impressed his style on the acting and on the popular taste of his generation, he inspired numerous imitators, and, when at his meridian, he was the most widely and generally admired actor in America. Upon the part of Othello he bestowed exceptional attention, and his performance of it was the most symmetrical, rounded, and finished of his achievements,—unless that distinction should be awarded to his Febro, in "The Broker of Bogota." His appearance in Othello was imposing, notwithstanding the ridiculous attire with which he invested himself, and his acting was powerful and at times fraught with a certain barbaric splendor of distinction, all his own. He wore a tunic, cut low in the neck, dark tights, low shoes fastened with straps and adorned with buckles, an ample silk mantle spotted with large gilt leaves, a turban-like hat, resembling an inverted saucepan, and a dress sword. His face was clean-shaved, except for his usual mustache and tuft of hair under the lower lip, and his color was dark brown. In the opening scenes he bore himself with a fine, solid dignity, suitable to a massive person and a composed and deliberate mind. In the passion and agony of the third and fourth acts he put forth his powers with prodigious effect. His delivery of the Farewell was a sonorous, various, skilful achievement of elocution, and at that point his rich voice was heard with delight. The ensuing transition was made. suddenly and with startling effect, when, with a sudden insane fury, he rushed upon Iago, clutching him by the throat, and in the speech beginning, "If thou dost slander her and torture me," he reached a supreme altitude of frenzy. In the last scene he so arranged the stage business that he was "discovered," Desdemona, meanwhile, being asleep in bed. The killing was done quickly, and with judicious, artistic avoidance of coarse and horrible literalism, an avoidance as effective as it was unusual in his acting. The subsequent action, on the revelation of Iago's treachery, was nobly tragic. No player could have spoken with more effect, "Wash me in steep-down gulfs of liquid fire." The suicide was accomplished with one blow of a dagger, and the death was immediate. On the American stage the scepter that slipped from the hand of Edwin Forrest was grasped by the hand of Edwin Booth. It was my fortune to see Booth many times in Othello. His performance varied greatly; it was often defective by reason of a certain element of unfitness,—the involuntary infusion into it of a mind too keenly perceptive and intuitive for the character; but that defect was not always present, and the performance was invariably a skilful, fascinating work of art. It especially excelled in the expression of Othello's love for Desdemona,—a love which contemplates its object as invested with sanctity; and also in the winning denotement of Othello's magnanimity. On one occasion, at Booth's Theater, it was my privilege to see him act the part to perfection. Nothing could have excelled it-I doubt if it has ever been equaled. I talked with him after the performance had ended and told him that I had never seen him act the part as well. "I have never played Othello as well before," he said, "and I shall never play it as well again.” He had, though greatly agitated, succeeded in maintaining absolute control of himself and of the part and, at the same time, in creating an effect of complete spontaneity and abandonment. His feelings, for he was a man of tender heart and acute sensibility, notwithstanding the exceptional dominance of intellect in his nature, had been so completely aroused that, after the self-contained, majestic opening, he seemed to be swept along upon a veritable tempest of passion, and he carried his auditors with him as leaves are swept by the whirlwind. In the killing of Desdemona which, terrible though it be, is, in her husband's belief, a righteous immolation, Othello is like a priest at the altar. There is no anger in his conduct, no fury, no ferocity. The man has passed through a hell of anguish and passionate conflict, has fallen in epileptic fits, has barely survived an ordeal of maddening torture, and at last he is calm, in the concentration of deadly despair. despair. Desdemona must die, because, as he believes, it is necessary and right. He is not doing a murder; he is doing what he thinks to be an act of justice. He confidently supposes himself to be fulfilling a sacred duty of sacrifice. He is the wretched victim of a horrible delusion, but in that awful moment he is a sublime figure, an incarnation at once of rectitude and misery. That was the emi nence to which Edwin Booth attained, in his personation of Othello, and his acting, in that scene, has not been surpassed by any performer of our time. One of the most pathetic moments in acting that I have known, or that, as I believe, was ever known by anybody, was the moment when the German tragedian Bogumil Davison (1818-1872), playing Othello, raised the dead body of Desdemona in his arms, and swaying to and fro, in utter, abject, unspeakable, and indescribable misery, with excruciating sobs, three or four times, in accents of heartrending lamentation, moaned out her name. The Davison performance of Othello was given, December 29, 1866, at the old Winter Garden Theater (which stood on the west side of Broadway, nearly opposite the end of Bond Street, New York), in association with Edwin Booth, as Iago, and Madame Methua-Scheller, as Desdemona. Davison spoke German, Booth and the members of his company spoke English, and Madame Methua-Scheller spoke both languages. That was the first of the polyglot representations of Shakspere with which the local stage has been disfigured, -but it discovered some remarkably fine effects. Davison was, at that time, fulfilling an engagement at the old Stadt Theater, in the Bowery. In the production of "Othello" which was made for him by Booth, at the Winter Garden, the colloquies that begin the fourth act, comprehending Othello's epileptic fit and Cassio's contemptuous reference to his mistress, Bianca, which Othello overhears, supposing it to be allusive to Desdemona,-were restored. That part of the tragedy, containing the final and decisive stroke of Iago's infernal malignity, contains also such foulness and such excess of agony, that, commonly, it is omitted. Many lines of this play, indeed, must be discarded in order that it may be made endurable, not to say decent, in a public representation, and, matchless though it is, as a piece of dramatic construction, the community, perhaps, would not suffer an irreparable loss if it were altogether relegated from the stage to the library. There can be no doubt, however, that it exactly fulfils the purpose of tragedy as defined by Aristotle, the excitation, namely, of pity and terror. No adequate presentment of it ever yet failed to provide a solemn warn ing against the passion of jealousy-always cruel in its operation, and often appalling in its consequences. Edwin Booth made a fine production of "Othello," October, 1863, at the Winter Garden Theater,-burned down March 22, 1867, and another, even more elaborate and splendid, at Booth's Theater, April 12, 1869. On the latter occasion Iago was acted by Edwin Adams, while Mary McVicker (she was married to Booth in the following June) appeared as Desdemona, and, in the fifth act, sang the Willow Song, the effect of which was strangely ominous and sadly beautiful. It had not, I believe, been heard on the dramatic stage of America before that time; it has not been heard there since. Edwin Booth gave incomparably the best performance of Iago that has been seen in our day,-meaning in the period, about fifty years, since 1860. His Iago, when in company, was entirely frank and not only plausible but winning. The gay, light-hearted, good-humored soldier whom he thus presented would have deceived anybody, and did easily deceive Othello, who, as Kemble truly and shrewdly remarked, is "a slow man,"-meaning, of course, a man slow to those passions which shatter the judgment. Nothing could be more absolutely specious and convincingly sympathetic than Booth's voice, manner, and whole personality were, when he said, "There's matter in 't indeed, if he be angry!" The duplicity of the character, when visible in association with others, was made evident to the audience by the subtle expedient of gesture and facial play, by perfect employment of the indefinable but instantly perceptible expedient of transparency-but it was only when alone that his lago revealed his frightful wickedness and his fiendish joy in it, and there was in that revelation an icy malignity of exultation that caused a strange effect of mingled admiration, wonder, and fear. Another exceptionally fine performance of Iago was that given by Edward L. Davenport. A reminiscent comment made by the experienced old journalist and critic John Taylor (1833), relative to Henderson's superb embodiment of Iago, exactly indicates the peculiar merit of that of Davenport: "He admirably mingled the subtlety of the character with its reputed honesty." As to the style of Booth and Davenport, no competent judge of acting ever questioned its apparent spontaneity, flexibility, and absolute consonance with Nature. No actor of the present day has equaled either of those actors, in the matter of being "natural" without ceasing to be artistic and interesting-and they thus excelled, it should be remembered, in poetic tragedy, not by the employment of photographic copies of the surface aspects of vulgar life. If Davenport's personation of Othello,- for he also acted that part with abundant success,had been as deep in feeling as it was symmetrical in form it would have been perfect. Although we must detest Iago even while we admire and shudder at him, he not only supplies the motive and inspires the action of the tragedy, but also he is the most interesting figure in it, even if the interest be the fascinated loathing inspired by a deadly reptile. It is not, however, possible to consider that terrible character, and describe in detail its stage history, within this article. Charles Fechter (1824-1879), within his appropriate professional field, was a remarkably fine actor, but Fechter, when performing in Shakspere, was such an eccentricity as imposed a severe tax on critical patience. The Shaksperian parts that he assumed were Hamlet, Iago, and Othello, and of his performances of those parts lago was undoubtedly the best. He failed as Othello. He lacked dignity; he was weak, fantastic, completely unimpressive. In his utterance of the Farewell he rose from a chair and declaimed the lines, as if delivering an address,-the bad effect of which proceeding was intensified by his sing-song delivery and execrable utterance of the English language. The business with which he began the last scene would, alone, suffice to prove his absolute lack of comprehension of the character. He went to a mirror and stared into it at his countenance and then spoke the words which Othello utters, relative to the necessity of killing Desdemona,— "It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul,Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars! It is the cause,-" to indicate that Othello ascribes Desdemona's (supposed) infidelity to the fact of her husband's color and racial difference. In the killing of Desdemona Fechter's Othello pursued his terrified wife to the chamber door and dragged her back to the bed, to smother and strangle her. In the ensuing scene, after the treachery has been revealed, he forced Iago to his knees and made a show of stabbing him. His performance, though it deserved no admiration, did not lack admirers. Foreign misrepresentations of Shakspere's characters seldom suffer from lack of praise. The question as to the representation of Othello is, after all, a simple one: Should the character and experience be interpreted before the public as poetry or as prose? Discussion of that subject was much stimulated when the eminent Italian actor Tommaso Salvini first made his appearance here, September 16, 1873, at the Academy of Music-acting Othello, and presenting an Italian ideal of the part. The excellence of Salvini as an executant in the practice of his art has never been doubted or denied. He is a great actor, one of the greatest that have ever lived. In the characters of Conrad, in "La Morte Civile," and Niger, in "The Gladiator," he surpassed competition. In King Saul, a grand and terrible figure, as drawn by Alfieri, from the old Hebrew scripture, he was artistic perfection. Those parts, and certain others which could be named, appertain to the dramatic literature of his native land, and they are wholly within his comprehension. In the great characters of Shakspere, because they do not truly exist in the Italian language, he was always, and necessarily, obstructed, by his lack of a full understanding of the conceptions of the English poet. His performance of Othello was tremendously effective as a piece of dramatic execution, but it was radically and ruinously false in ideal. The love of Othello for Desdemona is devotional, not sensual. When they meet, at Cyprus, he hails her with the expressive words, "O my soul's joy!" The key-note is struck in that greeting: "If it were now to die, 'T were now to be most happy; for, I fear, The exquisite poetry of that speech has not been transmuted into the Italian lan |