[269] Sidney Lanier, together with the esteem in which she was held by all intellectual America, would show that she was not aloof from the life of the time. One looks in vain through the repertories of the great actors for that encouragement of the American drama which it most needed as an ‘infant industry.’ Edwin Booth (1833-1893) at the time the assassination of Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth, 14 April, 1865, drove him temporarily from the stage had built for himself a permanent reputation in Shakespeare, which he resumed and maintained until his last appearance as Hamlet, 4 April, 1891. Even as a manager, he chose English plays; and his close associate, Lawrence Barrett (1838-1891), was of the same mind, though he appeared in Boker's Francesca da Rimini (Chicago, 14 September, 1882) and W. D. Howells's version, from the Spanish, of Yorick's love (Cleveland, 26 October, 1878). Though as a family of managers the tradition of the Wallacks was distinctly English, Lester Wallack (1819-1888) romantically masked his old English comedy manner beneath local colour in Central Park (14 February, 1861); but his dash was happiest in such pieces, of his own concoction, as The romance of a poor young man (adapted by him 24 January, 1860) and Rosedale (produced 30 September, 1863). To the time of his last appearance (29 May, 1886), he was true to his English taste. To see Lester Wallack at his best, one had to see him as Shakespeare's Benedick or Mercutio; as Dumas's D'Artagnan, or in the social suavity of the Robertson and contemporary French drama.
The British tradition seemed so natural to Lester Wallack [writes Brander Matthews], so inevitable, that when Bronson Howard, in his 'prentice days, took him a piece called Drum-Taps, —which was to supply more than one comedy—scene to the later Shenandoah,—the New York manager did not dare to risk a play on so American a theme as the Civil War. He returned it to the young author, saying, ‘Couldn't you make it the Crimea?’In 1860, the comedian W. E. Burton died; his last appearance was as Micawber, 15 October, 1859—a fitting end, as he was in the forefront of the Dickens interpreters. Dramatizations of Dickens in America kept pace with those in England. It is well to emphasize Burton's stage career, because it brings
