EDWIN BOOTH IN GERMANY.

Patea Mail, Volume VIII, Issue 1048, 18 June 1883, Page 3

EDWIN BOOTH IN GERMANY.

Mr Edwin Booth’s theatrical campaign in Germany has been a great success. In Hamburg all the places were bought up weeks in advance at a premium. The Press notices were very cordial, and the stage manager, a pupil of Davrient, said that he had never till then seen Hamlet or Lear. Herr Maurice, the manager, pronounced Edwin Booth the greatest actor who had been since Talma’s death. When he was playing Lear an eye-witness states that it was most pathetic to see the people sobbing at the wings. The actors engaged to suppoit the star are described as perfectly wild with enthusiasm. In fact, their admiration took an unpleasant demonstrative form. The men fell upon his shoulders, and in Continental fashion, kissed him on both cheeks ; while the women wept and sobbed as they shook -hands with him; He .did hot relish the kissing. • In vain he cried out: “ Mind the paint 1” And at last, in a sort of comic desperation, he exclaimed : “If kissing be the correct thing, please stand aside, gentlemen, and let the ladies advance.” On another occasion we learn that after the curtain : had fallen amid deafening applause, Mr ' Booth was embraced by every member of the Company “ except the extra little girls engaged to act as pages.” But as he left the theatre the extra little girls were waiting .for him in the hall, and, “ in a perfectly artless .end.m'(^^'|n'aixnei?) , ’ one ofJhem'approached him, arid in broken English said through her fears,: “Mr Booth, you make us: cry—we'; do want-so much to kiss you.” We do not know whether Mr Booth cried out; “ Mind . the paint ” on this occasion.,