JOHN HOWARD PAYNE.

Evidences of such early dramatic experiences might readily be multiplied; but a decided distinction should be made between the phenomenal young actor or actress who walks upon the stage in leading parts, a child Richard or an infant Richmond, and the youthful artist, born of dramatic parents, who, never attempting what is beyond his years or his station, plays Young York or Young Clarence to support his father, says his few lines, gets his little bit of applause, is not noticed by the critics, and goes home like a good child to his mother and to his bed. It is as natural for the child of an actor to go upon the stage as it is for the son of a sailor to follow the sea; but while the young mariner before the mast is taught the rudiments of his profession by the roughest of experiences and the hardest of knocks, the young Roscius too frequently is given command of his dramatic ship before he can box the dramatic compass, or can tell the difference in the nautical drama between Black-eyed Susan and The Tempest.

BLIND TOM.

Miss Clara Fisher (Mrs. James G. Maeder) was regarded in her youth as a prodigy second only to Master Betty; but, unlike Master Betty, she more than realized the best hopes of her early admirers, and lived to be considered one of the most perfect and finished actresses ever known to our stage. Born in England in 1811, she appeared in Drury Lane, London, the scene of Master Betty’s earliest successes, when she was only six years of age, and at once she won the most decided triumphs. It was said of her that she clearly understood, even at that early age, her author and his meaning, entered thoroughly and enthusiastically into all of her parts, and displayed in every scene not only acuteness of intellect, but a temperament fully in unison with the profession of her choice. Cast in plays with actors of the regulation age and size, instead of being dwarfed by the contrast with them, she made the rest of the dramatis personæ appear entirely out of proportion, and carried away all of the honors. Her American début was made September 12, 1827, at the Park Theatre, New York. In the seventeenth year of her age she could scarcely rank among the Infant Phenomena, however, and she is only known in this country, where the rest of her professional life has been spent, as a leading lady, justly celebrated, but not wonderful, out of all whooping, as an Infant Roscia.

MASTER BURKE AS HAMLET.

Mrs. Maeder comes of a theatrical race, and one which seems to mature early. Her sister, Jane Marchant Fisher, the good old Mrs. Vernon of Wallack’s, went upon the stage in London a child of ten; Frederick G. Maeder, her son, made his first appearance at the age of eighteen; and Alexina Fisher (Mrs. A. F. Baker) and Oceana Fisher, daughters of Palmer Fisher, and members of the same family, played here as children half a century ago.

MAY HAINES AND ISA BOWMAN AS THE TWO PRINCES IN KING RICHARD III.

The most remarkable and most successful of the Infant Phenomena of modern times in America have been the Bateman Children, the Marsh Juvenile Troupe, and the Boone and the Holman Children. On the 10th of December, 1849, E. A. Marshall, manager of the Broadway Theatre, introduced on the boards of that house, for the first time to New York audiences, Kate and Ellen Bateman, whose united ages were not ten years. Kate made her début as Richmond, and Ellen, the younger, as Richard, in scenes from Shakspere’s Richard III. The announcement of the coming of the infantile Thespians was not favorably received by the regular attendants of the Broadway; the appearance of prodigies of any kind being a departure from the ways of that traditional home of the legitimate drama, and there was a prejudice formed against these young stars which nothing but the absolute cleverness of their performances was able to overcome. After Mr. Hackett as Falstaff, and Miss Cushman as Lady Macbeth, it was scarcely natural that unknown children in the same and kindred parts should satisfy the critical audiences of the Old Broadway. The popularity of the Batemans, however, was quickly established; those who came to scoff on the first night returned to praise; the whole town, young and old, petted and applauded the children; while still the wonder grew, during the single week of their engagement, how the two small heads could carry all they knew. It seemed incredible that an infant of four years like Ellen Bateman could present anything approaching an embodiment of such characters as Shylock, Richard, or Lady Macbeth; or that a child of six, as was Kate at that time, should be able to play Richmond, Portia, or the Thane with the correctness of elocution, the spirit, and the proper comprehension of the language and the business which she displayed. The simple task of committing to memory the text of so many parts was in itself a marvellous effort for children of their tender age, but to be able to speak these lines as set down for them with correct emphasis and gesture, and with every appearance of a thorough conception of the character sustained, as the little Batemans are said to have done, certainly warranted all the praise that was bestowed upon them. Every fresh character they undertook was a surprise, and was considered more clever than any that had preceded it. Lady Macbeth was, perhaps, the most successful of Ellen’s assumptions, while Kate read Portia with amazing skill and propriety; her delivery of the familiar lines was finished, and her carriage throughout was that of an experienced artist.

After appearing in Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and other American cities, the Bateman Children were taken to England by P. T. Barnum, in the summer of 1851, making their first appearance there at the St. James’s Theatre, London, on the 23d August, as The Young Couple, and meeting with decided success. They returned to the Old Broadway November 15, 1852, and opened in a comedietta entitled Her Royal Highness, written expressly for them. They were quite as popular here as when they first appeared, and before they left New York Mayor Kingsland, “on behalf of a committee of leading citizens,” presented to each of the children a tiny gold watch.

In 1856, no longer juveniles, though still most acute, voluble, and full of grace, they retired from the stage. Miss Kate Bateman returned to it, however, in a few years, a young lady, and an actress of more than ordinary merit. Even if she had not since then made for herself, both in this country and in England, a reputation as one of the strongest tragic and melodramatic artists on the English-speaking stage, the story of her early career as told here is worthy of a place in dramatic history because of the precocious excellence of her acting as a child, and of the wonderful success which she everywhere won. She was a Phenomenon among Phenomena in this respect, that she grew and advanced in her profession as she grew in stature and advanced in years—one of the very few of the infant prodigies who, in later life, became an ornament to the stage.

On the 10th of December, 1855, precisely six years after the first appearance of the Bateman Children at the Broadway Theatre, the Marsh Juvenile Troupe made their first appearance here at the same house, and made, also, a very favorable impression even upon critics not predisposed to be attracted by any exhibition of prodigies. In their acting was a perceptible absence of that familiar, parrot-like, mechanical repetition of unfamiliar words, and of those studied and artificial attitudes so painfully marked in juvenile players generally. Their impersonations were spirited and exact, and evinced unusual mental aptitude and training, their audiences being sometimes startled by the extraordinary precocity with which some of the leading parts were filled. Their initial performance consisted of Beauty and the Beast, Miss Louisa Marsh representing the Beast, while little Mary Marsh, as Beauty, pleasantly filled all of the personal and mental requirements of that rôle. Beauty and the Beast was followed by The Wandering Minstrel, Master George H. Marsh playing Jem Baggs, “with the popular, doleful, pathetic, sympathetic, lamentable history of ‘Villikins and his Dinah.’” These were supplemented later, during the Marshes’ engagement, with The Rivals—Mr. Blake as Sir Anthony, Madame Ponisi as Julia—or with A Morning Call, Madame Ponisi playing Mrs. Chillington, and Augustus A. Fenno Sir Edward; the Juveniles, although attractive, being scarcely successful in filling the house by their sole exertions.

The Marsh Children, although generally announced by that name on the bills, were not members of one family, nor were they Marshes. George and Mary, brother and sister, and both of them said to have been less than eight years of age when they came here first, were in private life Master and Miss Guerineau—while the other leading lady, Louisa Marsh, was properly Miss McLaughlin. The entire company was composed of children. As they died—and the mortality among them was remarkable—or as they grew too large for the troupe, their places were filled by other precocious infants, engaged by their clever manager in his strollings from town to town. Among the members of the company at different times were Miss Ada Webb, Miss Fanny Berkley, Miss Ada and Miss Minnie Monk, and Louis Aldrich, all of whom, if not great, subsequently, in their profession, are still not unknown to fame. Unlike the Batemans, however, none of the Marsh Juveniles ever became stars of more than common magnitude, and none of them are shining very brilliantly on the stage to-day. George Marsh, the low comedian, was very clever in his way, although not original in his impersonations. His powers of imitation were marvellous, and his Toodles, a miniature copy of Burton’s Toodles, in which all of the business and many of the gags—even to the profanity at the mention of Thompson—were retained, was almost as funny in its uproariousness as was Burton’s Toodles itself, and certainly better than many of the imitations that have been seen since Burton’s day. Little Mary Marsh was an uncommonly attractive child, bright-eyed, graceful, fresh, and fair. The boy between eight and fifteen in her audiences who did not succumb to her loveliness was only fit for treason, stratagem, and spoils. Her name was to be found written in some copy-book, her face sketched in some drawing-book in the male department of every school in New York, and in the average schoolboy’s mind she was associated in some romantic way with all of the good and beautiful women of his history or his mythology; she inhabited all the salubrious and balmy isles in his geography; she was dreamed of in his philosophy; and one particular lad, who is now more than old enough to pay the school bills of boys of his own, when asked, in a chemistry class, by the master, “What is the symbol and equivalent of potassium?” answered, absently, but without hesitation, “Mary Marsh!”

The passion the child inspired in the breasts of her adorers was a pure one, and, except in the neglect of a prosy lesson or two, it did no harm. Her memory is still kept green in the hearts of many practical men of to-day, who unblushingly confess to a filling of their boyish eyes and a quivering of their boyish lips when the sad story of her untimely and dreadful death was told here. While playing in one of the Southern cities, her dress took fire from the footlights and she was fatally burned, living but an hour or two after the accident occurred.

On the 3d of August, 1857, the Marshes played Black-eyed Susan at Laura Keene’s Theatre here, followed by The Toodles. From the bill of this, their opening night, the following casts are copied:

This was probably the last season of the Marsh Juveniles in New York, and since their exit no startling troupe of Phenomena have appeared here. The Boone and the Holman Children were clever, but not so successful as the Marshes. The Worrell Sisters were popular, but, although young girls, they were in their teens, and scarcely came under the head of infant players. They made their New York début at Wood’s Theatre, 514 Broadway, afterwards the Theatre Comique, under the management of George Wood, in a burletta called The Elves, April 30, 1866, Miss Sophie Worrell, the eldest of the three sisters, being at that time fully eighteen years of age.

Among the occasional companies of children who have appeared in New York were “The Mexican Juvenile Troupe.” They occupied Mr. Daly’s Fifth Avenue Theatre during the summer season of 1875, remaining two weeks, and appearing at the Lyceum Theatre, on Fourteenth Street, from the 1st to the 13th of November in the same year. Their performances were conducted in the Spanish language, and their specialty was opera-bouffe. They were well trained in voice and action, but the music in their childish treble was weak; and, personally, the troupe ran to legs and arms and hands and feet, and the general angular and awkward undevelopment characteristic of their age and size. The bit of a prima donna who sang La Grand Duchesse and La Belle Hélène in the titular parts, and who was known to fame as Signorina Carmen Unda y Moron, was made up carefully after Tostée, whom, in certain actions and gestures and expression of face, she much resembled. She displayed all of the vim and abandon and chic of the veteran actress, and tossed her head, and switched her train, and ogled and leered, and capered like the very Tostée herself, as seen through the reverse of an opera-glass. The child acted with spirit, or something that was like it, and seemed to have a morbid enjoyment and comprehension of the indelicate parts she played. The spectacle was far from being a pleasant one, and probably shocked more persons than it amused. Little Carmen was certainly not more than eight years old, and barely as tall as the table in her stage parlor, while none of the company reached in height the backs of the chairs of ordinary size with which, in strange incongruity, the stage of the Lyceum was always set.

During the past fifteen or twenty years there have appeared upon the New York stage, generally unheralded, several little actors and actresses who have shown decided ability for the profession, while claiming no phenomenal talent, and in whom certainly there seemed to be fair promise of a brilliant future. Among these have been little Minnie Maddern, who appeared at the French Theatre on Fourteenth Street, May 30, 1870, as Sibyl Carew, in Tom Taylor’s Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing, supporting Miss Carlotta Leclercq as Anne. Her knowledge of stage business, her general carriage, and the careful delivery of her lines throughout the play were remarkable for a child of her years; and hers was considered one of the most satisfactory representations in the piece. The pleasant reputation she made there was sustained at Booth’s Theatre in the month of May, 1874, when she played Arthur in King John, with Junius Brutus Booth, Jr., in the titular part, Mrs. Agnes Booth as Constance, and John McCullough as the Bastard—a good cast. A more pretentious Arthur—an older, not a better one—was that of Master Percy Roselle, who played it in one act of King John at a matinée benefit given to Miss Matilda Heron, January 17, 1872.

Miss Jennie Yeamans was almost a Phenomenon, although, fortunately for herself, she was never subjected by her managers to the forcing process. As Joseph in a burlesque of Richelieu, at the Olympic, in February, 1871, she was very good, second only to George Fox as the Cardinal-Duke, whom, with a piece of chalk, she assisted in drawing the awful circle of the Tammany Ring around the form of Miss Lillie Eldridge as Julie. The solemnity of the entire performance on the child’s part, her wonderful command of her features, and her display of a dry, apparently unconscious humor, all in the true spirit of burlesque, were delightful to contemplate. She was equally good and amusing in a part of an entirely different nature, Notah, the Little Pappoose, in Augustin Daly’s Horizon, a little later in the same season at the same house. Representing an Indian child who had no knowledge of the English tongue, and who united to the natural mischievousness of childhood all of the untamed viciousness of the Indian nature, she was captured on the plains by the Hon. Sundown Bowse (G. L. Fox), and she made that gentleman’s stage existence more than a burden to him through several acts. When Charles Fisher played Falstaff at the Fifth Avenue Theatre she was an excellent William Page.

Miss Mabel Leonard, apparently some five years old, supported H. J. Montague at Wallack’s Theatre in the month of October, 1874, when the Romance of a Poor Young Man was produced, playing with a good deal of skill a little Breton peasant girl. The same young lady and Bijou Heron were the children in Miss Morris’s version of East Lynne, called Miss Multon, at the Union Square Theatre in November, 1876. Their judicious training, and the careful acting of their not unimportant parts, added much to the general completeness of the drama, and will be still vividly remembered by all now living who were play-goers years ago.

Of all the children who have appeared upon the stage during the past twenty years, Bijou Heron was one of the brightest and most promising. In face refined, intelligent, and attractive, in voice pleasant and sympathetic, in figure neat, graceful, and petite even for her years, she had all the personal requirements of success in her profession, combined with careful training, quick comprehension, tact, intelligence, and love for her art. As the only child, and as the hope and idol of a once favorite actress, whose popularity was of so comparatively recent a date that she had not passed out of the memory of the theatre-goers of her daughter’s time, she was kindly and affectionately received in New York for Matilda Heron’s sake, even before she had won for herself, and by her own exertions, so many friends here.

After long preparation she made her first appearance on any stage at Daly’s Fifth Avenue Theatre, Twenty-eighth Street, on April 14, 1874, in a play entitled Monsieur Alphonse, from the French of the younger Dumas, by Mr. Daly, and first presented that evening in this country. It was probably one of the most thoroughly successful débuts witnessed here in many years. Aside from the shyness and constraint so natural to the débutante, and without which no true actor ever stepped for the first time before a critical public, she bore herself naturally, simply, and with charming grace. The part is long and difficult, not one of the commonplace, childish rôles usually intrusted to infant players, nor one of the high tragedy star rôles sometimes inflicted upon juvenile prodigies, but a bit of leading juvenile business requiring more than ordinary intelligence and skill upon the part of its representative. Many actresses who have been years upon the stage, and who are considered beyond the average in their playing, would have played it with less appreciation and success.

Of the juvenile actors of the present time something has already been said. As a rule they belong to the legitimate branches of the profession, and they are as rational, perhaps, as is the drummer-boy of the army, the elevator-boy of society, or the cash-boy of trade. Alice in Wonderland adorns a charming tale, Prince and Pauper and Little Lord Fauntleroy point a pretty moral, even Editha’s Burglar may have his uses; but, take them as a whole, it is a difficult matter to determine the exact position of the Infant Phenomena upon the stage. They occupy, perhaps, the neutral ground between the amateurs and the monstrosities, without belonging to either class, or to art. As professional performers, although in embryo, they cannot share exemption from the severe tests of criticism with those who only play at being players; and as human beings, although undeveloped, they cannot be judged as leniently as are the learnèd pigs and the trained monkeys from whom some of Mr. Darwin’s disciples might believe them to be evolved. The public demands them, however, and dramatists make them; therefore let them pass for stars!

ACT V.
A CENTURY OF AMERICAN HAMLETS.

A CENTURY OF AMERICAN HAMLETS.

Hamlet, in his wholesome advice to the players, in his command to the garrulous old gentleman who would have been his father-in-law had Hamlet been a low comedy instead of a high tragedy part, that the players be well bestowed, and in his bold assertion that the play’s the thing, showed plainly how great was his interest in the drama, and how keen his appreciation of what the Profession ought to be. Hamlet has done much for the players, but the players have cruelly wronged Hamlet. They have mouthed him, and strutted him, and bellowed him, have sawn him in the air with their hands, and have torn his passions to tatters, till it were better for Hamlet often that the town-crier himself had spoken his lines. A very few of our tragedians of the city have had enough respect for the character of Hamlet to let him alone. Others have done full justice to Hamlet, and as Hamlet have reflected credit upon Hamlet and upon themselves; but there have been players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, who, not to speak it profanely, having neither the accent of Christians nor the gait of Christian, pagan, or man, have made nights and matinées hideous with the part, and have done murder most foul to Hamlet.

There can be no question that New York is the dramatic metropolis of the United States—and despite the absence of anything like State aid—as certainly as Paris is the capital of France, and as surely as London is the centre of Great Britain. A New York success is of as much importance to the new play and to the young player as is the crown of the Academy to the new book, or the degree to the young doctor; and a history of Hamlet in New York, therefore, is virtually a history of Hamlet in America.

The tragedy has been played here during the last century and a quarter in many languages, by actors of all ages and of both sexes, in blond wigs and in natural black hair, with elaborate scenery and with no scenery at all, by almost every tragedian in the country, and on the stage of almost every theatre in the city with the exception of Wallack’s last theatre, now Palmer’s. It has been burlesqued, and sung as an opera; and its representatives have been good, bad, and very, very indifferent. So much is there to be said about Hamlet in New York that the great difficulty in preparing this sketch of its career is the proper and natural selection of what not to say.

EDMUND KEAN.

Hamlet was first presented in the city of New York on the evening of the 26th of November, 1761, and at the “New Theatre in Chappel Street”—now Beekman Street—near Nassau, the younger Lewis Hallam, the original Hamlet in America (at Philadelphia, in the autumn of 1759), playing the titular part. Hallam was a versatile actor, who was on the stage in this country for over fifty years, and always popular. Concerning his Hamlet very little is now known, except the curious statement in the Memoirs of Alexander Graydon, published in 1811, that Hallam once ventured to appear as Hamlet in London—“and was endured!” He was the acknowledged leading tragedian of the New York stage until his retirement in 1806, and he is known to have played Hamlet as late as 1797, when he must have been close upon sixty years of age. Mr. Ireland is of the impression that John Hodgkinson, a contemporary of Hallam’s, who appeared as Hamlet in Charleston, South Carolina, early in the present century, conceded Hallam’s rights to the character in the metropolis, and never attempted it here.

The first Hamlet in New York in point of quality, and perhaps the second in point of time, was that of Thomas Abthorpe Cooper, who played the part at the John Street Theatre on the 22d of November, 1797, although Mr. Ireland believes that he was preceded by Mr. Moreton at the theatre on Greenwich Street, in the summer of the same year, as he had played the Ghost to Moreton’s Hamlet in Baltimore a short time before. William Dunlap speaks in the highest terms of Cooper’s Hamlet, and John Bernard ranks it with the Hamlet of John Philip Kemble himself.

James Fennell, a brilliant but uncertain English actor, who came to America in 1794, was the next Hamlet worthy of note to appear in New York. He was at the John Street Theatre as early as 1797, but he does not seem to have undertaken the character of the Dane until 1806, when he was at the Park for a few nights. He was an eccentric person, who figures in all of the dramatic memoirs of his time, and who published in 1841 a very remarkable book, called an Apology for his own life. Educated for the Church, he became in turn—and nothing long—an actor in the provinces of England, a teacher of declamation in Paris, a writer for the press in London, and a salt-maker, a bridge-builder, a lecturer, an editor, a school-master, and again and again an actor in America. John Bernard speaks of him as that “whirligig-weathercock-fellow Fennell,” and as “the maddest madman I ever knew.” He was excellent as Othello and Iago, and, according to Mr. Ireland, “beyond all competition as Zanga,” but concerning his Hamlet history is silent.

WILLIAM AUGUSTUS CONWAY.

John Howard Payne enjoys the distinction of being the first American Hamlet who was born in America, and he had been born but seventeen years when he played Hamlet at the Park Theatre in May, 1809. Two years later, on the 5th of April, 1811, he introduced the tragedy to Albany audiences, and his Hamlet, naturally, was as immature and as amateur as it was premature.

Other juvenile tragedians followed Master Payne upon the stage when they should have been in bed, notably Master George F. Smith, who played Hamlet at the Park Theatre on the 28th of March, 1822, and, very notably, Master Joseph Burke, who played in Dublin in 1824, when he was five years old, and who was recognized as a star in Hamlet in the United States when he was twelve.

But to leave the pygmies and return to the giants. Play-goers in New York between the years 1810 and 1821 were blessed, as play-goers have never been blessed before, in being able to enjoy and to compare the performances of three of the greatest actors it has ever been the lot of any single pair of eyes to see or of any single pair of ears to hear: to wit, Cooke, Kean, and Booth. George Frederick Cooke arrived in America in 1810, and remained here until his death in 1812. Setting at defiance all the laws of nature, society, and art, he was in nothing more remarkable than in the fact that in the whole history of the drama in this country he is the only really great tragedian, old or young, who never attempted to play Hamlet here. His diary records his failure in the part in London years before; and Leigh Hunt, who praises him highly in other lines, says that he could willingly spare the recollection of his Hamlet, and that “the most accomplished character on the stage he converted into an unpolished, obstinate, sarcastic madman.”

JAMES WILLIAM WALLACK.

Edmund Kean first played Hamlet in New York in the month of December, 1820, Junius Brutus Booth in the October of the following year. Concerning these men and their rivalry volumes have been written; each had his enthusiastic admirers, and the Hamlet of each has become a matter of history. That Kean believed in his own Hamlet in his younger days there can be no question now, and he gave to it the closest study until the widow of Garrick induced him to alter his reading of the “closet scene,” and to adopt the manner of her band; an innovation which left him ever after dissatisfied with himself in that part of the tragedy. Hazlitt considered Kean’s kissing of Ophelia’s hand, in the famous scene between them in Act III., “the finest commentary that was ever made on Shakspere.... The manner in which Mr. Kean acted in the scene of the play before the King and Queen,” he adds, “was the most daring of any, and the force and animation which he gave it cannot be too highly applauded. Its extreme boldness bordered ‘on the verge of all we hate,’ and the effect it produced was a test of the extraordinary powers of this extraordinary actor.” The younger Booth, writing of the elder Kean, defends his father’s foe in the following noble words: “The fact that Kean disliked to act Hamlet, and failed to satisfy his critics in that character, is no proof that his personation was false. If it was consistent with his conception, and that conception was intelligible, as it must have been, it was true. What right have I, whose temperament and mode of thinking are dissimilar to yours, to denounce your exposition of such a puzzle as Hamlet? He is the epitome of mankind, not an individual: a sort of magic mirror in which all men and all women see the reflex of themselves, and therefore has his story always been, is still, and will ever be the most popular of stage tragedies.”

That Edwin Booth should not have written concerning the Hamlet of his father in the same charming vein is greatly to be regretted. There are men still living who recollect the elder Booth in the part—he played it for the last time in New York in 1843—and to these it is one of the most delightful of memories. Thomas R. Gould, writing in 1868, sums up as follows his own ideas of the Hamlet of this great man: “The total impression left by his impersonation at the time of its occurrence, and which still abides, was that of a spiritual melancholy, at once acute and profound. This quality colored his tenderest feeling and his airiest fancy. You felt its presence even when he was off the stage.”

This famous decade of the New York stage saw other great actors and other great Hamlets, some of whom in point of time preceded Kean and Booth. Joseph George Holman played Hamlet at the Park Theatre in September, 1812, James William Wallack, on the same stage, in September, 1818, Robert Campbell Maywood in 1819, John Jay Adams in 1822, William Augustus Conway in 1824, Thomas Hamblin in 1825, and last, but not least, William Charles Macready in October, 1826.

WILLIAM C. MACREADY.

Of the Hamlet of John R. Duff there is, strange to say, no record in New York, although he played here occasionally between the years 1814 and 1827. He was very popular in Boston and Philadelphia, and a writer in the Boston Centinel, in the autumn of 1810, does “not hesitate to say, that in some of the scenes [of Hamlet], and those of no ordinary grade of difficulty, he has never been excelled on the Boston boards.” His wife is still considered by certain old play-goers to have been the best Ophelia ever seen in the United States, and no account of the tragedy in this country can be complete without mention of her name. As Ophelia, in New York and elsewhere, she supported the elder Booth, the elder Kean, the elder Conway, Cooper, Payne, Wallack, and other stars; and Mr. Booth wrote to George Holland in 1836 that he considered her “the greatest actress in the world.”

Mr. Macready was the first of a trio of remarkable Hamlets who came to this country from England at about the same period. Charles Kean was the second, in 1830, Charles Kemble the third, in 1832. Of Macready’s Hamlet he says himself, in his Reminiscences: “The thought and practice I have through my professional career devoted to it, made it in my own judgment and in those [sic] of critics whom I had most reason to fear and respect, one of the most finished, though not the most popular, in my repertoire.”

In Cole’s Biography of Charles Kean, inspired by its subject and written under his direction, if not at his dictation, is the following account of his first attempt at Hamlet: “The new Hamlet was received with enthusiasm. From his entrance to the close of the performance the applause was unanimous and incessant. The celebrated ‘Is it the King?’ in the third act, produced an electrical effect. To use a favorite expression of his father’s, ‘The pit rose at him.’”

Concerning the Hamlet of Charles Kemble, his daughter wrote, in 1832: “I have acted Ophelia three times with my father, and each time in that beautiful scene where his madness and his love gush forth together, like a torrent swollen with storms that bears a thousand blossoms on its turbid waters, I have experienced such deep emotion as hardly to be able to speak.... Now the great beauty of all my father’s performances, but particularly of Hamlet, is a wonderful accuracy in the detail of the character which he represents,” etc.

All of this would seem to be ex parte evidence, but it is interesting nevertheless; and neither Mr. Macready, Mr. Kean, nor Miss Kemble, perhaps, was very far astray. On the other hand, George Henry Lewes (On Actors and the Art of Acting) says that “Macready’s Hamlet was, in his opinion, bad, due allowance being made for the intelligence it displayed. He was lachrymose and fretful; too fond of a cambric pocket-handkerchief to be really effective.... It was ‘a thing of shreds and patches,’ not a whole.” The flourishing of this handkerchief just before the play scene gave great offence to Forrest, who had the bad taste to hiss it in Edinburgh; and thus began the wretched feud which nearly convulsed two continents, and ended in bloodshed at Astor Place, New York.

CHARLES KEMBLE.

Confessing that the elder Kean could not have surpassed the younger in certain melodramatic parts, Lewes adds that it was never an intellectual treat to see him (Charles Kean) play any of Shakspere’s heroes; and the author of The Actor says: “Charles Kean’s Hamlet has many beauties, but he is physically disqualified to do justice to any character in tragedy.... Nature has given him a most unmelodious voice, the sound of which seems to flow rather through his nose than its appropriate organ, a face altogether unsuited to the character he attempts, and we doubt if she ever intended him for an actor.” Apropos of Kean’s difficulties in the utterance of certain of the consonants, particularly m and n, the London Punch acknowledged his antiquarian researches, and thanked him for having proved Shylock to be a vegetarian by his reading of the following lines:

“You take my life
When you do take the beans whereby I live!”

Macready described Charles Kemble as a first-rate actor in second-rate parts, and said that “in Hamlet he was Charles Kemble at his heaviest,” while other critics dismiss his Hamlet as “passable.” Thus do the doctors of criticism disagree.

It was said of Forrest, many years ago, that “his Hamlet seemed like some philosophical Hercules rather than the sad, unhappy youth of Denmark.” If this was true of him when first spoken, it was much more true of him in his representation of the part during the later years of his life, and as he is only remembered by the large majority of the play-goers of the present. Forrest was too great an artist to play badly any part he ever undertook, but his Hamlet certainly was the least pleasing of all his Shaksperian rôles. Physically, he was altogether too robust. His too, too solid flesh was bone and muscle. The soul of Hamlet, as drawn by his creator, and as conceived by every thorough Shaksperian student since Shakspere’s day, could hardly have existed in a frame so magnificent as that which nature had given Edwin Forrest. No subtle mind, wily as was Hamlet’s, whether it were sound or unsound, was ever found in so sound a body. Forrest, when he was young enough to play Hamlet, never knew what nerves or indigestion were. He gave to the part no little thought, and no doubt he understood it thoroughly; but that it did not suit him physically, and that he realized the fact, seemed often manifest when he was playing it. He presented the tragedy at Niblo’s Garden in 1860, Edwin Booth—at the Winter Garden—appearing in the same part at the same time; and the contrast between the powerful robustious figure, deep chest tones, and somewhat ponderous action of the elder actor, and the lithe, poetic, romantic, melancholy rendition of the younger, was very marked.

CHARLES KEAN.

Forrest first played Hamlet in New York at the Park Theatre, in the month of October, 1829, when he was but twenty-three years of age; and at his last public appearance here, November 22, 1872, he read portions of the tragedy at Steinway Hall. Mr. Eddy, Mr. Studley, and other tragedians of Mr. Forrest’s “school of acting” were not more satisfactory in the part of Hamlet than was Mr. Forrest himself. John McCullough, however, a pupil of Forrest’s, and his leading man for a number of years, met with more success. Although a native of Ireland, his professional life was begun and almost entirely spent in America, and he may be considered a native Hamlet, to this manor born. His voice and action in certain scenes where loud declamation is demanded by the text were quite after the manner of Forrest, but as a whole he excelled his master in the part. He was free from mannerisms, his figure was manly and striking, he was neither too puny nor too burly, his sentiment was not mawkish, nor was his honesty brutal.

George Vandenhoff made his first appearance in America at the Park Theatre, New York, on the 21st of September, 1842, in the character of Hamlet, when Miss Sarah Hildreth, afterwards the wife of Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, was the Ophelia. The Polonius was Henry Placide, whom Mr. Vandenhoff, in his Leaves from an Actor’s Note-Book, called “the best Polonius and the best actor in his varied line in this country”; the Ghost was William Abbott, a superior actor in the higher range of parts; the Grave-digger was John Fisher, very popular and very able; the Horatio was Thomas Barry, who won for himself in later years no little distinction in New York and in Boston in the highest tragedy rôles; and the first Mrs. Thomas Barry, an actress of some ability, was Mr. Vandenhoff’s Player Queen.

EDWIN FORREST.

The Hamlet of Edward L. Davenport was never so popular as it should have been, nor was Mr. Davenport himself properly appreciated as an actor during the last years of his life. He was out of the fashion so long that until a far-sighted management engaged him to play the part of Brutus, during the famous run of Julius Cæsar at Booth’s Theatre in 1875-76, he was only known to the younger generation of theatre-goers, when he was known at all, as Miss Fanny Davenport’s father! That Mr. Davenport, at the close of his long career, should have been banished to the Grand Opera-house, and to Wood’s Museum, in upper Broadway, is a stronger argument in favor of the alleged degeneracy of the drama in this country than is the unhealthy popularity of the current variety shows, and the emotional plays from the French.

The faithful band of Mr. Davenport’s friends who followed him to the west side of the town, during his occasional visits to the metropolis, found nothing in his acting to wean them from their allegiance, while he made many new and enthusiastic friends among the gods of the gallery, those keen and appreciative critics whose verdict, although not always the general verdict, is ever, in an artistic way, the most valuable and pleasing to the actor. But galleries, alas! do not fill managers’ pockets, nor do they lead the popular taste; and Mr. Davenport, at one time a universal favorite in New York with galleries, boxes, and pits, lived to find himself, through no fault of his own, and to the lasting discredit of metropolitan audiences, neglected and ignored.

Hamlet was not Mr. Davenport’s greatest part, as it is not the greatest part of many of the popular Hamlets of the present; his Sir Giles Overreach, his Bill Sikes, his Brutus, and his William, in Black-eyed Susan, were as fine as his Hamlet, if not finer; nevertheless it was a singularly complete conception of the character—scholarly, finished, and profound. In his younger days he played the part many times, and with some of the “finest combinations of talent” which the records of the stage can show. On the 16th of October, 1856, at Burton’s Theatre, New York, Mark Smith was the Polonius, Burton and Placide the Grave-diggers, Charles Fisher the Ghost, and Mrs. Davenport the Ophelia to his Hamlet—a combination of strength in male parts almost unequalled. At Niblo’s Garden, in 1861, Mrs. Barrow was his Ophelia, William Wheatley his Laertes, Thomas Placide his First Grave-digger, James William Wallack, Jr., his Ghost, and Mrs. Wallack the Queen; and at the Academy of Music, on the 21st of January, 1871, he played one act of Hamlet to the Ophelia of Miss Agnes Ethel, on the occasion of the famous Holland Benefit, when the audience, as large as the great house would hold, was the only audience to which Mr. Davenport played Hamlet in many years that was at all worthy of the actor or his part. Miss Ethel was a perfect picture of the most beautiful Ophelia. It was her first attempt at anything like a legitimate tragedy part, and was decidedly successful.