Newberry Minute: Rival Richards!!!

This is the latest Newberry Minute video that I created just last week. This video was made with the quickest turnaround time to date…just two days! Considering that in the past, I have let weeks go before getting around to editing a video, this was quite a feat for me.

The video coincides with a Spotlight Exhibit at the Newberry Library on the performance and acting of Shakespeare and his characters on the stage since the 1700s to the present. In the video, Jill Gage talks about a satirical print made in 1817 that lampoons the actor Junius (not Julius) Brutus Booth for taking on the role of the Richard III at the same time that a more famous actor, Edmund Kean, was portraying the character…across the street!

Jill and I spoke before shooting the video about the culture of celebrity that arose in the 19th century, when the print featured in the video was made. She talked about how, for 19th century audiences, actors were, in some ways, more important than the characters they played. Audiences often associated a character with a particular actor. In the case of the print, Booth is subject to humiliation for trying to take on a role (Richard III) that audiences associated with Kean.

Walt Whitman called Junius Brutus Booth “the grandest histrion of modern times”

Another interesting dynamic at play in this video involves the tension between the urban theater world of London and that of provincial England. According to Jill, Booth was a provincial actor trying to break-in to the London theater world. As the print suggests, people felt that Booth had a publicity machine pushing and puffing him in public view.

The conflict between Booth and Kean came to an interesting conclusion just a year later. The International Dictionary of Theatre explains that Kean “invit[ed] the younger man over from Covent Garden to Drury Lane on 20 February 1818 to play Iago to his Othello and providing the London public with compelling proof of his superiority.”

Newberry Minute: Jemima Hall