14 1/2 x 6 in. printed broadside. (Minor chipping along extremities.)

"BETWEEN OURSELVES, HE IS HAMLET..."

In an 1862 review by the New York Post a critic wrote of the Booth brothers: "Edwin has more poetry, John Wilkes more passion; Edwin has more melancholy of movement and utterance, John Wilkes more energy and animation; Edwin is more correct, John Wilkes more spontaneous...in a word, Edwin is a better Hamlet, John Wilkes a better Richard III."

Comparisons between Edwin and John Wilkes Booth would follow both throughout their early careers, ending only after the assassination of President Lincoln, when the memory of John Wilkes's promising start in the theater was better forgotten. Yet few who saw the brothers perform in one another's signature roles tended to disagree with the Post critic, including John Wilkes Booth himself, who once responded to a fellow actor's praise of his performance as Hamlet that "There's one Hamlet to my mind, and that's my brother Edwin. You see, between ourselves, he is Hamlet, melancholy and all!"

Two and a half years after John Wilkes Booth's performance as Hamlet at the Boston Museum, Edwin Booth began his history-making run of one hundred consecutive performances in the role, which concluded on 22 March 1865, marking Edwin's final appearance before his brother assassinated President Lincoln. It was also the first role that Edwin played upon his return to the stage at the Winter Garden Theatre in January 1866, and the last before his death in 1893. A statue of Edwin Booth as Hamlet was installed in Gramercy Park, adjacent to the Players Club, in 1916.