. (seeWilliams, Barney).

Florence, Wm. J.,5,43,165,177-8,329.

Florence, Mrs. Wm. J.,5,44,177-8.

Flynn, Thomas,329.

Foote, Samuel,151-2.

Forbes, W. C.,314.

Forrest, Edwin,13-17,102,103-4,174,200,277,278-81,322.

Fortescue, G. K.,195.

Foster, Stephen,141-2.

Fox, Chas. H.,138.

Fox, George L.,29-30,182-91,250,251,318,321.

French, Stephen,173.

Frost, Arthur B.,148.

Gale, Minna,301.

Gannon, Mary,233.

Gardner, Benjamin,138.

Garrick, David,93,266-9.

Garrick, Mrs. David,266-9.

Gay, John,154.

“George Eliot,”147.

George IV.,225.

Germon, Effie,79-80,173,301.

Gilbert, John,23,329.

Golding, Arthur,152,153.

Goodwin, N. C.,192-5,203.

Gothold, Newton,301.

Gough, John B.,111-12.

Gould, Thos. R.,270.

Graham, Richard,314.

Grattan, H. P.,314.

Graupner, Gottlieb,99-100.

Gray, Thomas,4.

Gray, William,138.

Graydon, Alexander,261.

Hackett, J. H.,5,25,39,241,314.

Hackett, Mrs. J. H. (Second),64.

Haines, May,239.

Hallam, Lewis (Younger),94,261.

Hallam, Mrs. (Mrs. Douglas),155.

Halleck, Fitz-Greene,23.

Hamblin, Thomas,270,322.

Hamblin, Mrs. Thos. (Mrs. Shaw),322.

Harland, Ada,30.

“Harland, Marion,”71.

Harper & Brothers,101.

Harrigan, Edward,51-2,99,192,195.

Harrigan and Hart,51-2,99,192.

Harrington, George (seeChristy, George).

Harrington’s Minstrels,135.

Harris, Joel C.,142.

Hart, Antonio,51-2,99,139,192,195.

Hart, Robert,138.

Harte, Bret,3,29,148.

Hasse, Herman,313.

Hatton, Mrs. (Anne Kemble),8.

Haverly, J. H.,136.

Hawthorne, N.,3,191.

Hazlitt, William,269.

Hegner, Otto,214,218.

Hengler, John M.,293.
[Pg 337]
Herbert, Mr. (“Pig-Pie Herbert”),100.

Heron, Bijou,251-3.

Heron, Matilda,76,80-4,230,250,252.

Hicks, Chas. C.,293,314.

Hildreth, Sarah (Mrs. B. F. Butler),282.

Hill, Geo. H. (“Yankee Hill”),8,40.

Hilson, Thomas,119,153.

Hilson, Mrs. Thos. (Ellen Augusta Johnson),14.

Hipponax of Ephesus,148-9,195.

Hodgkinson, John,261.

Hodson, Georgina,163,165.

Hofman, Josef,214-217.

Holland, George,111,157,273.

Holland, J. G.,72.

Holman Children,247.

Holman, J. G.,270.

Holmes, Oliver W.,4.

Holt, Elise,178.

Hooley, Richard M.,136.

Hopper, De Wolf,203.

Horn, Eph,138.

Horn, Kate (Mrs. Buckland),59.

Horncastle, William,158-9.

Howard, Bronson,5,8,72,84,99.

Howard, Cordelia,218.

Howard, “Gus,”138.

Howells, Wm. D.,4.

Howett, Belle,187.

Hughes, Mrs. (Mrs. Young),297.

Hunt, Leigh,266.

Hunter, “Harry,”192.

Huntley, Mr.,137.

Hurlburt, Wm. H.,75.

Ireland, Joseph N.,7,47,96,119,123,129-30,229-30,261,262,265,290,313.

Irving, Henry,317.

Irving, Washington,3,5,36.

Jackson, Andrew,102.

James I.,89.

“Japanese Tommy,”221.

Jarrett, Henry C.,289,313.

Jefferson, Joseph,5,36,39-40,112,196-9,230,329.

Jefferson, Thomas,144.

Jeffreys-Lewis, Miss,301.

Jennings, Clara,301.

“Johannes, Count” (seeJones, George).

Johnson, Ellen A. (Mrs. Hilson),14.

Johnstone, Henry Erskine,314.

Johnstone, Thos. B.,20,162,165,174.

Jones, George (“Count Johannes”),318-21.

Jones, Mrs. Geo. (Melinda Jones),321.

Jones, J. S.,40.

Jordan, George,23.

Jullien, M.,230.

Kean, Charles,188,273,274,277-8,326.

Kean, Edmund,90,266-9,273,274,277.

Kean, Thomas,154.

Keeble, Walter G.,69.

Keeler, Ralph,107-8.

Keene, Laura,20.

Kellogg, Gertrude,329.

Kelly, Edwin,136,188.

Kelly and Leon,136.

Kemble, Anne (Mrs. Hatton),8.

Kemble, Charles,273,274,278.

Kemble, Fanny,195,274.

Kemble, J. P.,8,262.

Keppell, Wm. H.,314.

Kingsland, A. C.,242-3.

Kingston, Duchess of,151.

Kirby, J. H.,178.

Knight, Mrs. Edward (Mary Anne Povey),60.

Knight, Geo. H.,192.

Lafayette, Marquis of,121.

Lamb, Charles,3.

Lane, John A.,329.
[Pg 338]
Leavitt, Andrew,139.

Leclercq, Carlotta,249.

Leffingwell, M. W.,162,174.

Lennox, Adelaide,65.

Leon, Francis,136,138.

Leonard, Mabel,251.

Leslie, Elsie,218.

Levick, Milnes,329.

Lewes, Geo. H.,274,317.

Lewis, James,177,178-81.

Lewis, Jeffreys, Miss,301.

Lind, Jenny,230.

Lingard, Wm. H.,181.

“Little Mac” (Ebenezer Nicholson),139.

Liszt,218.

Lloyd, David D.,43,72.

Logan, Olive,84,144.

Longfellow, H. W.,3,80,191.

Loraine, H.,314.

“Lotta” (Charlotte Crabtree),233.

Loutherbourg, Mr.,94.

Lowe, Professor (Balloonist),108.

Lowell, James Russell,3,4.

Lynch, Frank,108-11.

Macdonough, Thomas,101.

Mackaye, James Steele,84.

Macomb, Alexander,101.

Macready, Wm. C.,200,225-6,270,273,274,278,321.

Maddern, Minnie,249-50.

Maeder, F. G.,238.

Maeder, Mrs. J. G. (Clara Fisher),230,234-8,325.

Mann, Mrs. Sheridan (Alice Placide),69.

Mansfield, Richard,5.

“Marion Harland,”71.

“Mark Twain,”17,43.

Marriott, Miss,325.

Marsden, Frederick,84.

Marsh, Geo. H.,244-7.

Marsh, Louisa,244-7.

Marsh, Mary,244-7.

Marshall, E. A.,238.

Marshall, W.,314.

Martin, Benjamin Ellis,xii,164.

Mason, Charles Kemble,301,325.

Massey, Rose,178.

“Master Eugene,”139.

Mathews, Mrs. Charles J. (Lizzie Weston Davenport),170,325.

Matthews, Brander,19,51,72,137-8.

Mayo, Frank,32-5,329.

Maywood, R. C.,270.

McCullough, John,14,250,281-2,302.

McKee, Thos. J.,xii,120.

McVicker, Mary (Mrs. Edwin Booth),230.

Mendelssohn, F. B.,221.

Mestayer, Louis,178.

Mexican Juvenile Troupe,248-9.

Mitchell, Mike,108.

Mitchell, William,48,132,157,158-62,164,185,196,318,321.

Modjeska, Helena,301,329.

Monk, Ada,245.

Monk, Minnie,245.

Montague, Henry J.,251.

Moody, John,93.

Moore, G. W. (“Pony Moore”),138.

Morant, Fanny,302.

Moreau, Chas. C.,xii,96,122.

Moreton, Jno. P.,262.

Moron, Carmen,248-9.

Morris Bros.,136.

Morris, Clara,251,302.

Morris, Owen,154.

Morris, Mrs. Owen (Second),154.

Morris, Wm. E.,136.

Mortimer, J. K.,29.

Morton, A.,79.

Motley, J. Lothrop,3.

Mowatt, Anna Cora,8,53-71,76,79,99.

Mowatt, James,69.

Mozart,218.

Murdoch, F. E.,26,30-5.

Murdoch, Jas. E.,35,293,302.

Murphy, Mr. (of Cotton and Murphy),136.
[Pg 339]

Neafie, J. A. J.,314.

Nelson, Miss (Mrs. Brougham),162,165.

Nero,144.

Nevin, Robert P.,118.

Newcomb, “Billy,”138.

Nicholson, Ebenezer (“Little Mac”),139.

Nickinson, John,67.

Northall, W. K.,158-9,160.

Nutt, “Commodore,”221.

Oates, Alice,192.

Ogden, Anna Cora (seeMowatt, Anna Cora).

O’Hara, Kane,155.

O’Neill, Miss (Lady Beecher),229.

Ottignon, Charles,129.

Ovid,152.

Owen, Robert Dale,10-13.

Owens, John E.,40,79-80.

Oxley, J. R.,314.

Palmer, A. M.,258.

Palmer, Harry,289,313.

Palmer, John,160.

Palmo, Ferdinand,129-30,135.

Parker, Mrs. Amelia,79.

Parkman, Francis,3.

Parsons, Charles,161-2.

Pastor, Antonio,136.

Pateman, Bella,301.

Pateman, Robert,301.

Paulding, J. K.,25.

Payne, John Howard,226-9,265,273.

Pearson, Henry,181.

Peel, Matt,138.

Pelby, William,317.

Pelham, Richard,124-6,136.

Pell, John,136.

Peters, Charles,301.

Phelps, H. P.,102-3.

Phillips, Adelaide,288.

Pierce, E. H.,186.

Pitt, Chas. D.,317.

Pitt, William,225.

Placide, Alice (Mrs. Sheridan Mann).69.

Placide, Henry,8,153,282,286.

Placide, Thomas,10,14,67,286,297,301.

Plympton, Eben,329.

Pocahontas,10.

Poe, Edgar Allan,57.

Pomeroy, Mrs. Louise M.,64,325.

Ponisi, Madame,244.

“Pony” Moore,138.

Poole, John,157,321.

Pope, Mr. (1696),90.

Povey, John,14.

Povey, Mary Anne (Mrs. Knight),60.

Powers, Jas. T.,203.

Preston, Thomas,152.

Primrose, Geo. H.,137.

Prior, Mrs. J. J.,173.

Prior, Lulu,30.

Raleigh, Sir Walter,130.

Rand, Rosa,32-5.

Rankin, Mrs. McKee (Kitty Blanchard),181.

Raymond, Jno. T.,43.

Raymond, O. B.,162.

Raynor, J. W.,138.

Reade, Charles,99.

Reed, David,108,138.

Rees, James,18.

“Ricardo,”139.

Rice, Thos. D.,112-20,122.

Richings, Peter,10,14.

Ristori, Adelaide,230-3.

Ritchie, Wm. F,68.

Ritchie, Mrs. Wm. F. (seeMowatt, Anna Cora).

Roberts, James,121.

Roberts, J. B.,317.

Robertson, Mrs. (seeBrougham, Mrs. John).

Robertson, Thos. W.,72.

Robinson, Hopkins.100.

Robinson, Solon,117.

Robson, Frederic,174.

Robson, Stuart,177,181
[Pg 340]
Roselle, Percy,250.

Rosenfield, Sydney W.,43.

Rossi, Ernesto,306,313.

Rubinstein, Anton,217.

Russell, Thomas,218.

Ryan, Mr. (1788),154.

Ryman, “Add,”139.

Saint-Saëns, M.,217.

Salvini, Tomaso,306,313.

Sanford, Samuel,139.

San Francisco Minstrels,136.

Sargent, Epes,53-4.

Scheller, Marie,301.

Schoolcraft, Luke,138.

Scott, John R.,18,317.

Seaman, Julia,325.

Sefton, John,67,329.

Sefton, Mrs. John (Mrs. Watts),67.

Seilhamer, Geo. O.,7.

Setchell, Dan’l E.,200,322.

Seymour, “Nelse,”138.

Shakspere,89,144,152,182,195,269,278,293,302.

Sharpe, Mrs. (Miss Leesugg),14.

Sharpley, Samuel,136.

Shaw, Mrs. (Mrs. Hamblin),322.

Sheridan, Richard B.,85,94,154.

Siddons, Henry,95.

Siddons, Sarah,8,95.

Silsbee, Joshua S.,40.

Simpson, Alexander,8.

Simpson, Edmund,10.

Skerrett, George,59.

Skerrett, Mrs. Geo.,162,165.

Smith, Geo. F.,265.

Smith, Jno. N.,120.

Smith, Mark,162,170,181,199,200,286,297,322.

Smith, Sol (Elder),39,100-1,103,104,117.

Southerne, Thomas,90.

Speaight, J. G.,209-17.

Spiler, Mr.,321.

Stark, James,293,317.

Stevens, George,152.

Stevens, “Major,”221.

Stevens, Sarah,297.

Stewart, Alfred,247.

Stickney, Mrs. (seeBattersby, Mrs.).

Stoddart, J. H.,166,297.

Stone, H. D.,100.

Stone, Jno. A.,13-17.

Stowe, Harriet Beecher,4,107.

Stratton, Charles (see“Tom Thumb”).

Stuart, William,297.

Studley, J. B.,185,281.

Sullivan, Barry,289-90,293,302.

Talfourd, Francis,173-4.

Taylor, J. H.,301.

Taylor, Mary,233.

Taylor, Tom,36,249.

Thackeray, Wm. M.,3,140.

Thalberg, Sigismund,230.

Thatcher, George,137,139.

Thatcher, Primrose & West,137.

Thompson, Denman,43-4,52.

Thompson, Elizabeth (Lady Butler),63.

Thompson, Lydia,177,181.

Thompson, Maurice,143-4.

Thorne, James,10.

Tiffany & Co.,130.

Tiffany, Young & Ellis,129-30.

Titus, Master,230.

Todd, Carrie,247.

Todd, Waldo,247.

“Tom Thumb,”221.

Tostée, Madame,177,248-9.

Trollope, Anthony,317.

Trowbridge, Mr. (of Pell and Trowbridge),136.

“Two-headed Nightingale,”221.

Tyler, Royall,7,8.

Unsworth, James,139.

Valentine, David T.,129.

Vandenhoff, George,282.

Vandenhoff, John,317.

Vernon, Ida,302.

Vernon, Mrs. (Jane M. Fisher),10,66,238.
[Pg 341]
Vining, Fanny (seeDavenport, Mrs. E. L.).

Von Bülow, Hans,63.

Wagner, “Cal,”139.

Wainwright, Marie,65.

Walcot, Chas. M. (Elder),165,169.

Walcot, Chas. M. (Younger),301.

Wallack, Fanny,325.

Wallack, Henry,317.

Wallack, Jas. Wm. (Elder),165,270,273,293.

Wallack, J. W. (Younger),23,286,317,322.

Wallack, Mrs. J. W., Jr.,23,286,301.

Wallack, Lester,162,177,329.

Waller, D. W.,301.

Waller, Mrs. D. W.,325.

Waller, Wilmarth,317.

Wambold, David,138.

Ward, Thomas,326.

Warner, Chas. Dudley,43.

Warren, Lavinia,221.

Warren, William (Elder),329.

Warren, William (Younger),329.

Washington, George,100,121,154.

Watts, Mrs. (Mrs. Sefton),67.

Weathersby, Eliza,191.

Weaver, Henry A.,301.

Webb, Ada,245.

Wells, Mary,301-2.

Wemyss, F. C.,14,117.

Wendell, Evart Jansen,xii.

West, William,137.

Weston, Lizzie (Mrs. Davenport, Mrs. Mathews),170,325.

Wheatleigh, Charles,29.

Wheatley, Emma,10.

Wheatley, William,17-18,286.

Wheeler, Andrew C.,84.

Wheelock, Joseph,329.

White, Charles,99-100,122,124,126-31,135,138.

White, “Cool,”138.

Whitfield, George, D.D.,151.

Whitlock, William,124.

Whittier, Jno. G.,3.

Wignell, Thomas,7,154.

Wild, John,52,99.

Wilder, Marshall P.,203.

Wilkins, Marie,301.

Williams, Barney,104-6,130.

Williams, Mrs. Barney,44.

Wilson, Francis,203.

Winans, John,23.

Winter, William,112,154,188.

Winthrop, Theodore,72.

Wister, Owen,195.

Woffington, Margaret,169.

Wood, George,248.

Wood, Henry,111,132,136.

Wood, Mrs. John,199.

Wood, N. S.,317.

Wood’s Minstrels,136.

Woodworth, Samuel,8.

Woolf, Benjamin,40.

Worrell, Irene,247-8.

Worrell, Jennie,247-8.

Worrell, Sophie,247-8.

“Yankee Hill” (George H. Hill),8,40.

Yeamans, Mrs. Annie,52.

Yeamans, Jennie,30,250-1.

THE SYNOPSIS OF SCENERY.

Academy of Music,286,321.

Albany, N. Y.,100,101,102,103,104,122,265.

Anthony Street Theatre,321.

Arch Street Theatre, Philadelphia,14.

Ardres, France,178.

Astor Place Opera-house,277,325.

Athens, Greece,144,149.

Baltimore, Md.,76,107,229,242,262,326.

Barnum’s Museum,24.

Bartlett’s Billiard-room,126.

Bath, England,95.

Belair, Md.,106.

Berlin, Germany,217.

Booth’s Theatre,191,250,285,289,325.

Boston, Mass.,69,75,99,106,188,200,209,213,242,273,282,302,309,329.

Boston Museum,106.

Boston Theatre,213.

Bowery Theatre,102,119,185,293,305,318.

Branch, Bowery,126.

Broadway Theatre (Anthony St.),76,238-41,242,243,290,293.

Brougham’s Lyceum,157,164-9,322.

Brougham’s Theatre (Twenty-fourth Street),169,170.

Buffalo, N. Y.,132.

Burton’s Theatre (Chambers Street),76,79,129,162,163-4,170,286,293,321.

Burton’s Theatre (Metropolitan-Winter Garden),136,170,199.

Cambridge, England,225.

Carlton House, London,225.

Champlain, Lake,101.

Chappel Street Theatre,261,329.

Charity Hospital, New Orleans,122.

Charleston, S. C.,261.

Chatham Theatre,23,124,126,321.

Chicago, Ill.,132.

Chios, Greece,148.

Cincinnati, Ohio,103,115,118,119,302.

City Hall, New York,96.

Columbia Street Theatre, Cincinnati,115.

Cork, Ireland,104,106,229.

Cracow,217.

Cypress Hills Cemetery,102-3.

Daly’s Theatre (Twenty-fourth Street),84.

Daly’s Theatre (Twenty-eighth Street),248,252.

Daly’s Theatre (Broadway and Thirtieth Street),178.

Drury Lane Theatre,93,94,226,234.

Dublin, Ireland,222,265.
[Pg 346]
Duke’s Theatre, Lincoln’s Inn Fields,154.

Edinburgh, Scotland,277.

Ephesus,148.

Federal Street Theatre, Boston,99-100.

Fifth Avenue Hall,136.

Fifth Avenue Theatre (Twenty-fourth Street),173,174,181.

Fifth Avenue Theatre (Twenty-eighth Street),191,248,251,252.

Forrest Home,173.

Franklin Theatre,105.

French Theatre (Fourteenth Street),249.

Front Street Theatre, Baltimore,107.

Globe Theatre, Bankside,89.

Globe Theatre, Cincinnati,103.

Grand Opera-house,199,285,289.

Green Street Theatre, Albany, N. Y.,101,104.

Greenwich Street Theatre,262.

Guisnes, France,178.

Harrigan & Hart’s Theatre,51-2,99,192.

Henley-on-Thames,70.

Hoboken, N. J.,160.

Holiday Street Theatre, Baltimore,326.

Hope Chapel (Broadway),136.

John Street Theatre,6,9,19,94,96,101,154,262.

Keene, N. H.,44.

Laura Keene’s Theatre,26,182,187,247.

Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre (Duke’s),154.

London, England,58,60,68,70,75,119,154,157,225,234,238,242,258,261,262,266.

Louisville, Ky.,115,117.

Lower Brandon, Va.,70.

Lyceum Theatre (Fourteenth Street),248,249.

Madison Square Theatre,136,173,174.

Manchester, England,68.

Mechanics’ Hall,132,135,136.

Melodeon (53 Bowery),129,135.

Metropolitan Hotel,135.

Metropolitan Theatre (Winter Garden),136,170,199,297,298.

Mobile, Ala.,182.

Nassau Street Theatre,154.

National Theatre (Chatham Street),188,191,318,321.

National Theatre (Church Street),233,318,322.

Newark, N. J.,51.

New Bowery Theatre,24.

Newcastle, Pa.,302.

New Orleans, La.,102,122,192.

New Theatre (Chappel Street),261,329.

New York Hospital,130.

Niagara,80.

Niblo’s Garden Theatre,32,66,68,209,214,281,286,313,325.

North Pearl Street Amphitheatre, Albany, N. Y.,122.

Olympic Theatre, London,60.

Olympic Theatre, (Mitchell’s),10,48,132,157,161-2,321.

Olympic Theatre (Laura Keene’s),26,182,187,247.

Palmer’s Theatre (Wallack’s),258.

Palmo’s Opera-house,129-30,135.

Pantheon,204.

Paris, France,258,262.
[Pg 347]
Park Theatre,9,10,13,17,19,58,60,66,96,118-19,123,153,229,230,237-8,262,265,270,281,282,322.

Philadelphia, Pa.,7,10,14,20,35,60,122,242,261,273.

Pittsburg, Pa.,117-18.

Plattsburg, N. Y.,100-1.

Players, The, xii.

Princess’s Theatre, London,68.

Richmond, Va.,70.

Rochester, N. Y.32.

Rome, Italy,144.

St. James’s Theatre, London,242.

St. Nicholas Hotel,51,136.

San Francisco, Cal.,135.

Saratoga, N. Y.,138.

South Street Theatre, Philadelphia,20.

Stadt Theatre,305.

Star Theatre (Wallack’s),79,181,238,251.

Steinway Hall,281.

Stoppani’s Baths,130.

Stratford-on-Avon,151.

Sturtevant House,136.

Stuyvesant Institute,69.

Swanzey, N. H.,44.

Tammany Hall (Fourteenth Street),136.

Thalian Hall,129.

Theatre Comique,51,247-8.

Theatre Royal, Bath,95.

Toledo, Ohio,107-8.

Tremont Street Theatre, Boston,188.

Union Square Theatre,251.

Vauxhall Garden,104.

Wallack’s Theatre (Broome Street),111,293.

Wallack’s Theatre (Star),79,181,238,251.

Wallack’s Theatre (Palmer’s),258.

Washington, D. C.,112.

Washington Theatre,112.

Waverley Theatre,178.

White’s Athenæum,135.

Winter Garden Theatre,80,136,170,199,281,297,298,329.

Wood’s Museum,177-8,247-8,285.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CURIOSITIES OF THE AMERICAN STAGE ***

Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions willbe renamed.

Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyrightlaw means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the UnitedStates without permission and without paying copyrightroyalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use partof this license, apply to copying and distributing ProjectGutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by followingthe terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for useof the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything forcopies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is veryeasy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creationof derivative works, reports, performances and research. ProjectGutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you maydo practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protectedby U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademarklicense, especially commercial redistribution.

START: FULL LICENSE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the freedistribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “ProjectGutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the FullProject Gutenberg™ License available with this file or online atwww.gutenberg.org/license.

Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg™electronic works

1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree toand accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by allthe terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return ordestroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in yourpossession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to aProject Gutenberg™ electronic work and you do not agree to be boundby the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the personor entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.

1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only beused on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people whoagree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a fewthings that you can do with most Project Gutenberg™ electronic workseven without complying with the full terms of this agreement. Seeparagraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with ProjectGutenberg™ electronic works if you follow the terms of thisagreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg™electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.

1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“theFoundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collectionof Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the individualworks in the collection are in the public domain in the UnitedStates. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in theUnited States and you are located in the United States, we do notclaim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long asall references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hopethat you will support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promotingfree access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg™works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping theProject Gutenberg™ name associated with the work. You can easilycomply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in thesame format with its attached full Project Gutenberg™ License whenyou share it without charge with others.

1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also governwhat you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries arein a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of thisagreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or anyother Project Gutenberg™ work. The Foundation makes norepresentations concerning the copyright status of any work in anycountry other than the United States.

1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:

1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or otherimmediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must appearprominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg™ work (any workon which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which thephrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed,performed, viewed, copied or distributed:

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work isderived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does notcontain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of thecopyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone inthe United States without paying any fees or charges. If you areredistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “ProjectGutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must complyeither with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 orobtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg™trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is postedwith the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distributionmust comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and anyadditional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional termswill be linked to the Project Gutenberg™ License for all worksposted with the permission of the copyright holder found at thebeginning of this work.

1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg™License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of thiswork or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg™.

1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute thiselectronic work, or any part of this electronic work, withoutprominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 withactive links or immediate access to the full terms of the ProjectGutenberg™ License.

1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, includingany word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide accessto or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work in a formatother than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the officialversion posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expenseto the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a meansof obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “PlainVanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include thefull Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.

1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™ worksunless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providingaccess to or distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic worksprovided that:

• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, but he has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.”
• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™ License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™ works.
• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of receipt of the work.
• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.

1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a ProjectGutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms thanare set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writingfrom the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager ofthe Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as setforth in Section 3 below.

1.F.

1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerableeffort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofreadworks not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the ProjectGutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, maycontain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurateor corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or otherintellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk orother medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage orcannot be read by your equipment.

1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Rightof Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the ProjectGutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the ProjectGutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a ProjectGutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim allliability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legalfees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICTLIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSEPROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THETRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BELIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE ORINCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCHDAMAGE.

1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover adefect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you canreceive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending awritten explanation to the person you received the work from. If youreceived the work on a physical medium, you must return the mediumwith your written explanation. The person or entity that provided youwith the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy inlieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the personor entity providing it to you may choose to give you a secondopportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. Ifthe second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writingwithout further opportunities to fix the problem.

1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forthin paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NOOTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOTLIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.

1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain impliedwarranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types ofdamages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreementviolates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, theagreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer orlimitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity orunenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void theremaining provisions.

1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, thetrademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyoneproviding copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works inaccordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with theproduction, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any ofthe following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of thisor any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, oradditions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) anyDefect you cause.

Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg™

Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution ofelectronic works in formats readable by the widest variety ofcomputers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. Itexists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donationsfrom people in all walks of life.

Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with theassistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg™’sgoals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™ collection willremain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the ProjectGutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secureand permanent future for Project Gutenberg™ and futuregenerations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg LiteraryArchive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, seeSections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.

Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of thestate of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the InternalRevenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identificationnumber is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg LiteraryArchive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted byU.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.

The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500 West,Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and upto date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s websiteand official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact

Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project GutenbergLiterary Archive Foundation

Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespreadpublic support and donations to carry out its mission ofincreasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can befreely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widestarray of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exemptstatus with the IRS.

The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulatingcharities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the UnitedStates. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes aconsiderable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep upwith these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locationswhere we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SENDDONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular statevisitwww.gutenberg.org/donate.

While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where wehave not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibitionagainst accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states whoapproach us with offers to donate.

International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot makeany statements concerning tax treatment of donations received fromoutside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.

Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donationmethods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of otherways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. Todonate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate.

Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg™ electronic works

Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the ProjectGutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could befreely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced anddistributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose network ofvolunteer support.

Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several printededitions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright inthe U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do notnecessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paperedition.

Most people start at our website which has the main PG searchfacility:www.gutenberg.org.

This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™,including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg LiteraryArchive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how tosubscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.

BLACK-EYED SUSAN.
William		Miss Louisa Marsh.
Gnatbrain		Master George H. Marsh.
Tom Bowling		Master Alfred (Stewart).
Admiral		Master Waldo (Todd).
Dolly Mayflower		Miss Carrie (Todd).
Black-eyed Susan		Miss Mary Marsh.

TOODLES.
Timothy Toodles		Master George H. Marsh.
George Acorn		Miss Louisa Marsh.
Tabitha Toodles		Miss Mary Marsh.

Movatterモバイル変換

The Project Gutenberg eBook ofCuriosities of the American Stage

E-text prepared by the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(http://www.pgdp.net)
from page images generously made available by
Internet Archive
(http://archive.org)

THE ARGUMENT.

ACT I.
THE NATIVE AMERICAN DRAMA.

ACT II.
THE AMERICAN STAGE NEGRO.

ACT III.
THE AMERICAN BURLESQUE.

ACT IV.
INFANT PHENOMENA OF AMERICA.

ACT V.
A CENTURY OF AMERICAN HAMLETS.

THE CAST OF CHARACTERS.

THE SYNOPSIS OF SCENERY.

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

	PAGE
Junius Brutus Booth	Frontispiece
G. W. P. Custis	9
Edwin Forrest	11
John McCullough	15
Major André	21
J. H. Hackett	27
Frank Mayo as Davy Crockett	33
William J. Florence as Bardwell Slote	37
John T. Raymond	41
Neil Burgess as the Widow Bedott	45
F. S. Chanfrau as Mose	49
Epes Sargent	55
Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie	61
Edgar Fawcett	73
Brander Matthews	77
Bronson Howard	81
Charles Dibdin as Mungo	91
Ira Aldridge as Othello	95
Old Play-bill	97
Andrew Jackson Allen	103
Barney Williams inDandy Jim	105
Ralph Keeler	107
[Pg xiv]P. T. Barnum	109
John B. Gough	113
Thomas D. Rice as Jim Crow	116
Thomas D. Rice	118
James Roberts	120
George Washington Dixon	121
Mr. Dixon as Zip Coon	123
Daniel Emmett	125
Charles White	127
Edwin P. Christy	131
George Christy	133
George Swayne Buckley	137
Eph Horn	139
Jerry Bryant	140
Nelse Seymour	140
Dan Bryant	141
Stephen C. Foster	143
Mrs. Hallam (Mrs. Douglas)	156
Mark Smith as Mrs. Normer	159
William Mitchell as Richard Number Three	161
John Brougham and Georgiana Hodson inPocahontas	163
Harry Beckett as the Widow Twankey, inAladdin	167
James Lewis as Syntax, inCinderella at School	171
George L. Fox as Hamlet	175
Lydia Thompson as Sindbad	179
William H. Crane as Le Blanc, inEvangeline	183
Stuart Robson as Captain Crosstree	186
Harry Hunter as the Lone Fisherman	189
Francis Wilson in theOolah	193
Mr. Jefferson and Mrs. Wood inIvanhoe	196
James T. Powers as Briolet, inThe Marquis	197
Charles Burke as Kazrac, inAladdin	200
N. C. Goodwin inLittle Jack Sheppard	201
[Pg xv]De Wolf Hopper as Juliet, and Marshall P. Wilder as Romeo	203
Henry E. Dixey as the Country Girl inAdonis	205
Munrico Dengremont	211
Josef Hofman	215
Otto Hegner	219
Elsie Leslie	223
Charles Stratton (“Tom Thumb”)	227
Lavinia Warren	231
John Howard Payne	233
Blind Tom	235
Master Burke as Hamlet	237
May Haines and Isa Bowman as the two Princes inKing Richard III.	239
Edmund Kean	259
William Augustus Conway	263
James William Wallack	267
William C. Macready	271
Charles Kemble	275
Charles Kean	279
Edwin Forrest	283
Edward L. Davenport	287
James Stark	291
Edwin Booth	295
Lawrence Barrett	299
James E. Murdoch	303
Charles Fechter	307
Henry E. Johnstone	311
John Vandenhoff	315
George Jones	319
Augustus A. Addams	323
William Pelby	327

Movatterモバイル変換

The Project Gutenberg eBook ofCuriosities of the American Stage

E-text prepared by the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive (http://archive.org)

THE ARGUMENT.

ACT I.THE NATIVE AMERICAN DRAMA.

ACT II.THE AMERICAN STAGE NEGRO.

ACT III.THE AMERICAN BURLESQUE.

ACT IV.INFANT PHENOMENA OF AMERICA.

ACT V.A CENTURY OF AMERICAN HAMLETS.

THE CAST OF CHARACTERS.

THE SYNOPSIS OF SCENERY.

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

E-text prepared by the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(http://www.pgdp.net)
from page images generously made available by
Internet Archive
(http://archive.org)

ACT I.
THE NATIVE AMERICAN DRAMA.

ACT II.
THE AMERICAN STAGE NEGRO.

ACT III.
THE AMERICAN BURLESQUE.

ACT IV.
INFANT PHENOMENA OF AMERICA.

ACT V.
A CENTURY OF AMERICAN HAMLETS.