President Shot; Lincoln, Theatre Dead

By Maximilian Rochester, Theatre Critic (April 15, 1865)

Jan. 24, 2014

Americans across our great union are mourning today for the loss of a strong and noble leader who has carried us through these dark times of civil war. Many will undoubtedly also shed a tear for the death of a great art form that was the American theatre. A manhunt is underway for the coward who has wounded our proud nation and also, I hope, for the conspirators in an equally devastating attack on the art of the stage play. Although speculation runs rampant as to the whereabouts of the former, to find the latter I would direct you to none other than the stage of Ford’s Theatre tonight at half past eight o’clock in the evening.

Our American Cousin, like the presidential assassin, is still running, and must be stopped. Both have toppled once-proud institutions, the American comedy and the American presidency respectively.

After being shot, the President was taken to the Peterson boarding house, where he died early this morning. Yet, in a sense, Honest Abe was the lucky one, for he died only once. American theatre, however, is slowly being killed night after night by the bumbling cast of Our American Cousin, portraying larger-than-life buffoons as they try and eke out a laugh from an audience of half-wits and fools who wouldn’t know a stellar production if it shot them in the back of the head.

If you ask me, actor Edward Sothern is the real villain of last night’s events, and should be imprisoned and charged with the cold-blooded murder of what was once high art. When we allow jesters and harlequins to invade the arena of the stage, we concede all that defines the medium and subject ourselves to artistic slavery, a slavery for which there can be no Emancipation Proclamation.

As the blood and brains of our former leader lie on the floor of Ford’s Theatre, so too do the entrails of the dramatic arts. As the remains of our freely elected president are laid to rest, so much cannot be said for the corpse of the theatrical production that has been left in the cold by the writer and director of this unholy abomination. Consider this, fellow citizens, a call to arms to rise up and retaliate against the forces that have caused us such grief this day. We cannot let these men, though we once considered them our brothers, carry on this way of life. It is cruel, inhumane, and threatens our very sensibilities. Lovers of theatre, unite!