THE 
HAMLET OF EDWIN BOOTH: 
A PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDY. 
’v/ 
A O. KELLOGG, M. D., 
HUDSON RIVER* STATE HOSPITAL. 
IREPRIN1ED FROM TEE JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGICAL MEDICINE, 
APRIL, 1872.] 
NEW YORK: 
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IIOO N D EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED. 
D. APPLETON & CO., Publishers, 
549 & 551 BROADWAY, NEW YORK. THE 
HAMLET OF EDWIN BOOTH: 
• A PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDY. 
BY\^' 
A O. KELLOGG, M. D., 
HUDSON RIVER STATE HOSPITAL. 
l It EPS INI ED FROM TEE JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGICAL MEDICINE, 
APRIL, 1872.] 
NEW YORK: 
I). APPLETON & COMPANY", 
549 & 551 BROADWAY. 
1872. THE HAMLET OF EDWIN BOOTH: A PSYCHO- 
LOGICAL STUDY. 
Whenever extraordinary claims to excellence in the de- 
lineation of Hamlet, undoubtedly the highest of dramatic 
creations, are advanced, it becomes not only the dramatic 
critic, but the student of psychological science, to examine the 
grounds and analyze carefully the qualities on which such 
claims rest. 
The Ilamlet of Shakespeare involves a most profound 
psychological problem, and one not yet solved to the satisfac- 
tion of many thinking minds; therefore, all studies of this 
character must be, to a certain extent, psychological. The 
line of demarcation between health and disease is here so 
obscure and delicately drawn, that the character, viewed from 
a certain stand-point, seems on one side of the boundary, and 
again, viewed from another, as decidedly on the other, and 
hence the disputes as to the real or feigned insanity. 
To a question once put to the elder Booth as to whether 
he considered Hamlet sane or insane, he is said to have made 
this remarkable reply, evincing that thorough grasp and ap 
preciation of character incident to genius: “ Something of 
both, but always very uncertain,” said the great actor. This 
answer was undoubtedly drawn from the depths of his own 
spiritual experience, and seems to embrace the whole subject- 
matter in dispute. The commentator and the character both 
belonged to the same order of beings, and hence the fitness 
and truthfulness of the comment. Both were denizens of 4 
THE HAMLET OF EDWIN BOOTH. 
what we have before designated as that curious border-land 
that divides the realms of sanity and insanity, and both seemed 
sometimes on one side of the line and again on the other, as 
they were impelled by a strange and rare organization, over 
which the power of the will, at times, appeared to have little or 
no control. Both were “ mad nortli-nortliwest,” but, when the 
wind was “ southerly,” each “ knew a hawk from a handsaw.” 
When adversity, trials, temptations, and perplexities came 
upon them, like a piercing north wind, they were smitten and 
fell; but, when the “ sweet south ” breathed upon them as 
“ upon a bank of violets,” they revived again, and came forth 
in all their native and resplendent beauty and loveliness. 
To have met either when the intellectual weather-vane 
pointed in a certain direction, no psychological lore would 
have been necessary to determine the question of their com- 
plete mental integrity; but, when blown about by the storms 
and tempests of life, without compass or ballast, no expert was 
needed to predict, sooner or later, intellectual shipwreck. 
Hamlet, as we have shown in a former paper on this 
character,1 was a melancholic, and melancholy is now re- 
garded not merely as the “nurse of frenzy,” into which it 
very frequently passes, but a distinct form of mental derange- 
ment. “ Since learning this,” said one great delineator of 
Hamlet once to the writer, “ I never ask myself, in playing the 
character, ‘ Am I sane or insane ? ’ as I constantly did before.” 
Under the excitement of the interview with Ophelia in her 
chamber, and also with Laertes at her grave, he is quite 
beside himself, and his language, appearance, and loss of self- 
control on both occasions, give unmistakable evidence of men- 
tal derangement. On the contrary, during the interview with 
his mother, and upon other occasions, though he does not lose 
self-control, he seems ready at any moment to pass the boun- 
dary-line, with the same results seen both in the chamber and 
at the grave of Ophelia. His condition is always, in the lan- 
guage of the elder Booth, already quoted, “ very uncertain.” 
He has no self-reliance, neither can he be relied upon. He 
makes high resolves, but he executes only by impulse. Yet he 
1 See “ Shakespeare’s Delineations of Insanity,” etc. Ilnrd & Hough- 
ton. 1866. THE IIAMLET OF EDWIN BOOTH. 
5 
is honest, and means to carry out his purposes, and keep his 
promises, but he has not always the power to do so, and the 
condition which prevents him is one not merely of inherent 
weakness of character in certain directions, as set forth by 
Goethe in the subjoined extract from his “Wilhelm Meister,” 
but of engrafted melancholia : 
“ Imagine to yourself a prince whose father dies unexpect- 
edly. The desire of honor and love of power are not the 
passions which animate him ; it is sufficient for him that he 
was the son of a king ; but now he is under the necessity of 
observing carefully from a distance the difference between the 
king and the subject. The right to the crown was not heredi- 
tary, yet a longer life of his father might have made the 
claim of his only son stronger, and the hope of the crown 
more secure. Now, on the contrary, he must attain it through 
his uncle, and, notwithstanding the apparent promise, perhaps 
he is forever shut out from it. lie now feels himself poor in 
graces and goods, a stranger in that which, from his youth up, 
he was accustomed to regard as his own by right. Here his 
spirit receives the first heavy stroke. lie feels that he is no 
more than any nobleman, indeed, not as much. lie regards 
himself as a servant of all. lie is not courteous, not conde- 
scending, but, rather, bowed down and abject. He now looks 
upon his former circumstances as upon a vanished dream. In 
vain does his uncle encourage him, and seek to show him his 
situation from another point of view; the perception of his 
nothingness never leaves him. 
“ The second stroke he receives wounds him yet more, bows 
him yet deeper. It is the marriage of his mother. To him, a 
true and tender son, there remains, after his father’s death, a 
mother, and he hopes, in company with his noble mother left 
behind, to do honor to the heroic form of the great one depart- 
ed. But he also loses his mother, and in a manner far worse 
than though death had torn her from him. That perfect ideal 
which a well-bred child so readily forms of a parent, vanishes; 
from the dead there is no help, and from the living no support. 
She is also a woman, and from the common frailties incident 
to her sex she is not exempt. Now, for the first time, he feels 
himself truly bowed down, and no fortune in the world can 6 
THE HAMLET OF EDWIN BOOTH. 
again restore to liim tliat which he has lost. Not melancholy, 
not naturally reflective, melancholy and reflection become 
heavy burdens to him. 
“ Imagine, vividly, to yourself this young man, this princely 
son, fancy his circumstances, and then observe him when he 
perceives the appearance of his father’s form. Stand by him 
on that terrible night when the venerable spirit himself walks 
before him. Huge terror and amazement seize upon him. 
He speaks to the wonderful figure, sees it beckoning, follows 
and hears. The terrible complaint resounds in his ears, calling 
for vengeance, and the pressing and oft-repeated entreaty, 
‘ Remember me ! ’ And, when the spirit has vanished, what 
do we see standing before us? A young hero that pants for 
vengeance ? A born prince that deems himself fortunate in 
wreaking vengeance on the usurper of his crown ? No, aston- 
ishment and sadness fall upon the lone one. lie becomes bit- 
ter against the smiling villain, swears not to forget the depart- 
ed, and concludes with the significant expression : ‘ The times 
are out of joint; woe unto me that I was born to set them 
right! ’ In these words lies the key to the whole conduct of 
Hamlet, and to me it is clear that Shakespeare would have 
pictured a great deed imposed as a duty upon a spirit that was 
not equal to that deed. This idea seems worked out in the 
entire plot. Here is an oak planted in a delicate vessel that 
should only have contained flowers; the roots strike out, and 
the vessel is destroyed. 
“ A beautiful, high, pure moral being, without the mental 
strength that make3 the hero, travels under a burden which 
crushes him to the earth, one which he can neither bear nor 
cast entirely from him. Every duty is sacred to him, but this 
is too heavy. The impossible was demanded of him; not that 
which was in itself impossible, but that which was impossible 
to him. How he -writhes and turns, filled with anguish, strides 
backward and forward, ever being reminded, ever reminding 
himself, and at last losing sight of his purpose, without ever 
having been made happy.” 
Shakespeare, whatever may have been his intention, rec- 
ognized what has apparently escaped even the penetration of 
the great German poet and philosopher, viz., that there are TIIE HAMLET OF EDWIN BOOTH. 
7 
cases of melancholia, of a delicate shade, in which the intellect 
proper, so far from being overcome, may, perhaps, in certain 
directions be rendered more active and vigorous. “ A mind 
diseased,” in the ordinary acceptation of the term (a term we 
are scarcely willing, in the present state of science, to accept 
at all), need not imply a mind destroyed, or even deranged in 
all its faculties, but one changed in its normal operations by 
the intense emotions excited in it. Such a change, as we have 
before pointed out,1 Shakespeare lias given us in the character 
of Hamlet, with a wonderful fidelity to nature. 
After these preliminary observations on the character of 
Ilamlet, as we understand it—a character ’we have attempted 
to analyze more fully in a former essay—we approach the 
main idea involved in this paper, viz., the manner in which 
the difficulties incident to its proper delineation are met by 
our distinguished countryman, Edwin Booth. 
That there must be a rare combination of natural gifts to 
meet all requirements in the proper delineation of this great 
dramatic creation, none will pretend to deny; and that more 
of these gifts are combined in Mr. Booth than in any other, 
now or for some time past before the public, is claimed by 
some of the most candid, enlightened, and intelligent critics. 
These claims we here propose to analyze, and set forth 
some of the reasons for the faith which animates us in the su- 
preme excellence of the delineation by our countryman. 
That something of national pride should enter into and in- 
fluence to a certain extent the judgment of Americans is nat- 
ural, and perhaps not altogether unavoidable, but we hope in 
pursuing our analysis to divest ourselves as much as possible 
of this feeling, and rely upon facts, evident to all of whatever 
nationality, and reasonable and unprejudiced deductions from 
the same. 
As the physical qualities necessary to the proper delinea- 
tion of this character, and which are so happily combined in 
Mr. Booth, have been repeatedly set forth, wre pass them by in 
this connection, and come at once to the consideration of those 
which more especially interest us, viz., the psychological. 
The truly great delineator of Ilamlet must possess certain 
1 See “Delineations of Insanity,etc., p. 3G, et seq. 8 
THE HAMLET OF EDWIN BOOTH. 
natural, mental, and moral characteristics, as well as the phys- 
ical qualities above glanced at, to enable him to meet suc- 
cessfully all its severe requirements. 
He must have not only that education in art necessary to 
the proper impersonation of any great tragic conception, but 
lie must have passed through a rare and rich experience, and, 
to a certain extent, represent in his own life-history what he 
professionally portrays, and as Hamlet feel and think, “ live, 
move, and have his being,” in his daily walk and conversa- 
tion. Hamlet is not something “that a man may play” suc- 
cessfully by merely donning the “ trappings and the suits of 
woe,” but there must be “ that within which passeth show,” a 
deep, rich, sympathetic nature. 
The actor, of all artists, must possess such a nature, for 
without it there is no complete and abiding success. His 
heart must be attuned to every human sympathy, otherwise 
his impersonation is indeed a sham, and not a life-picture, as 
it should be. It is one thing to “ speak the speech trippingly 
on the tongue,” and another to feel its full force in the depths 
of his own heart. The one is merely to “ split the ears of the 
groundlings” and obtain an ephemeral notoriety; the other is 
to put himself in true sympathy with thoughtful minds and 
feeling hearts, and permanently to control them. 
Now, we are aware that these are great demands, but they 
are legitimate, and, as we expect to show, are met by Mr. 
Booth in his delineation of Hamlet in a manner most unusual, 
if not hitherto unequalled. 
The gifts which enable him to meet these demands have, 
in the first place, come to him by natural descent from an 
illustrious father, who was himself a man of great and ac- 
knowledged genius; and these powers were educated and 
developed under the eye of this parent from early youth to 
manhood. In the second place, these powers have been de- 
veloped by an extraordinary combination of circumstances 
and life-experiences, so sad as to have overwhelmed an 
ordinary nature; but tending, when applied to such as his, 
to deepen the “ native hue of melancholy ” which belongs to 
it, and bring out those tints, sombre indeed, but none the 
less lovely, which otherwise might forever have been con- 
cealed from view. THE IIAMLET OF EDWIN BOOTH. 
9 
To an intelligent American, supposed to be acquainted 
with the history of the drama in his native country, and also 
the connection of the Booth family, not only with that history, 
but with the great national tragedy, in which one was, alas! 
the chief actor, it would scarcely seem necessary to do more 
than glance at these circumstances. But there are those 
abroad who are not as well informed in these matters; indeed, 
scientific journals of high standing, both in France and Eng- 
land, have confounded John Wilkes Booth with his father, 
Junius Brutus Booth, who died in 1852, and both with him 
whose name stands at the head of this paper.1 Such, of 
course, have never reflected on the influence this crushing 
sorrow may have had on the full development of the powers 
of Edwin Booth, perfecting him in his great interpretation 
of this least understood, most subtle and profound, of the 
dramatic creations of William Shakespeare. 
We now come to consider a component in the intellectual 
character of our gifted countryman which has, in the estima- 
tion of the writer, contributed more to his extraordinay 
success in the delineation of the character of Ilamlet than 
any thing else. 
Edwin Booth inherits from his illustrious father, not only 
great dramatic genius, but that tendency to melancholia 
has been shown before in our analysis of the charac- 
ter of' the father,2 is so frequently an accompaniment of great 
intellectual powers. But this is not all; as every man is said 
to be a compound of qualities, good or bad, that have previ- 
ously characterized some one of his progenitors, there has 
descended to the son, from some ancestral source, a certain 
moral and intellectual balance, not derived from or possessed 
by his immediate progenitor. This element has been the 
conservative force in the character of the son—the good angel 
of the intellectual household, shielding him from all danger, 
guarding him in the hour of temptation, and guiding him 
through the fiery furnace of affliction so safely that he has 
1 See Journal of Mental Science, London, 1869; and Annales Medico- 
Psyehologiques, Paris, 1869. 
2 See Journal of Insanity, April, 1868. 10 
TIIE HAMLET OF EDWIN BOOTH. 
emerged not only unscathed, but purified, strengthened, and 
ennobled. 
We now come to consider certain epochs of sorrow in the 
life of Edwin Booth, in order to contrast them with those 
woven by the dramatist into the life-history of his immortal 
conception, and this parellelism is, to us, singularly interesting. 
The more we have reflected upon it, the more strongly have 
we been impressed with the thought as to how far the life- 
history of the delineator has tended to influence the character 
and success of his great delineation. Notwithstanding the 
free use the public claim to make of all that is most sacred in 
the private life of eminent public favorites, we hope to ap- 
proach this branch of the subject with all the delicacy which 
legitimately belongs to it, especially during the lifetime of 
the individual. 
Like Ilamlet, Edwin Booth’s first great sorrow was the 
death of a kindly, generous, and illustrious father, alone, and 
in circumstances peculiarly painful to his devoted family. 
Up to this time father and son had scarcely been separated, 
and although the son pleaded earnestly to accompany his 
father on this last journey, as lie had on all others from earliest 
youth, he was not allowed, the father insisting on his remain- 
ing in California to pursue his profession. The farewell was 
forever. On the journey home he was seized, on board a 
Mississippi steamboat, with one of those rapidly-fatal diseases 
4of the Southwest, and died suddenly, his only attendant being 
the steward of the boat. 
Thus fell upon the tonder and youthful heart of the son 
its first great sorrow, like a thunder-bolt from a clear sky, and 
its traces, heightened by others in after-life, can be seen in- 
delibly impressed on those extraordinary features, which have 
been the study of so many artists, and the admiration of so 
many thousands of every age, sex, and condition in life. 
For a long time, the youth is said to have been inconsol- 
able, brooding in silent sorrow over his irreparable loss, and, 
“ with veiled lids, 
Sought for his noble father in the dust.” 
The noble words which Ilamlet addresses to his mother, 
when she seeks to rally him from his excessive grief at the TIIE IIAMLET OF EDWIN BOOTH. 
11 
death of his lather, seemed the eloquent and only expression 
of the state of mind and feelings of the youth, in view of his 
great bereavement: 
“ Seems, madam! nay, it is ; I know not seems. 
’Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, 
Nor customary suits of solemn black, 
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath, 
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye, 
Nor the dejected havior of the visage, 
Together with all forms, modes, shows of grief, 
That can denote me truly: these, indeed, seem, 
For they are actions that a man might play: 
But I have that within, which passeth show; 
These, but the trappings and the suits of woe.” 
The next great sorrow which overshadowed him also bore 
a certain resemblance to that which came upon Hamlet in the 
estrangement and death of Ophelia, whom, as he says, he had 
loved with more than the love of “forty thousand brothers.” 
This sorrow was the death of a wife, a woman of great per- 
sonal charms and loveliness of character, and one every way 
worthy of that deep affection which only such a nature as his 
can lavish with unselfish devotion upon another. By this 
blow he was nearly driven to despair, but Providence, whose 
dealings, though sometimes dark and strange, are ever kindly, 
had provided a way to save him from utter desolation of 
heart, and, perhaps, moral and intellectual shipwreck; for 
such natures, without some support, cannot always, and 
under all circumstances, stand erect. The same blow, we be- 
lieve, that deprived him of a wife, left him a tender child, 
upon whom to lavish the wealth of his affections, and who 
can say how much dramatic art in America is indebted to 
this child, now a deep-eyed, brown-haired little maid of eight 
years ? 
Hot long after this second great affliction he made his first 
deep and abiding impression upon his countrymen, by enact- 
ing Ilamlet for one hundred consecutive nights to crowded 
houses—something unprecedented, we believe, in the history 
of the drama. Who can say to what extent the success of the 
delineation was dependent upon the recent affliction of the 
delineator? As the audiences looked into his sad, thoughtful 12 
THE HAMLET OF EDWEST BOOTH. 
countenance, the deep melancholy of which was not neces- 
sarily assumed, they read not only the history of the thought- 
ful, melancholy Dane of the great dramatist, but the life-his- 
tory of his most truthful interpreter. 
Time had barely toned down this sorrow when a calamity 
fell upon the nation by the hand of a younger brother, which, 
while it seemed for a time to threaten the destruction of the 
whole body politic, carried not only death and desolation, 
but calumny and dishonor, into the family, of which he was 
the acknowledged head. 
Like Hamlet, he could bear up under all the sorrows 
death could inflict, for death involved only the ruin of his af- 
fections, and the blasting of cherished hopes; but again, like 
him, when, with this desolation of heart, calumny and dis- 
honor were heaped on the head of innocence, the sorrows, not 
only of Hamlet, but of Job and the weeping prophet, seemed 
for the time to be laid upon him. We wull not seek to follow 
him through the dark valley he was made to thread, sustained 
only by his strong faith in the divine order of all things, and 
leaning upon one friend, America’s most promising sculptor, 
who, during the whole pilgrimage, like Faithful in the im- 
mortal allegory, stuck “ closer than a brother.” .Neither will 
we seek to draw these sorrows from their abode in the 
breasts of the two friends, and hold them up to the gaze of a 
morbid, sensation-lmnting public; we allude to them here 
only because they seemed necessary to the analysis we have 
undertaken, and to show with what sincerity of heart he 
could apply to himself the words of Hamlet he had so fre- 
quently repeated to enraptured thousands: 
“ O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, 
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew! 
Or that the Everlasting had not fixed 
Ilis canon ’gainst self-slaughter! O God! O God ! 
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable 
Seem to me all the uses of this world ! 
Fie on’t! O fie! ’tis an unweeded garden, 
That grows to seed ; things rank and gross in nature 
Possess it merely.” 
The actor and sculptor above alluded to stand in the same 
relation to each other as did Ilamlet and Iloratio, and those THE IIAMLET OF EDWIN BOOTH. 
13 
who know the sculptor best will be the first to admit that he 
possesses, in a marked degree, many of those admirable quali- 
ties of head and heart delineated by the poet in the character 
of Horatio which fit him for the bosom-friend of such a man. 
Intelligent, genial, sympathetic, watchful of his varying 
moods, and meeting tlnim with an ever-ready sympathy, he 
has ever been to him, in all his afflictions, a tower of strength, 
and an inexhaustible fountain of consolation and support. 
Such a friendship as this Shakespeare himself must have ex- 
perienced in order to have depicted it so truthfully in the case 
of Ilamlet and Horatio. 
Between the character of Ilamlet, as drawn by Shakespeare, 
and that of Edwin Booth, as seen by his most intimate friends 
and associates, there are certain points of resemblance which, 
to those who have made a study of both, are strikingly sig- 
nificant. There is a strange, silent, thoughtful, melancholic 
mystery about both not easily penetrated, or analyzed fully. 
At the same time this mystery is not repulsive, but, on tin1 
contrary, it has a curious fascination, which, while it attracts 
with a power which is irresistible, baffles all solution and 
all attempts at complete analysis. “ I have been long ac- 
quainted with him,” said a very intelligent lady once to the 
writer, “ but he is a strange mystery. I cannot understand 
him fully ; he is too deep for me, but I believe he is goodness 
and generosity to the very bottom. I know he is, as far down 
as I have been able to sound him.” Let any attempt, however, 
be made to “ pluck out the heart of his mystery ” by those 
animated by motives of interest or impertinent curiosity, and 
such will find themselves very soon in the same position as 
were Bosencranz and Guildenstern when sent to spy out 
Ilamlet. They would learn that to “ play on that pipe ” was, 
indeed, not “ as easy as lying.” 
Toward his intimate friends and associates, his bearing in 
private is marked by a refined and unobtrusive courtesy, and 
a quiet geniality and generosity of character and sentiment, 
which, if any thing, is more fascinating than any of his public 
performances. lie seems to have laid well to heart the advice 
which, as Ilamlet, he gives to Polonins, “Use every man after 
your own honor and dignity.” 14 
THE IIAMLET OF EDWIN BOOTH. 
Every one admitted to his presence, who has witnessed his 
Hamlet, is made to feel at once that the bearing of the actor, 
in his greatest delineation upon the stage, is not all assumed, 
but that it belongs to Edwin Booth, the man, that he is “ na- 
tive here, and to the manner born.” The charm which be- 
longs to him in the character is not all dissipated, as is too 
often the case, by the very first utterances of the man, for the 
man belongs to the character, and the character to the man; 
the refining influences have not all been on one side, but 
reciprocal. The other delineations of Mr. Booth—his Mac- 
beth, Othello, Iago, Bichelieu, Sir Giles, etc.—are specimens 
of high art, and as such stand confessedly in the front rank; 
but in all these he has been equalled, and in some, perhaps, 
excelled; not so, however, with Ilamlet; here, for reasons we 
have given, he stands out in bold relief. And it seems now 
to be the settled conviction of the best critics, that he must 
continue to occupy his high and well-earned position without 
a rival. 
It is such a rare life-experience as we have here pointed 
out, engrafted upon great natural abilities and peculiar con- 
stitutional tendencies, that Mr. Booth brings to the delinea- 
tion of this wonderful conception of the immortal bard ; and 
we repeat, in conclusion, that such a combination of qualities, 
physical, mental, and moral, has seldom, if ever, been seen; 
and when he passes away (may the time be far in the future!) 
no one will remain to enact Hamlet. And it may be years 
before another will appear, who will bring to the delineation 
all that has here been noticed, fitting him to meet successfully 
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