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Edwin Booth on Dion Boucicault, Playwriting, and Play Production—a Previously Unpublished Letter
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 October 2010
Extract
While researching my dissertation topic, “Edwin Booth: Theatre Manager,” I happened upon a previously unpublished letter written by Booth to a Jno. M. Leavitt. In this letter, Booth gives a contemporary and perhaps surprising evaluation of Dion Boucicault's playwriting, he articulates a set of guidelines for playwrights, and his comments on playwriting indicate a theory of play production which actually guided Booth's own work as actor-manager of Booth's Theatre from 1869 to 1873.
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- Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1980
References
NOTES
1 The letter is from the collection of the Rosenbach Museum and Library, Philadelphia. I have retained the idiosyncrasies of Booth's spelling, punctuation and capitalization. There are also several places in the letter where Booth's handwriting is unintelligible. These words are in brackets. My word selections are consistent with the context and with the length and known letters of the unintelligible words.
2 Shattuck, Charles H., Shakespeare on the American Stage: From the Hallams to Edwin Booth (Washington, D.C.: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1976), p. 131.Google Scholar
3 LaCasse, Donald E. Jr, “Edwin Booth: Theatre Manager,” Diss. Michigan State University 1979, pp. 143–44.Google Scholar
4 Booth's Theatre Programme, Daddy O'Doud, week ending 29 March 1873, located at The Walter Hampden-Edwin Booth Theatre Collection and Library, The Players, New York.
5 J. Henry Magonigle, Letters to Dion Boucicault, Fall 1872, in “Transcript Book,” The Players.
6 Honaker, Gerald Leon, “Edwin Booth, Producer: A Study of Four Productions at Booth's Theatre,” Diss. Indiana 1969, p. 222.Google Scholar