Edwin Booth

Lore & Background

Edwin Booth was born in Bel Air, Maryland, into the Anglo-American theatrical Booth family. He was the son of the famous actor Junius Brutus Booth and Mary Ann Holmes. He made his stage debut in Boston on September 10, 1849, in Colley Cibber's version of Richard III. After his father's death in 1852, Booth went on a worldwide tour, visiting Australia and Hawaii, and gained acclaim during an engagement in Sacramento, California, in 1856. In 1864, he appeared with his two brothers, John Wilkes and Junius Brutus Booth Jr., in Julius Caesar, the only time the three brothers performed together on the same stage. Immediately afterward, he began a production of Hamlet that became known as the 'hundred nights Hamlet,' setting a record until John Barrymore broke it in 1922.

After John Wilkes Booth's assassination of President Lincoln in April 1865, Edwin Booth abandoned the stage for many months. He disowned his brother and refused to have John's name spoken in his house. He returned to the stage in January 1866 at the Winter Garden Theatre, playing Hamlet, which became his signature role. In 1869, he founded Booth's Theatre in Manhattan, which opened with Romeo and Juliet. The theatre went bankrupt in 1874 after the panic of 1873. In 1879, a traveling salesman named Mark Gray fired two shots at Booth during a performance of Richard II in Chicago, missing him. Booth later founded The Players, a private club for artists, in 1888. His final performance was as Hamlet in 1891 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Reader's Guide

Edwin Booth's significance lies in his reputation as the preeminent American Shakespearean actor of the 19th century, a status achieved through extensive touring and acclaimed performances in the United States and Europe. His founding of Booth's Theatre in New York represented a major investment in theatrical production, though it ultimately failed financially. His legacy is complicated by the infamy of his younger brother, John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln. The assassination forced Edwin to temporarily abandon the stage and permanently sever ties with his brother. A notable act of his life was saving Robert Todd Lincoln, the president's son, from injury or death on a train platform in Jersey City, New Jersey, in late 1863 or early 1864. This event, recalled by Robert Lincoln in a 1909 letter, was said to have been of some comfort to Edwin following his brother's act. Booth's career also intersected with debates about the character Othello, as his 1874 casting of James O'Neill, an Irish American actor with black hair, has been marked as one possible origin of disputes about whether Othello was meant to have merely black hair and swarthy skin rather than be of sub-Saharan African origin.

Did You Know?

• Edwin Booth saved Abraham Lincoln's son, Robert Todd Lincoln, from serious injury or death on a train platform in Jersey City, New Jersey, in late 1863 or early 1864.
• In 1869, Edwin acquired his brother John's body after repeatedly writing to President Andrew Johnson, and had it buried unmarked in the family plot at Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore.
• In 1879, a traveling salesman named Mark Gray fired two shots at Booth during a performance of Richard II in Chicago, missing him.
• The only time the three Booth brothers performed together on the same stage was in Julius Caesar in 1864, with Edwin as Brutus, John Wilkes as Marc Antony, and Junius Brutus Jr. as Cassius.