Charles Kemble.[F]
From a lithographic reproduction of a drawing by R. J. Lane, A.R.A. Published by J. Dickinson, London, May, 1830. In the collection of Douglas Taylor, Esq.
Junius Brutus Booth.
From a daguerreotype in the collection of Peter Gilsey, Esq.
Junius Brutus Booth was restless and erratic even in youth. After absorbing a fine classical education he attempted to learn the printing-trade, then studied law, which he soon left to enter the navy; finally, at seventeen, he became a strolling actor with Penley's Circuit, and, after two years of provincial playing, reached a small stock position in Covent Garden Theatre in 1815 and 1816.
An injudicious attempt of his friends to place him in competition with Edmund Kean, who at times assumed to be his friend, resulted in angry rivalry and riot, and ended in his leaving England in April, 1821, for America.
Having already achieved a success with all but Kean's supporters in "Richard III.," he chose that for his principal part in the New World, and soon established his reputation as a star of the first magnitude throughout the Union, especially in Richard, Pescara, Iago, Hamlet, Sir Giles, Shylock, Sir Edward Mortimer and Brutus in John Howard Payne's tragedy. His eccentricity was exhibited in occasionally performing John Lump in the "Review," or Jerry Sneak in the "Mayor of Garrett" (clownish, comic afterpieces on his benefit nights), and his acquirements were shown by his performance at Bristol of Shylock in a strange Hebrew dialect and of Orestes in the original French at New Orleans.