All the World's a Stage

Joe Jefferson [seated in front], Palm Beach, Florida, circa 1904.
Touring Turn-of-the-Century America, 1880-1920
Jefferson died in Palm Beach in 1905.

Comic actor Joseph Jefferson, one of the most well-known American stage personalities of the nineteenth century, was born into a family of actors in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on February 20, 1829. He made his stage debut at the tender age of three in a production of German playwright August von Kotzubue's Pizarro.

Jefferson achieved his first great success in 1858 in Tom Taylor's Our American Cousin. He is best remembered for his portrayal in the 1860s of Rip Van Winkle, an Americanized version of a German folk tale popularized by Washington Irving in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent (1819-1820).

The first American theaters were built in the early eighteenth century in Virginia and South Carolina, where Puritan prohibitions against the dramatic arts carried less weight. By the early nineteenth century, American actors were making a name for themselves on both sides of the Atlantic. Two of the most famous were Edwin Booth, son of native Englishman Junius Brutus Booth and brother of the infamous John Wilkes Booth, himself an actor of some note, and Edwin Forrest, who was known for his vocal power and athleticism on stage.

Edwin Forrest, studio of Mathew Brady, circa 1844-1860.
America's First Look into the Camera: Daguerreotypes, 1839-1862

Junius Booth, Father of John Wilkes Booth, in Theatrical Costume, studio of Mathew Brady, circa 1844-1852.
America's First Look into the Camera: Daguerreotypes, 1839-1862

• Search the American Memory collections on Washington Irving to locate more material on The Legend of Sleepy Hollow that inspired actor Joseph Jefferson's most memorable performances.
• American Variety Stage, 1870-1920 is a rich source of material on the history of popular entertainment in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Special Presentation The American Variety Stage provides an introduction to this collection.
• From the American Memory Collection Finder, select Performing Arts from the Broad Topics category to access a list of collections with music, dance, and theater materials. Search across this list of collections, or any subset of this group, on terms such as theater, actress, and actor. For yet more related information, search the Today in History Archive on these same terms.
• Search on the term Booth in the collection An American Time Capsule to see a wanted poster illustrated with photographic prints of John Wilkes Booth and others involved with the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.