Booth, Edwin (Thomas)

Booth, Edwin [Thomas] (1833–93), actor and manager. The second son of the elder Junius Brutus Booth to become an actor, he was born in Belair, Maryland, and made his debut in 1849 at the Boston Museum playing Tressel to his father's Richard III. Booth made an unobtrusive New York debut in 1850 as Wilford in The Iron Chest but later garnered attention when he replaced his ailing father as Richard III. Shortly afterward he left to spend several seasons in California and the South Pacific, during which time his father died. It was on this tour that he mastered virtually all the roles for which he would be famous, notably Hamlet, Cardinal Richelieu, and Sir Giles Overreach. On his return to New York in 1857, he was billed as “the Hope of the living Drama.” His season included not only Hamlet, Richelieu, and A New Way to Pay Old Debts, but also King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, The Lady of Lyons, and Othello (in which he played Iago to Charles Fisher's Moor), as well as several now‐forgotten works. Critics were unawed by his name or billing, the Tribune noting, “Mr. Booth is the most unequal actor we remember ever to have seen; and his fine, careful acting in one scene is no guaranty that he will not walk feebly through the next, and let it go by default.” By 1862, when he became manager of the Winter Garden, his acting had improved, although many critics still complained about occasional unevenness. Booth mounted many highly praised Shakespearean productions at the house, including a Julius Caesar in which he portrayed Brutus, Junius Brutus Booth Jr. played Cassius, and John Wilkes Booth played Marc Antony. The following night, November 26, 1864, he began a one‐hundredperformance run as Hamlet, the longest run the play had ever had until that time. Less than a month after the play closed, Booth went into temporary retirement after learning that his brother had assassinated President Lincoln. He returned to the stage in 1866, and when the Winter Garden was destroyed by fire, he built his own theatre at 23rd Street and Sixth Avenue, opening it in 1869 with Romeo and Juliet. His Juliet, Mary McVicker, later became his second wife. Unfortunately, the playhouse sat on the edge of the main theatre district. This, coupled with some poor financial management, forced Booth to declare bankruptcy and lose the theatre in 1873. He then toured the country and from 1880 to 1882 performed successfully in England and Germany. In London he played at Henry Irving's Lyceum, where he and Irving alternated as Othello and Iago. On his return he formed noteworthy partnerships with Lawrence Barrett, Helena Modjeska, Madame Ristori, and Tommaso Salvini. In 1888 he gave his home on Gramercy Park to the newly organized Players, though he retained an apartment there until his death. His last appearance was as Hamlet in 1891 at the Academy of Music in Brooklyn.

Booth's personal life was as plagued by tragedy as any of the characters he portrayed. His father and several other close family members died insane; both his first wife, Mary Devlin Booth, and his second died young; his brother's murder of Lincoln gave him his darkest moment; and financial and drinking problems often beset him. Quite possibly the daunting distractions of his private life determined his conservative approach to drama. Unlike Edwin Forrest, he never sought to promote native plays; unlike Barrett, he never risked reviving obscure or neglected masterpieces. From early on he recognized that he had small ability in comic or in basically romantic plays. Tragedy was his forte, and he remained content with his reasonably large but relatively safe repertory. Booth stood about five feet six inches tall. His black hair, dark complexion, brown eyes, and sad mouth gave him a slightly Latin or Semitic appearance. Of his acting in Hamlet, William Winter wrote, “Surely the stage, at least in our time, has never offered a more impressive and affecting combination than Mr. Booth's Hamlet of princely dignity, intellectual stateliness, glowing imagination, fine sensitiveness to all that is most sacred in human life and all that is most thrilling and sublime in the weird atmosphere of ‘supernatural soliciting,’ which enwraps the highest mood of the man of genius!” A statue of Booth was erected in 1918 in Gramercy Park opposite the Players, making him one of the rare actors so honored, and in 1913 a second New York theatre was named after him. Biography: Prince of Players, Eleanor Ruggles, 1953.