![]() ![]() He was an actor as Shelley was a poet, Raphael a painter, Mozart a musician, - an actor by every instinct of his nature, by the impulse of every drop of his blood. Ambition to excel and to shine was, of course, one of the feeders of the zeal which burned with such a pure and steady flame but it was only one. For forty years all his strength and industry, all his powers and parts, were concentrated upon the study and practice of his art. Booth surpassed even the custom of his class. The histrionic art has ever been a jealous mistress to her followers, and no class of professional men and women are, as a rule, so completely absorbed by their work as are actors and actresses. Physically he was nobly equipped for his work : with a voice of exceptional purity, range, and carrying power with a figure of medium height and size, but well knit and proportioned and with a mobile face, finely, almost faultlessly chiseled, lighted by dark eyes of extraordinary brilliancy and depth, and marked in repose by a cold but highly distinguished beauty. His intellect was vigorous, intuitive, and singularly lucid. Booth’s nature there was a remarkable combination of sensibility, thoughtfulness, power, and reserve. Edwin was undoubtedly inferior to his father in that plasticity which may be cultivated, but cannot be acquired yet his temperament was admirably well adapted to the needs of his craft, and especially of that department of the actor’s art to which, after a little experimenting at the outset of his professional life, he wholly devoted himself. was born to the royal purple in his infancy and youth he breathed the atmosphere of the stage, and histrionic traditions and aptitudes came to him as a part of his birthright. He was born to the buskin as truly as Edward III. Booth inherited from his father, Junius Brutus Booth,- an actor accounted by many competent critics the greatest of his brilliant period, - a definite bent and a full gift. The student of the history of the English stage will not find, outside of the Kemble and Kean families, a person whose equipment would vie with that of Edwin Booth including within the word “equipment” all that may be reasonably expected from tradition, heredity, and surroundings in early life. Irving’s Louis XI., Mathias, and Dubose will be recalled when his Hamlet and King Lear have quite slipped out of general recollection. ![]() Booth will be remembered as a classic tragedian, while it is more than probable that Mr. Irving, in his picturesque and versatile talents, has ever displayed an eccentric quality of which there was not a trace in the American performer. By turns a comedian, a player of melodrama, an attempter of tragedy, and a master of farce, Mr. Irving, it is fair to say that neither his career nor his success has been precisely upon the plane of Mr. Booth has had no rival as a tragedian among those actors who use our language and it is equally plain that there is to-day not even a candidate for his vacant place.Īs for Mr. Irving be left out of view, it is plain that for many years Mr. THE keen sense of loss which has come to the American people because of the death of Edwin Booth may well be shared by all the English-speaking communities of the world. ![]()
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