EDWIN BOOTH AS HAMLET
“There’s something in his soul
O’er which his melancholy sits on brood.”
—Act III, sc. 1
Photograph by Sarony. Authors’s Collection.
Antony; when Booth played Brutus McCullough was Cassius; when Booth was Antony Keene was Cassius and McCullough went back to Brutus. We used to wish we had Lawrence Barrett there for Cassius—but ’Tom’ Keene was a fine actor in his way, and I shall never forget those performances of ’Cæesar,’ nor those of ’Othello,’ in which Booth and McCullough alternated as Othello and Iago. Booth was my great idol; the one actor who, for me, could surpass McCullough, Barrett, and Montgomery. I found him very uneven—that is, his performances were not always up to his own standard. But, when he was really ’in the vein,’ there was nobody like him; there never has been, and there never will be! I never heard such a voice,—so full of fire, feeling, and power,—and I never saw such eyes as Booth’s, when he played King Richard the Third, Richelieu, or Iago. At first I used to go to the California to watch his rehearsals, but I soon found out it was little use. The plays were all an old story to him and he wouldn’t rehearse. McCullough had Booth’s prompt books, and Booth left the company pretty much to him and just ’ran through’ the big scenes with the principals. He was very gentle, considerate, and kind to everybody, but he seldom said much unless spoken to. I valued my acquaintance with him greatly; I never missed an opportunity to see him, and I cherish his memory as that of one of the best of men and greatest of actors.”
Belasco’s enthusiasm for Booth has led him, in recent years, to make an extensive collection of precious stage relics associated with that sombre genius: visitors to the reception room on the stage of the Belasco Theatre will find the “star’s” dressing room, which opens off it, indicated by a star of brilliants which was worn, first, by William Charles Macready as Hamlet, and, afterward, by Booth, in the same part. There, also, are displayed Booth’s Brutus sandals and sword, his Macbeth spear, his Bertuccio bauble, the mace carried by him when acting King Richard the Third, the sceptre he used as King Lear, the hat he wore as Petruchio, his Shylock knife and scales, and his make-up box.
During October of 1876 Belasco worked for a short while with James W. Ward and Winnetta Montague (he appeared with them at the Grand Opera House, October 16, in “The Willing Hand”), as stage manager and as adapter and rectifier of several plays. On Sunday, October 22, he participated in a benefit for Katie Mayhew given at Baldwin’s Theatre, appearing as Doctor of the Hospital, in “The Two Orphans.” Soon after that, declining a minor position in a new company, headed by Eleanor Carey and organized for “a grand re-opening of the Grand Opera House” (effected November 13, with “Wanted, a Divorce”), he joined a travelling company, at Olympia, Washington, headed by Fanny Morgan Phelps, and for about three months resumed the precarious life of a strolling player.
BELASCO AND “THE EGYPTIAN MYSTERY.”
By about the beginning of February, 1877, Belasco was once more in San Francisco, and immediately allied himself, as playwright, stage manager, and actor, with Frank Gardner and his wife, Caroline Swain. Gardner,—who afterward turned his attention to gold mining in Australia and acquired great wealth,—had associated with himself a person familiar with the famous “Pepper’s Ghost” illusion, and together they had devised a variant of that contrivance which was utilized in giving theatrical performances. Belasco, describing it, writes: “There was a stage, covered with black velvet, and a sheet of glass, placed obliquely over a space beneath the stage,—which was called the ’oven.’ Gas lamps were ingeniously concealed so as to give the impression of a phosphorescent light from ghostlike bodies. The characters in the play were obliged to enter the ’oven’ under the black velvet, and to lie on their backs, while their misty shadows were thrown like watery impressions upon the glass plate. As these shadows floated across the surface of the glass, the people in the ’oven’ could easily shake tables and move chairs to the hair-raising satisfaction of the audience.”