CHARLES BURKE AS KAZRAC, IN “ALADDIN.”
No history of American burlesque could be complete without some mention of the name of Daniel Setchell. His Leah the Forsook, and Mark Smith’s Madeline are remembered as pleasantly in New York as his Macbeth and Edwin Adams’s Macduff are remembered in Boston. William H. Crane places the Macduff of Adams—he dressed in the volunteer uniform of the first year of the war, and read lines ridiculous beyond measure with all of the magnificent effect his wonderful voice and perfect elocution could give them—as the finest piece of burlesque acting it has ever been his good-fortune to see. But the stories told by the old comedians of the extravagant comedy performances of their contemporaries in other days, if they could be collected here, would extend this chapter far beyond the limits of becoming space.
N. C. GOODWIN IN “LITTLE JACK SHEPPARD.”
DE WOLF HOPPER AS JULIET, AND MARSHALL P. WILDER AS ROMEO.
Whether the burlesque of the present is comparable with the burlesque of the past is an open question, much debated. Mr. Wilson in the Oolah, Mr. Hopper as Juliet, Mr. Powers in The Marquis, Mr. Goodwin in Little Jack Sheppard, Mr. Burgess as the Widow Bedott—if she can be considered a burlesque part—and other men and women who burlesque women and men and things to-day, are, without question, very clever performers; the laughs they raise are as hearty and prolonged as any which paid tribute to the talents 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 grow higher as distance lends enchantment to their view. As Lawrence Barrett has said, “the actor is a sculptor who carves his image in snow.” The burlesque which has melted from our sight seems to us, as we look back at it, to be purer and cleaner than the frozen burlesque upon which the sun as yet has made no impression; and the figure of Pocahontas, gone with the lost arts, seems more beautiful than the Evangeline of the modern school. When the Adonis of the present counterfeits the deep tragedian he is guilty of imitation, and of clever imitation, but nothing more; when he represents the clerk in the country store he gives an admirable piece of comedy acting; but he never rises to the sublime heights of Columbus, as Columbus is remembered by those who saw him before Hoolah Goolah was born.