Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Taavi Kalju and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net SHADOWS OF THE STAGE BY WILLIAM WINTER _"The best in this kind are but shadows"_ SHAKESPEARE NEW YORK MACMILLAN AND COMPANY AND LONDON 1893 COPYRIGHT, 1892, BY MACMILLAN & CO. Set up and electrotyped May, 1892. Large Paper Edition printed May. Ordinary Edition reprinted June, August, November, 1892; January, June, October, November, 1893. Norwood Press: J.S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith. Boston, Mass., U.S.A. TO Henry Irving IN MEMORY AND IN HONOUR OF ALL THAT HE HAS DONE TO DIGNIFY AND ADORN THE STAGE AND TO ENNOBLE SOCIETY THIS BOOK IS GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED _"Cui laurus aeternos honores Delmatico peperit triumpho"_ PREFACE. _The papers contained in this volume, chosen out of hundreds that the author has written on dramatic subjects, are assembled with the hope that they may be accepted, in their present form, as a part of the permanent record of our theatrical times. For at least thirty years it has been a considerable part of the constant occupation of the author to observe and to record the life of the contemporary stage. Since 1860 he has written intermittently in various periodicals, and since the summer of 1865 he has written continuously in the New York Tribune, upon actors and their art; and in that way he has accumulated a great mass of historical commentary upon the drama. In preparing this book he has been permitted to draw from his contributions to the Tribune, and also from his writings in Harper's Magazine and Weekly, in the London Theatre, and in Augustin Daly's Portfolio of Players. The choice of these papers has been determined partly by consideration of space and partly with the design of supplementing the author's earlier dramatic books, namely: Edwin Booth in Twelve Dramatic Characters; The Jeffersons; Henry Irving; The Stage Life of Mary Anderson; Brief Chronicles, containing eighty-six dramatic biographies; In Memory of McCullough; The Life of John Gilbert; The Life and Works of John Brougham; The Press and the Stage; The Actor and Other Speeches; and A Daughter of Comedy, being the life of Ada Rehan. The impulse of all those writings, and of the present volume, is commemorative. Let us save what we can._ _"Sed omnes una manet nox, Et calcanda semel via leti."_ W.W. APRIL 18, 1892. CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE I. THE GOOD OLD TIMES 13 II. IRVING IN FAUST 30 III. ADELAIDE NEILSON 47 IV. EDWIN BOOTH 63 V. MARY ANDERSON 90 VI. OLIVIA 119 VII. ON JEFFERSON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY 130 VIII. ON JEFFERSON'S ACTING 151 IX. JEFFERSON AND FLORENCE 159