Redrawing a Picture of Lincoln’s Assassin
Rachel SaltzAugust 31, 2010: The Mad Tragedian: that’s what critics called the eccentric actor Junius Brutus Booth. His brooding son Edwin, the Prince of Players, was one of the great 19th-century Hamlets, perhaps because, as John Wilkes said of his brother, “He is Hamlet.” Johnny was the charmer, a dashing matinee idol whom even the president, the theater-loving Abraham Lincoln, wanted to meet.
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