Life and art of Joseph Jefferson, together with some account of his ancestry and of the Jefferson family of actors . except with his soul. Jefferson gave a neat theatrical version of The Cricketon the Hearth> in three acts, using the text of Dickens,and braiding deftly together the affairs of Dot andJohn Perrybingle, Caleb Plummer and blind Bertha,the returned sailor-boy, old gruff Tackleton and TillySlowboy. In the second act occurs the pious decep-tion of Bertha, and the old man makes merry, with hisquavering song, — an effect produced with sweet andtouching quaintness by Jefferson. In th
Life and art of Joseph Jefferson, together with some account of his ancestry and of the Jefferson family of actors . except with his soul. Jefferson gave a neat theatrical version of The Cricketon the Hearth> in three acts, using the text of Dickens,and braiding deftly together the affairs of Dot andJohn Perrybingle, Caleb Plummer and blind Bertha,the returned sailor-boy, old gruff Tackleton and TillySlowboy. In the second act occurs the pious decep-tion of Bertha, and the old man makes merry, with hisquavering song, — an effect produced with sweet andtouching quaintness by Jefferson. In the third act therighteous deceit of Caleb is confessed, with a pathoscertainly equal to that of the recognition scene of RipVan Winkle, long peerless among scenes of domestictenderness upon the stage. The farce of Lend Me Five Shillings is notable forunflagging vivacity of incident and language. Jeffersonas Golightly presented a good fellow, of vivacious man-ners, beset with little troubles, through which he makeshis way with mirth and grace, alternating with a mostcomical denotement of serio-comic CALEB PLUMMER. X DR. PANGLOSS AND THE HEIR AT LAW One of the peculiarities of Jefferson as a comedian isthat he thinks in an original way and strikes out forhimself new pathways and new methods. The char-acter of Rip Van Winkle had been presented by severalgood actors before he assumed it, but it never became arepresentative character—comprehensive of many con-trasted elements of human nature and human experi-ence — until it was refashioned and newly embodiedby him; and the reason of his surpassing success with itis that he treated it in a poetical and not in a literalmanner. The character of Acres, in The Rivals, hadalways been treated as a low-comedy character, untilJefferson, in his memorable revival of that comedy atthe Arch Street theatre, Philadelphia, in 1880, embodiedit in such a way as to make it rueful, sweet, and sympa-thetic to the feelings, as well as q
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectjeffers, bookyear1894
