Shadows of the Stage


Shadows of the Stage, by William Winter

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Title: Shadows of the Stage
Author: William Winter
Release Date: July 18, 2006 [EBook #18860]
Language: English
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SHADOWS OF THE STAGE
BY WILLIAM WINTER
"The best in this kind are but shadows"
SHAKESPEARE
NEW YORK MACMILLAN AND COMPANY AND LONDON 1893
COPYRIGHT, 1892, BY MACMILLAN & CO.
Set up and electrotyped May, 1892. Large Paper Edition printed May. Ordinary Edition reprinted June, August, November, 1892; January, June, October, November, 1893.
Norwood Press: J.S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith. Boston, Mass., U.S.A.

TO
Henry Irving
IN MEMORY AND IN HONOUR OF ALL THAT HE HAS DONE TO DIGNIFY AND ADORN THE STAGE AND TO ENNOBLE SOCIETY THIS BOOK IS GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED
"Cui laurus ?ternos honores Delmatico peperit triumpho"

PREFACE.
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 present form, as a part of the permanent record of our theatrical times. For at least thirty years it has been a considerable part of the constant occupation of the author to observe and to record the life of the contemporary stage. Since 1860 he has written intermittently in various periodicals, and since the summer of 1865 he has written continuously in the New York Tribune, upon actors and their art; and in that way he has accumulated a great mass of historical commentary upon the drama. In preparing this book he has been permitted to draw from his contributions to the Tribune, and also from his writings in Harper's Magazine and Weekly, in the London Theatre, and in Augustin Daly's Portfolio of Players. The choice of these papers has been determined partly by consideration of space and partly with the design of supplementing the author's earlier dramatic books, namely: Edwin Booth in Twelve Dramatic Characters; The Jeffersons; Henry Irving; The Stage Life of Mary Anderson; Brief Chronicles, containing eighty-six dramatic biographies; In Memory of McCullough; The Life of John Gilbert; The Life and Works of John Brougham; The Press and the Stage; The Actor and Other Speeches; and A Daughter of Comedy, being the life of Ada Rehan. The impulse of all those writings, and of the present volume, is commemorative. Let us save what we can.
"Sed omnes una manet nox, Et calcanda semel via leti."
W.W. APRIL 18, 1892.

CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
I. THE GOOD OLD TIMES 13
II. IRVING IN FAUST 30
III. ADELAIDE NEILSON 47
IV. EDWIN BOOTH 63
V. MARY ANDERSON 90
VI. OLIVIA 119
VII. ON JEFFERSON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY 130
VIII. ON JEFFERSON'S ACTING 151
IX. JEFFERSON AND FLORENCE 159
X. ON THE DEATH OF FLORENCE 169
XI. SHYLOCK AND PORTIA 178
XII. JOHN McCULLOUGH 185
XIII. CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN 206
XIV. LAWRENCE BARRETT 215
XV. IRVING IN RAVENSWOOD 226
XVI. MERRY WIVES AND FALSTAFF 243
XVII. ADA REHAN 258
XVIII. TENNYSON'S FORESTERS 269
XIX. ELLEN TERRY: MERCHANT OF VENICE 286
XX. RICHARD MANSFIELD 301
XXI. GENEVIEVE WARD 315
XXII. EDWARD S. WILLARD 322
XXIII. SALVINI 339
XXIV. IRVING AS EUGENE ARAM 348
XXV. CHARLES FISHER 367
XXVI. MRS. GILBERT 374
XXVII. JAMES LEWIS 379
XXVIII. A LEAF FROM MY JOURNAL 383

"--It so fell out that certain players We o'er-raught on the way: of these we told him; And there did seem in him a kind of joy To hear of it."
HAMLET.
"Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world--though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst--the cant of criticism is the most tormenting. I would go fifty miles on foot, for I have not a horse worth riding on, to kiss the hand of that man who will give up the reins of his imagination into his author's hands,--be pleased he knows not why and cares not wherefore."
TRISTRAM SHANDY.

SHADOWS OF THE STAGE.

I.
THE GOOD OLD TIMES.
It is recorded of John Lowin, an actor contemporary with Shakespeare and associated with several of Shakespeare's greater characters (his range was so wide, indeed, that it included Falstaff, Henry the Eighth, and Hamlet), that, having survived the halcyon days of "Eliza and our James" and lingered into the drab and russet period of the Puritans, when all the theatres in the British islands were suppressed, he became poor and presently kept a tavern, at Brentford, called The Three Pigeons. Lowin was born in 1576 and he died in 1654--his grave being in London, in the churchyard of St. Martin-in-the-Fields--so that, obviously, he was one of the veterans of the stage. He was in his seventy-eighth year when he passed away--wherefore in his last days he must have been "a