Edwin and John Wilkes Booth

Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited

Folger Shakespeare Library

Arts

4.8 • 879 Ratings

🗓️ 5 February 2019

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Actor Edwin Booth was one of the 19th century’s biggest stars. One of the illegitimate sons of equally-famous actor Junius Brutus Booth, he made thousands of dollars touring America’s grandest theaters and playing Shakespeare’s greatest roles. But today, relatively few people have heard of Edwin Booth. Instead, they remember his brother—also an actor—John Wilkes Booth. That’s because on April 14, 1865, John Wilkes assassinated President Abraham Lincoln. The Booths’ story is like one of Shakespeare’s tragedies, with an unstable father, a rivalry between brothers, and an ending that changes the course of history. To learn more about the Booth brothers and their tumultuous lives, we talked to Nora Titone, resident dramaturg at Chicago’s Court Theatre and author of 2010’s My Thoughts Be Bloody: The Bitter Rivalry Between Edwin and John Wilkes Booth That Led to an American Tragedy. Nora Titone is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. From our Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published February 5, 2019. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “My Brother, My Competitor,” was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer. We had technical help from Andrew Feliciano at VoiceTrax West in Studio City, California, and Shelly Steffens at WBEZ Public Radio in Chicago.

Transcript

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0:00.0	There's a statue of William Shakespeare in Central Park in New York.
0:03.9	The money to build it came, for the most part, from the sale of tickets to a performance of Julius Caesar in 1864.
0:11.4	Now, if I told you that there's a direct link between that statue, that performance, and one of our country's most notorious murders, would you believe me?
0:22.2	And would you keep listening?
0:24.0	Let's find out.
0:29.2	From the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited.
0:33.3	I'm Michael Whitmore, the Folgers director.
0:36.1	That Julius Caesar production, I mentioned, featured three members of one of America's best-known
0:41.1	theatrical families.
0:43.3	Across the United States in the 19th century, the name Booth was synonymous with Shakespeare
0:48.0	performance at its highest level.
0:50.8	First, the British actor, Junius Brutus Booth, and then his son, Edwin, earned applause,
0:56.2	rave reviews and thousands of dollars, primarily performing Shakespeare in America's grandest
1:01.4	theaters from 1821 until 1891.
1:05.6	But Junius Brutus Booth also had three other sons by his American wife. Joe Booth had a mental illness and rarely left
1:13.2	his mother's home. Junius Jr. performed mostly in obscurity in the saloons and mining camps of
1:20.3	Gold Rush, California. And then there was the youngest son, John Wilkes Booth, best known as the man who assassinated Abraham Lincoln.
1:30.7	Historian Nora Tatone tells the story of the Booth brothers in her book,
1:34.9	My Thoughts Be Bloody, the bitter rivalry between Edwin and John Wilk's Booth that led to an American tragedy.
1:42.1	She stopped by the studio recently to talk.
1:45.0	We call this podcast, My Brother, My Competitor.
1:49.4	Nora Tatone is interviewed by Barbara Bogate.
	...

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