How much judgment is there in a statement which classifies performances of Othello, Mathias, and Hamlet among “entertainments”? Salvini had played nothing like Othello, Irving nothing like Mathias, Booth nothing like Hamlet before, respectively, they played those parts. (Such performances as Sellers, Fritz, Crockett, and Kit, well enough in their way, do not deserve thoughtful consideration as the basis of histrionic “fame.”) “Any other actor might have become just as famous if Fate had thrown the part first in his way!” That is, according to this careless commentator, although a “one-part actor” achieves his greatest success in a part which happens to combine “all the excellent things,” the peculiar, individual merits, of that special actor, nevertheless any other actor could have achieved the same success if he had been fortunate enough to receive the golden opportunity first. Charles Harcourt played Mathias, under the name of Paul Zegers, at the Alfred Theatre (the old Marylebone), London, in a version of “The Polish Jew” by Frank Burnand, several months before Irving ever played it—and Harcourt utterly failed in it. Othello and Hamlet had been played by scores of contemporary actors before Salvini and Booth, respectively, played those parts,—yet the effect produced by those actors in those parts was not the less unique and extraordinary. Irving’s fame as an actor, moreover, rested and rests at least as much on his Hamlet, Shylock, King Louis, Mephistopheles, and Benedick as on his Mathias. Hamlet certainly was Booth’s most typical performance, but also certainly he was more popular as Richelieu than as Hamlet, and his fame rests on that part and on his Brutus, Shylock, King Richard the Third, and Iago as much as on his Hamlet. Salvini’s fame rests as much on his Corado, Niger, King Saul, and Orosmane as on his Othello—and in all of those parts he was finer than he was in Othello. Salvini, Irving, and Booth were not “one-part actors,” nor does their fame rest on any one performance, nor should the credit for their achievement be given to any author, director, or stage manager—or to anybody but themselves. Booth, Irving, and Salvini were stage directors and managers, and though they did not write the parts which they acted, they certainly arranged them, and as to some of them they supplied vital suggestions. The character of Mathias, in “The Bells,” for instance, was completely reconstructed by Leopold Lewis, at Irving’s suggestion, to adapt it to his mysterious personality and peculiarities of style. Lord Dundreary, when first given to Sothern by Laura Keene, was a wretched part, about seventeen lines in length,—“a dyed-up old man” she called it, asking him to accept it,—but the comedian eventually expanded it till it dominated the play, and it is fair to say that, literally, he “created” it.
THE FACTS ABOUT JEFFERSON’S RIP.
Jefferson was a youth when he was first attracted to the part of Rip Van Winkle. He had seen it played by his half-brother, Charles St. Thomas Burke, who was esteemed by his contemporaries a great comedian, and had acted in the play with him, as Seth. He has himself told me that long before he attained a position in which he could publicly assume it he frequently made up for it and rehearsed it in private. The play that he at first used was one Burke had made, which Jefferson tinkered and improved. There were at least ten plays on the subject in existence before Jefferson ever appeared as Rip, and eight recorded performers of that part. The first Rip was Thomas Flynn, the second was Charles B. Parsons; both of them acted it in 1828,—a year before Jefferson was born. Their successors were William B. Chapman, 1829; James Henry Hackett, 1830; Frederick Henry Yates, 1831; William Isherwood, 1833-’34; Joseph Jefferson, the second (our Jefferson’s father), about 183(8?), and Charles Burke, 1849-’50, or earlier. Jefferson first acted Rip at Caruso’s Hall, in Washington, in 1859, and he continued to act it for forty-five years. I first saw him in it, in the season of 1859-’60, at the Winter Garden Theatre, New York, and was deeply impressed by his performance, which almost ever since I have extolled in the press as one of the greatest pieces of acting that have been seen in our time. Down to 1865, Hackett, by birth a Hollander, was highly esteemed as Rip, but neither he nor either of the actors above mentioned was ever “just as famous” in it as Jefferson became, though “Fate” had thrown it in their way long before that deity had thrown it in his. His achievement has been more or less disparaged ever since he first won the public suffrage in it. His success has been ascribed to almost anything except the real cause,—for example, to Chance, to “Fate,” to Dion Boucicault, and to me,—which is mere nonsense. Jefferson’s wonderful artistic triumph as Rip Van Winkle was due to just one person—himself. He would have gained it if all the persons who have been credited with “making him” had never lived. His impersonation was entirely his own conception and construction—a work of pure genius. The play that Boucicault, in 1865, in London, made for him, on the basis of the old version which he had used for more than six years, was largely fashioned after suggestions made by Jefferson himself, the most important of which being that in the mysterious, supernatural midnight scene on the lonely mountain top the ghosts should remain silent and only the man should speak. Jefferson had the soul of a poet, the mind of a dreamer, the eye of a painter, the imagination and heart of a genius, and he was a consummate actor. As an executant in acting he operated with exquisite precision, and his art was infiltrated with light, geniality, and humor. “It is to the author, the director, the stage manager that the true credit of the creation belongs,” writes Belasco, himself an author, a director, and a stage manager, and therefore not an altogether impartial witness; forgetful, also, that Jefferson was experienced in all those callings. The author of a play provides the soul of a part, the actor provides the body and vitalizes it with all his being, and shapes and adorns it, revealing the soul, with all his art:
“But by the mighty actor brought,
Illusion’s perfect triumphs come,—
Verse ceases to be airy thought,
And Sculpture to be dumb!”
Jefferson used only the skeleton of the story of Rip Van Winkle as told by Washington Irving, in “The Sketch Book” (1819): the character, as he portrayed it, is quite different from the commonplace sot designated by Irving. As to Boucicault’s version of the play—that dramatist disparaged it, did not believe in it, and actually assured Jefferson, just before the curtain rose on its first performance (September 4, 1865, at the Adelphi Theatre, London), that it would fail; and after he had seen Jefferson’s performance he said to that comedian, “You are shooting over their heads,” to which Jefferson answered, “I am not even shooting at their heads—I am shooting at their hearts.” He hit them. Later, Boucicault discovered what Jefferson meant (he could see a church by daylight as well as another!), and paid him the compliment of devising for himself an Irish Rip Van Winkle, under the name of Conn, the Shaughraun, which he admirably acted, as nearly as he could, in Jefferson’s spirit and manner. “Jefferson,” writes Belasco, “was the Yankee personating the Dutchman.” Another mistake. “Yankee” is an epithet of disparagement which the British contemptuously applied to the rural inhabitants of New England in the time of the American Revolutionary War. Jefferson did not possess any of either the physical or mental qualities of a New Englander. He was of English, Scotch, and French lineage. His grandfather was a Yorkshire man; his father a Pennsylvanian; his mother a French lady (born in the Island of San Domingo); himself a native of Philadelphia—and no more a “Yankee” than J. A. Herne was, whose lineage was Irish, who was born at Cohoes, New York, and whose performance of Rip (a respectable one) was based in part on Jefferson and in part on Hackett. It is idle to disparage Jefferson as Rip Van Winkle. That impersonation will live in theatrical history when all the Hernes, McWades, etc., are lost in oblivion!
A LEADING LADY IN A PET.
Prior to presentment of “The Millionaire’s Daughter” (May 19, 1879) at the Baldwin Theatre Maguire had made a contract requiring production there, on May 24 and 25, of a play entitled “Cupid’s Lawsuit”: the prosperous though not protracted career of Belasco’s melodrama was, accordingly, interrupted on those dates and resumed on the 26th; it ended on June 1. June 2 was signalized by the
JOSEPH JEFFERSON AS RIP VAN WINKLE