WILLIAM H. CRANE AS LE BLANC, IN EVANGELINE.
The most successful burlesque of those times, and the entertainment which is most fresh in the memory, was “The New Version of Shakspere’s Masterpiece of Hamlet, as arranged by T. C. De Leon, of Mobile, for George L. Fox,” and first presented in New York at the Olympic (formerly Laura Keene’s) Theatre, on Broadway, February 14, 1870. Although not an improvement upon the original acting version of the tragedy, it was an improvement upon the general run of burlesques of its generation; it did not depend upon lime-lights or upon anatomical display, and it did not harrow up the young blood of its auditors by its horrible plays upon unoffending words. It followed the text of Shakspere closely enough to preserve the plot of the story; it contained, as well, a great deal that was 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 funny men of his day upon the American stage, was at his best in this travesty of Hamlet. Quite out of the line of the pantomimic clown by which he is now remembered, it was as supremely absurd, as expressed upon his face and in his action, as was his Humpty Dumpty. It was perhaps more a burlesque of Edwin Booth—after whom in the character he played and dressed—than of Hamlet, and probably no one enjoyed this more thoroughly, or laughed at it more heartily, than did Mr. Booth himself. While Fox at times was wonderfully like Booth in attitude, look, and voice, he would suddenly assume the accent and expression of Fechter, whom he counterfeited admirably, and again give a most intense passage in the wonderfully deep tones of Studley, at the Bowery. To see Mr. Fox pacing the platform before the Castle of Elsinore, protected against the eager and the nipping air of the night by a fur cap and collar, and with mittens and arctic overshoes, over the traditional costume of Hamlet; to see the woful melancholy of his face as he spoke the most absurd of lines; to watch the horror expressed upon his countenance when the Ghost appeared; to hear his familiar conversation with that Ghost, and his untraditional profanity when commanded by the Ghost to “swear”—all expressed, now in the style of Fechter, now of Studley, now of Booth—was as thoroughly and ridiculously enjoyable as any piece of acting our stage has seen since Burton and Mitchell were at their funniest, so many years before. He was startling in his recommendation of a brewery as a place of refuge for Ophelia, and in the church-yard his “business” was new and quite original, particularly the apostrophe to the skull of Yorick, who, he seemed to think, was laughing now on the wrong side of his face. Fox was one of the earliest Hamlets to realize that the skull even of a jester, when it has lain in the earth three-and-twenty years, is not a pleasant object to touch or smell, although very interesting in itself to point a moral, or for its association’s sake; and the expression of his face, as he threw the 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 may all return than any “Alas, poor Yorick!” ever uttered.
STUART ROBSON AS CAPTAIN CROSSTREE.
Hamlet at the Olympic was played for ten consecutive weeks. The general cast was not particularly strong or remarkable, except in the Ophelia of Miss Belle Howett. She was serious, and surprisingly effective in the mad scene, and often the superior of many of the representatives of Ophelia in the original tragedy, who unwittingly have burlesqued what the burlesque actress, perhaps as unwittingly, played conscientiously and well.
The travesty of Hamlet by Mr. Fox is dwelt upon particularly here as being 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 to the memory of an actor who, like so many of his professional brethren, was never properly appreciated during his life, and who never before—not even in William Winter’s usually complete Brief Chronicles—has received more than a passing notice in the long records of the stage he did so much to adorn.
George L. Fox was not always the clown and pantomimist of the Humpty Dumpty absurdity in which he is now remembered. He excelled in burlesque, as his Hamlet and Richelieu and Macbeth have shown. As a Shaksperean comedian his Bottom ranks among the best within the memory of men still living, while in standard low comedy, melodramatic, and even in tragedy parts, he had no little experience and some decided success. He made his first appearance in 1830 at the Tremont Street Theatre, in Boston, when he was but five years of age. The play was The Children of the Alps, and the occasion a benefit to Charles Kean. He played Phineas Fletcher, in the drama of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, during its famous run of so many nights at the National Theatre, New York, in 1853-54. He excelled as Mark Meddle, as Trip, as Jacques Strop, in Robert Macaire, as Tom Tape, in Sketches in India, as Box, as Cox, and as Sundown Bowse, in Horizon.