The several engagements of Mr. and Mrs. Davenport after this were in no way remarkable, except sadly remarkable that so great an actor should have been forced, in the greatest city of the Union, to play Hamlet to such poor houses and with such uncongenial surroundings.
On the evening of August 30, 1875, Mr. Davenport appeared as Hamlet in the Grand Opera-house, New York. On the same evening Barry Sullivan, under the management of Jarrett & Palmer, made his appearance at Booth’s Theatre in the same part. The comparison invited by the presentation of these rival Hamlets was not favorable to the Irish tragedian. He was extensively advertised, and his reception by his own countrymen was affectionate and sincere. The Irish regiment, the famous Sixty-ninth, was present on the opening night, and the house was crowded with our Irish citizens. The performance was superior to the general run of Hamlets, but it was not superlative. Mr. Sullivan had had great experience on the British stage, and was skilled in his profession, but his Hamlet was melodramatic, harsh at times, occasionally overacted, and in all respects totally different from the quiet, tender Hamlet of Mr. Davenport. Much of his business was believed to be new, and some of his novelties were effective, if not altogether according to the text of the tragedy. It was a Hamlet that appealed to the taste of the audiences of the Bowery rather than to those of the west side of the town. It is only just to say that Hamlet was not Mr. Sullivan’s strongest part in America. As Richard III., as Beverly, in The Gamester, and as Richelieu, he appeared to advantage, although his success in this country was not as great as his reputation at home would have warranted. This was his second appearance in America. His first was made at the Broadway Theatre, New York, and in the character of Hamlet, on the 22d of November, 1858.
The student of dramatic history in America must have been struck with the irregularity of the appearance of Hamlet upon our boards during the last hundred years. In Joseph Norton Ireland’s Records of the New York Stage, published in 1866-67, and the best and most complete work of its kind in this country, and perhaps in any country, there are seasons and successions of seasons in which there is to be found no hint of its production; in other seasons some domestic or imported star was seen in the tragedy, for a night or two at most, on its meteoric flight from horizon to horizon, while, on the other hand, for months together Hamlet was of weekly if not of nightly occurrence at some of the theatres of the metropolis.
JAMES STARK.
Probably at no period in the history of Hamlet, since the early days when Shakspere himself, according to tradition, played havoc with the Ghost, has any town witnessed such an epidemic of Hamlet as passed over the city of New York in the years 1857 and 1858. McKean Buchanan and Barry Sullivan appeared as Hamlet at the Broadway, James Stark and the elder Wallack at Wallack’s, Edward Eddy at the Bowery, and John Milton Hengler, a rope-dancer, played Hamlet, “for one night only,” at Burton’s, followed at 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 the most popular in America to-day. He has played the part in every important town in the Union, many hundreds of nights in New York alone, and to hundreds of thousands of persons, the warmest of his admirers and most constant attendants at his performances being men and women who are emphatically non-theatre-goers, and who never enter a play-house except to see Mr. Booth, and Mr. Booth in a Shaksperian part. He has done very much more than any other actor to educate the popular taste to a proper understanding of Hamlet, and to a proper appreciation of the beauties of the tragedy. He is the ideal Hamlet of half the people of the country who have any idea of Hamlet whatever.
In many minds Booth is Hamlet, and Hamlet is Booth; any conception of Hamlet that is not Booth’s, any picture of Hamlet which does not resemble the familiar features of Booth, any representation of Hamlet on the stage which is not an imitation of Booth’s Hamlet, is considered no Hamlet at all. If the very Hamlet of tradition himself—the Amleth of the old Danish legend from which Shakspere drew, no doubt, the facts and fancies of his play—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 after the manner of Edwin Booth.