T Preface. HIS volume, containing "Othello," "Richard II," "Richard III," "Henry VIII," "Much Ado About Nothing," and the old version of "The Taming of the Shrew," entitled “Katharine and Petruchio," continues and concludes the series of plays by Shakespeare in which Edwin Booth habitually acted. The characters that he assumed were Othello, lago, Richard II, Gloster who becomes Richard III, Cardinal Wolsey, Benedick, and Petruchio. Edwin Booth's embodiment of Iago was commonly preferred to his embodiment of Othello; it possessed, in the scenes of companionship, a galliard grace and a bluff and breezy charm of manner that were irresistible; in the scenes of soliloquy its cold malignity of infernal purpose was instinct with a horrible fascination; and, while it was wonderfully intellectual in ideal, it was fluent, flexible, and spontaneous in expression. Booth, physically and mentally, was somewhat less consonant with the artistic ideal of the massive and slow Othello than with that of the lithe, alert, and expeditious Iago, but I have seen him, as the Moor, when he was perfection. A great actor is always variable, and no actor can be equally good in all parts and equally effective at all times. As King Richard II, a part that had not been acted in America for many years when Booth revived Shakespeare's tragedy on that subject at the Fifth Avenue Theatre, New York, in 1875, he used the resources of his beautiful elocu |