JAMES LEWIS AS SYNTAX, IN “CINDERELLA AT SCHOOL.”
In short, he sees so much that is beyond the comprehension of the ordinary play-goer, that for thirty years he has been left in absolute retirement in that Forrest Home for good old plays which is styled French’s Minor Drama.
One of Brougham’s last burlesque productions was his Much Ado About a Merchant of Venice, presented March 8, 1869, at the little theatre on Twenty-fourth Street, New York, which has since borne so many names, and now, rebuilt, is known as the Madison Square. He played Shylock, Miss Effie Germon Lorenzo, and Mrs. J. J. Prior Portia. This was his final effort at theatrical management. He appeared in Pocahontas as late as 1876, but Shylock was his last original burlesque part which is worthy of serious mention.
Francis Talfourd’s Shylock; or, The Merchant of Venice Preserved, a Jerusalem Hearty Joke, is a much older production than Brougham’s travesty of the same play, with which it should not be confounded. Frederic Robson was the original Shylock in London, Tom Johnstone in New York (at Burton’s, October 9, 1853). M. W. Leffingwell gave an admirable performance of Talfourd’s Shylock in September, 1867, on the stage of this same little Twenty-fourth Street theatre, assisted by Miss Lina Edwin as Jessica. Mr. Leffingwell was a very versatile actor although he excelled in burlesque and broadly extravagant parts. He will be remembered as Romeo Jaffier Jenkins, in Too Much for Good Nature, and in travesties of Cinderella and Fra Diavolo. In the last absurdity, as Beppo, made up in very clever imitation of Forrest as the Gladiator, and enormously padded, he strutted about the stage for many moments, entirely unconscious of a large carving-fork stuck into the sawdust which formed the calf of his gladiatorial leg. His look of agony and his roar of anguish—perfect reflections of Forrest’s voice and action—when his attention was called to his physical suffering, made one of the most ludicrous scenes in the whole history of American burlesque. Mr. Forrest is said to have remarked of a lithograph of Leffingwell in this part, that while the portrait of himself was not so bad, the characteristics were somewhat exaggerated! Leffingwell was, no doubt, the original of the full length, life-sized effigy of Forrest which serves as the sign for a cigar store on one of the leading thoroughfares of New York to-day.
GEORGE L. FOX AS HAMLET.