ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an extract from Life and Art of Edwin Booth, London, 1893. In the mid-nineteenth century, the sceptre of theatrical monarch passed into the hands of Edwin Booth. It was in the two aspects of madness—at first incipient, then accomplished—that Booth denoted his keenest insight. The sense of relief succeeding the sense of torture, the vague imagery, the broken thoughts, the ghastly, haunting phantoms, and, interpenetrating all, the suggestion of what must have been the massive royalty and celestial goodness of this nature, which is so great, even in its ruin—all was embodied and expressed with absolute truth. in the splendid portraiture and suggestion of a true Shakespearian ideal, he employed an artistic method so clear, firm, and free that it seemed entirely spontaneous: no spectator remembered that he was merely acting: and he spoke the glorious verse of Shakespeare with a glittering eloquence that was at once music and beauty.
