Mr. Booth’s Hamlet is original in many respects; it is intellectual, intelligent, carefully studied, complete to the smallest details, and greatly to be admired. Nature has given him the melancholy, romantic face, the magnetic eye, the graceful person, the stately carriage, the poetic temperament, which are in so marked a degree characteristic of Hamlet, while his genius in many scenes of the tragedy carries him far above any of the Hamlets this country has seen in many generations of plays.
EDWIN BOOTH.
He first assumed the part in New York, and under Mr. Burton’s management, at the Metropolitan Theatre, in the month of May, 1857. The engagement was short, and Hamlet was presented two or three times. Even then, however, it created no little excitement, and was considered a very remarkable and finished representation in a young man but twenty-four years of age. In Mr. Burton’s company that season were Charles Fisher, Mark Smith, Thomas Placide, Sarah Stevens, Mrs. Hughes, and Mr. Burton himself, by whom the young tragedian was ably supported.
Mr. Booth next appeared in New York on the 26th of November, 1860, at the same theatre—then called the Winter Garden—under the management of William Stuart. He opened as Hamlet, and had the support of Miss Ada Clifton as Ophelia, of Mrs. Duffield as the Queen, and of Mr. Davidge and J. H. Stoddart as the Grave-diggers. This was his first genuine metropolitan success in the part, although it was presented but five times during an engagement of four weeks. A year or two later he played Hamlet to the Ophelia of Mrs. Barrow; in 1863 he was supported by Lawrence Barrett, Humphrey Bland, “Dolly” Davenport, Vining Bowers, and Miss Clifton; and still at the Winter Garden he appeared as Hamlet from the 26th of November, 1864, until the 24th of March, 1865, one hundred consecutive nights! This was an event entirely unprecedented in the history of Hamlet in any country, and probably the longest run that any tragedy whatever had at that time enjoyed. It was before the days of Rosedale and Led Astray—before managers dared to present a single play during an entire season, when changes of bill were of weekly if not of nightly occurrence, and when Mr. Booth himself, during an engagement of fifteen or eighteen nights, had played twelve or fifteen parts. “One hundred nights” of any production is no novelty now, since Adonis and Erminie have, with such little merit, drawn such full houses for so many months; but that one man should have played but this one part, and that too in a drama so decidedly a one-man play that Hamlet with Hamlet left out has become a proverb wherever English is known, was a quarter of a century ago certainly a magnificent achievement. It moved Mr. Booth’s many friends in New York to present to him on the 22d of January, 1867, the celebrated “Hamlet Medal,” the most complimentary and well-merited testimonial that any young actor, no matter how brilliant his career, has ever received from the American public in the history of its stage. During this famous engagement he was associated with Thomas Placide as Grave-digger; with Charles Kemble Mason, an admirable Ghost; with Charles Walcot, Jr., as Horatio; with Owen Fawcett as Osric; with Mrs. James W. Wallack, Jr., as the Queen; and with Mrs. Frank Chanfrau as Ophelia—as strong a combination of talent as the tragedy has often seen.
LAWRENCE BARRETT.