Memories grave and gay

by Florence Howe Hall

Although Edwin Booth and Charlotte Cushman never acted in “Hippolytus,” they did appear together in “Macbeth.” He mischievously remarked to us that he longed to say to Miss Cushman: “Why don’t you kill him? You’re a great deal bigger than I am.” He did not consider himself heavy enough for the part of Macbeth. Yet his rendering of it was very impressive. All the dreadful drama of the murder, the knocking at the outer gate, the banquet scene where the ghost of Banquo appears, were thrilling to witness.

Who, indeed, has rendered Shakespeare like Edwin Booth? Sir Henry Irving could not, in my opinion, be compared with him.

Hamlet was thought his best part—indeed, we said he was the gentle Prince of Denmark. The gravity of his disposition, “sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,” his natural dignity and the grace of his movements, all recalled Hamlet. When my mother saw him at the funeral of his beloved wife she remembered how often she had beheld him, on the stage, follow Ophelia to the grave.

Shakespeare’s “Richard the Third” was another character in which we especially liked to see him. He was so handsome, so fascinating, that the scene with Lady Anne, where he wins her from the very bier of her murdered husband, did not seem unnatural. The scene in the tent he gave with tremendous power. After the ghosts of his victims have appeared to him, one after another, calling down defeat upon his head, he arouses himself from his uneasy slumber. Still half-asleep, and fighting his way with his sword, he staggers to the front of the stage, crying out, “Give me another horse; bind up my wounds!” Kneeling for a moment, his countenance still distorted, he cries out, “Have mercy, Jesu!” His movements as he blindly made his way forward, the awful expression of his face, with eyes rolled upward, made this scene more terrible in its way than that of his death on Bosworth Field.

Yet this revelation of the true soul of the hump-backed king lasted but a few moments. Soon he recovers and “Richard is himself again.” (This phrase must have been added by Colley Cibber, for it is not in Shakespeare.)

As “honest Iago,” the openness of his countenance somehow conveyed to the beholder that it was assumed. Only in the final scene did he allow the true villainy of the character to appear on his face. His Othello was beautiful and moving. As Cardinal Richelieu he was wonderful, portraying to the life the little, cunning, powerful, yet on the whole benevolent old man of Bulwer’s drama. With what telling effect he drew the magic circle and gave the curse of Rome!

I saw him as Shylock a number of times, the last time shortly before his retirement from the stage. This impersonation had gained greatly in power since the early days. The awful look of hatred that, during his talk with Tubal, he allowed for a moment to play over his face was a revelation. You caught a glimpse of the race hatred accumulated through centuries of oppression.

Once when I thoughtlessly spoke of the principles of Christianity to a Hebrew acquaintance, I was frightened to see something of the same terrible expression come over his face.

When Booth was a young man he often played in comedy. The rollicking mischief and fun of his Petruchio and Don Cæsar de Bazan we greatly enjoyed. He gave an abbreviated version of the “Taming of the Shrew” as companion piece to “The Iron Chest.”

His acting was of an intellectual and poetic type. It was said that those who saw Edwin Booth play Romeo to Mary Devlin’s Juliet were not likely to forget it. They were so young, so beautiful, so identified with their parts. I should not say that, ordinarily, he excelled in the lover’s rôle. Charles Fechter, in spite of his very plain face and ugly figure, could enact the love scenes of Claude Melnotte in “The Lady of Lyons,” with a power that Edwin Booth lacked. Was it his natural reserve which made it distasteful and difficult for him to simulate love-making in public? I think it was. Like Hamlet, he had loved once and deeply. After that I fancy he took little interest in affairs of the heart. It is true, he married again, perhaps for companionship. His second wife did not long survive their marriage.