Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 September 1879 — EDWIN BOOTH. [ARTICLE]

EDWIN BOOTH.

The Great Tragedian Going to Englnml. [From the New York Tribune.] The most important and interesting theatrical hews that has reached us in many a day is the news that Edwin Booth intends to act in London, and that negotiations are even now in progress, between Henry Irving and himself, with a view to his appearance in that city. Edwin Booth is our greatest tragedian. He is in the prime of life; he has been thirty years an actor; his name is associated with some of the noblest dramatic undertakings that ever were attempted; he has been of incalculable benefit to the stage, equally by his pure life, high principled conduct, dignity, integrity, and rare genius; he never has had anrequal on the American stage in Hamlet or in Richelieu; he stands alone in those characters which are colored with romantic weirdness, and of which the central attribute is spiritual pathos; he has been accepted in a larger repertory of great characters than any contemporary actor has even attempted; and he is a better actor today than at any previous period of his life. Edwin Booth on the London stage, accordingly, will be a very prominent and significant figure—for he will illustrate to the British public not alone his own genius and accomplishments, but the condition of American taste and scholarship with reference to the drama in its. highest branches. That public has already seen our greatest comedian. Jefferson, and has awarded to him evon a higher rank than was claimed for him here—not hesitating to name him with the best artists of the best school in France. When it has seen Edwin Booth it will fully understand to what degree of excellence the art of acting has been carried in the New World Mr. Booth, will go over next spring, and it is not unlikely that Mr. Irving, a little later in the same year, will make his longcontemplated visit to America. Mr. Booth acted in London in September, 1861, under Buckstone’s management, in the Haymarket- appearing as Shy lock, Sir Giles Overreach and Richelieu—and subsequently in Liverpool and Manchester; but that was eighteen years ago, in war time! It will be very different now. Mr. Booth should—and we confidently believe he will—play great engagements in London and the principal cities of the kingdom, and afterwards in Paris and the dramatic centers of Germany. His standard repertory how includes Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, lago, Macbeth, Shylock, Wolsey, Richard 11., Richard 111., Benedick, Petruchio, Richelieu. Payne’s Brutus, Bertuccio in the “The Fool’s Revenge,” Ruy Bias and Don Csesar de Bazan, and this list could be considerably extended. It is an extraordinary thing that any actor should have attained to an even degree of excellence in such a wide variety of great characters. Mr. Booth has done this—and, in several of them, has risen to a lonely pinnacle of eminence, peerless and incomparable.