Is it true that Thomas Edison could have become a Shakespearean actor? |
This particular question is not really “frequently asked,” even at Folger Shakespeare Library. But the tradition that Edison considered becoming a Shakespearean actor instead of an inventor is typical of the stories involving Shakespeare that tend to spring up around famous Americans of the past. Shakespeare has such a special role in American culture that any connection to him is often emphasized—and sometimes embroidered—in anecdotes about figures like Edison.
In Edison’s case, there is an element of truth to the story, according to a 1998 biography by Paul Israel, Edison: A Life of Invention. Israel explains that Edison moved to Cincinnati, then a major theater town, in 1865, where he continued his early employment as a telegraph operator. In their spare time, he and the other operators often attended the theater; one later recalled that “[Edwin] Forrest and John McCullough were playing at the National Theater, and when our capital was sufficient we would go to see those eminent tragedians alternate in Othello and Iago. Edison always enjoyed Othello greatly.” This may, however, have been a trick of memory, since Israel could not locate performances by those particular actors during Edison’s time in Cincinnati. (He found, however, that two of the Booth brothers—Edwin and Junius Brutus, Jr.—did perform in the city in Shakespeare roles that year.)
Reporting several years later in 1878, the industry journal The Operator stated that “When Edison was a telegraph operator in Cincinnati in 1865, his ambition was to be a tragedian.” The Operator also reported that Richard III was “said to have been his favorite character, and whenever his duties in the office permitted, he would arise from his instrument, hump his back, bow his legs and proceed with ‘Now is the winter of our discontent,’ to the great amusement of his fellow-operators.” (When his progress as an inventor faltered, Edison later wrote the same line in his laboratory records.) Another operator friend, Jet Spencer, also wrote of “the loss suffered by dramatic arts when [Edison] turned [his] back on tragedy.”
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