(He
illustrated Plato's rule that to the forming an artist of the very
highest rank a dash of insanity or what the world calls insanity is
indispensable.) He was a small-sized man--yet sharp observers noticed
that however crowded the stage might be in certain scenes, Booth
never seem'd overtopt or hidden. He was singularly spontaneous and
fluctuating; in the same part each rendering differ'd from any and
all others. He had no stereotyped positions and made no arbitrary
requirements on his fellow-performers.
As is well known to old play-goers, Booth's most effective part was
Richard III. Either that, or lago, or Shylock, or Pescara in "The
Apostate," was sure to draw a crowded house. (Remember heavy
pieces were much more in demand those days than now.) He was also
unapproachably grand in Sir Giles Overreach, in "A New Way to Pay Old
Debts," and the principal character in "The Iron Chest."
In any portraiture of Booth, those years, the Bowery Theatre, with its
leading lights, and the lessee and manager, Thomas Hamblin, cannot be
left out. It was at the Bowery I first saw Edwin Forrest (the play was
John Howard Payne's "Brutus, or the Fall of Tarquin," and it affected
me for weeks; or rather I might say permanently filter'd into my
whole nature,) then in the zenith of his fame and ability. Sometimes
(perhaps a veteran's benefit night,) the Bowery would group together
five or six of the first-class actors of those days--Booth, Forrest,
Cooper, Hamblin, and John R.
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