The Bitter Rivalry Between Edwin and John Wilkes B
February 7, 2011
This account of the fraternal conflict between Edwin Booth—one of the most acclaimed Shakespearean actors of his era—and his less successful brother John Wilkes, who would soon achieve another, far darker brand of immortality for his own dramatic act, is read by John Bedford Lloyd, whose placid tone belies an undertone of menace. His reading is solid but uninspired—a surprising tone for a book that is itself about the lives of two singular dramatists. The audiobook also offers an introduction read by Doris Kearns Goodwin, who good-naturedly, if slightly awkwardly, pays tribute to the quality of Titone's scholarship. A Free Press hardcover.
August 2, 2010
Family dysfunction brings down a president in this lively if feckless historical melodrama. In her debut, Titone, a historical researcher, says almost nothing about John Wilkes Booth’s plot to kill Abraham Lincoln, focusing instead on his backstory and (speculative) psychological motivation. The tale has vibrant leads, including Booth’s father, Junius Brutus Booth, a famous tragedian and raging alcoholic, and his domineering brother Edwin, the biggest stage star of the Civil War era. Then there’s John Wilkes himself, a narcissist and hilariously bad actor—Titone regales readers with scathing reviews—whose good looks and hammy onstage swordplay drew crowds. The author’s sketchy theory of Lincoln’s assassination puts it at the confluence of John’s self-dramatizing vanity, romantic identification with the underdog South, and sibling rivalry; she presents the murder as a coup de théâtre that finally lets John upstage Edwin. Although overstuffed with digressions, Titone’s account paints a colorful panorama of 19th-century theatrical life, with its endless drunken touring through frontier backwaters and showbiz pratfalls. Neither deep nor tragic, her John Wilkes is oddly convincing: the first of the grandiose hollow men in America’s cast of assassins.