By KATHARINE RAMSDEN
On this day in 1893, renowned Shakespearean actor and Players founder Edwin Thomas Booth died. Son of famous English actor Junius Brutus Booth (and elder brother to actor John Wilkes Booth, who became notorious for the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln) he was esteemed as one of the greatest American actors, and the greatest Prince Hamlet, of the 19th century.
Booth was married to Mary Devlin Booth from 1860 until her death in 1863. They had one daughter, Edwina, born on December 9, 1861, in London. He later remarried, to his acting partner Mary McVicker Booth, in 1869, becoming a widower again in 1881.
In 1888, Booth founded The Players club for performing, literary, and visual artists and their supporters, and established his home at the Gramercy Park clubhouse.
Fittingly, his final performance was in his signature role of Hamlet, in 1891 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Katharine Ramsden is a (semi-retired) former journalist and corporate communications executive. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College and Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, she is a recently new Player, avid reader and one time a cappella singer.
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