Page:Once a Clown, Always a Clown.djvu/166

ONCE A CLOWN, ALWAYS A CLOWN become impassioned elocutionists, thundering blank verse in the stilted, florid, declamatory style still burlesqued in the stock low-comedy character of the "ham" Shakespearean actor. When our architecture and our interiors were at their rococo worst, Booth, following the roaring Forrest, led the classic stage back to simplicity, just as David Garrick a century earlier had deposed Quin and his fellow elocutionists of the English theater. The example of Booth still prevails and has been exemplified splendidly in modern time by Forbes-Robertson's and John Barrymore's Hamlets, by Walter Hampden, Lynn Harding and Miss Jane Cowl.

I suppose there never was such a scene in the theater as that which marked Booth's return to the stage after the voluntary retirement that followed the assassination of Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth. That mad act cast a somber shadow over Edwin Booth's remaining twenty-eight years. Only the necessity of supporting his family brought him out of retirement, and he never again played in Washington. The old Winter Garden in lower Broadway was the scene. I was a child at the time and not present, but Digby Bell, who was there, never ceased to recall it.