Shadows of the Stage

Jefferson came home in 1866 and passed ten years in America--years of fame and fortune, whereof the record is smooth prosperity. Its most important personal incident was his sec...

NOTE.--At the Garrick club, London, June 26, 1885, it was my fortune to meet Mr. Fladgate, "father of the Garrick," who was then aged 86. The veteran displayed astonishing resou...

Mrs. Asia Booth Clarke, wife of the distinguished and excellent comedian John S. Clarke, wrote a life of her father, Junius Brutus Booth, in which she has recounted interesting...

Knight's conjecture that _The Merry Wives_ was written before the histories were written is a plausible conjecture, and perhaps worthy of some consideration. It is not easy to b...

In the drama of _The Middleman_ Willard had to impersonate an inventor, of the absorbed, enthusiastic, self-regardless, fanatical kind. Cyrus Blenkarn is a potter. His genius an...

The sustained poetic exaltation of that embodiment, its unity as a grand and sympathetic personage, and its exquisite simplicity were the qualities that gave it vitality in popu...

In old times Charles Fisher often figured in the old comedies, and he was one of the last of the thin and rapidly lessening group of actors capable of presenting those pieces--w...

It is not to be denied that lovely words are spoken to Jessica, and that almost equally lovely words are spoken by her. Essayists upon the _Merchant_ have generally accepted her...

Edwin Booth has been tried by some of the most terrible afflictions that ever tested the fortitude of a human soul. Over his youth, plainly visible, impended the lowering cloud...

_The papers contained in this volume, chosen out of hundreds that the author has written on dramatic subjects, are assembled with the hope that they may be accepted, in their pr...

The persons in _Cymbeline_, moreover--aside from the exceptional character of Imogen--do not come home to a spectator's realisation, whether of sympathy or repugnance. It is lik...

Hermione has usually been represented as an elderly woman and by such an actress as is technically called "heavy." She ought to be represented as about thirty years of age at th...

Much of Salvini's mechanism in Lear was crude. He put the king behind a table, in the first scene--which had the effect of preparation for a lecture; and it pleased him to speak...

"Besides, the King's name is a tower of strength." Thousands of people all over the world honour, and ought to honour, every word that falls from the pen of Alfred Tennyson. He...

The basis of fact upon which Sir Walter Scott built his novel of the _Bride of Lammermoor_ is given in the introduction that he wrote for it in 1829. Janet Dalrymple, daughter o...

It was said by the poet Aaron Hill, in allusion to Barton Booth, that the blind might have seen him in his voice and the deaf might have heard him in his visage. Such a statemen...

Purists customarily insist that the old comedies are sacred; that no one of their celestial commas or holy hyphens can be omitted without sin; and that the alteration of a sente...

With the throne scene began the spiritual conflict. At least it then began to be disclosed; and from that moment onward the state of Richard was seen to be that of Orestes pursu...

Her first remarkable hits were made in Emilia, Meg Merrilies, and Nancy--the latter in _Oliver Twist_. But it was not till she met with Macready that the day of her deliverance...

"The fame of the actor more than that of any other artist is an evanescent one--a 'bubble reputation'--indeed, and necessarily so from the conditions under which his genius is e...