Benjamin Chapin: in interpretations of his own dramas

              From the Drawing from Life by Cahl Bohnen 1910

Benjamin Chapin
In Interpretations of his own dramas:

1
—The Original Dramatic Monolog Portrayal of his four act Lincoln A character drama of Life in the White House
2
—Arewen - By Benjamin Chapin
A four act drama dealing with the present and the future.
3
—Duality - By Benjamin Chapin
A drama in four acts dealing with a strange character and a psychological problem.
4
—Revival
of one or more of Mr. Chapin's early Lyceum Successes in which he appeared over 400 times in leading lyceum courses


Management:
The Coit Lyceum Bureau
A. C. Coit, Pres.   L. J. Alber, Gen. Mgr.
Citizens Building
818 Euclid Avenue
Cleveland, Ohio


Figure


From Photo by Sarony, New York

MR. CHAPIN in Costume and Make-Up AS PRESIDENT LINCOLN



BENJAMIN CHAPIN'S LINCOLN


Figure


The reviews below are not press notices written by friends boosting the show but critical reviews by Professional Dramatic Critics, all strangers to Mr. Chapin, at the time his four act drama Lincoln was produced by him for 21 consecutive times at the Liberty Theatre, New York.  Later Mr. Chapin appeared in the play for an extended run at the Garden Theatre, then at the Hackett Theatre, and at the New Academy of Music, Brooklyn, etc.  He also wrote and produced a one act Lincoln play, called At the White House, presented at the Colonial, the 5th Ave., the Orpheum, the Keith's and other theatres as the Headline Attraction.  Mr. Chapin gave his Dramatic Monolog Interpretation of his four act Lincoln several hundred times on leading Lyceum Courses of the East, before he produced the play; including two performances at Yale, two on the Y. M. C. A. Course in Brooklyn, three in Providence, three in Boston, etc.  He has returned to the Lyceum Platform with greater power in production and higher art in delivery.




Mr. Chapin, in the discharge of a difficult and delicate task, has displayed tact and intelligence, and has succeeded in producing a play thoroughly interesting and at times even inspiring, while his impersonation of his hero is eloquent of that tender, rich and unadorned humanity which has so endeared him to the hearts of his countrymen.  Mr. Chapin's 'Lincoln' possesses much sympathetic charm.  The humor of it is spontaneous, the benevolence of it sincere and refreshing, the sly paternal tenderness wholly delightful.  He is singularly, sometimes extraordinarily, felicitous and vital, and holds his audience in bonds of an eager sympathy which manifested itself last evening in frequent outbursts of unpremeditated applause.  To the innate nobility and simple magnanimity of the man he gives notable, natural artistic expression.
J. R. TOWSE (Dramatic Critic) in the New York Evening Post


AT THE WHITE HOUSE



Mr. Chapin's 'Lincoln' is written with admirable skill and restraint and a deep and sympathetic feeling for the humors as well as the heroism of the man.  It gives one a sense of the moral majesty not only of Lincoln but of his generation.  It is to be recommended, in these days of frenzied exposure of graft and treasonous scourgings of the Senate, as a much needed spiritual bath.—
JOHN CORBIN (Dramatic Critic) in the New York Sun


A great and genuine American play destined to win high distinction and rich emolument.
The New York Press (Dramatic Editor)


The natural ease and dignity of a great mind and heart manifest themselves in Mr. Chapin's 'Lincoln.'
The Times (Sunday)


MR. CHAPIN AS LINCOLN MAKING AN ADDRESS



Exceedingly clever acting.  Strong, potent, stirred the blood and appealed strongly to the emotions.  The curtain calls after the third act totalled a dozen.—
The New York Evening Journal


This Benjamin Chapin has ability.  He has won, both as an actor and as a dramatist.  He caught the fancy of the audience.  Not since Herne's 'Shore Acres' has a drama contained so much appealing realism.  There isn't the slightest doubt that Mr. Chapin in 'Lincoln' will make a fortune throughout the country and he may even make money in hypercritical New York.—
FREDERICK E. McKAY (Dramatic Critic) in N. Y. Evening Mail


From the moment Mr. Chapin appeared upon the stage he had the audience with him through the commingled smiles and tears of his piece.  When the curtain fell on the third act the audience rose to their feet in a body and demanded a speech.
Dramatic Critic in the New York Times


Handkerchiefs to moist eyes proved that Chapin had succeeded in making the tremendous humanity of the man felt.
CHARLES DARNTON (Dramatic Critic) In the New York Evening World


What might have been grotesque was real.  Mr. Chapin dallied with fire and was not burned.—
RENNOLD WOLF In the New York Morning Telegraph


A very real and abiding personality, so real and plausible that one forgets Mr Chapin is acting.—
Collier's Weekly


MR. CHAPIN AS LINCOLN THE DENOUNCEMENT



Every city, town and hamlet should see it.  It will touch the heart of everyone.  Even in the climaxes where the national fate hangs in the balance Mr. Chapin seems to measure up almost to the stature of the martyred President.
The Independent (Editorial.)


The drama received a real contribution in Benjamin Chapin's 'Lincoln.'  In his creation of the character he has 'blocked out' the great American historical drama.
The Literary Digest.


Benjamin Chapin's 'Lincoln' is the most noteworthy offering of the American stage this season, and perhaps in many of them.
Broadway Magazine (May.)


Mr. Chapin portrays with feeling, dignity, humor and humanity the wonderful personality of Lincoln.  It is a genuine impersonation of true dramatic value.
The Theatre Magazine (May.)


A positive evocation of the great dead.  A remarkable assumption of the almost impossible.—
JAMES HUNEKER in Metropolitan Magazine (June)


If Mr. Chapin has not quite achieved the great American historical drama for which wise men are watching, he has at least blocked it out.
HENRY TYRRELL in The Forum


Convincingly true to the nature of a great American.  Chapin treated his delicate subject throughout in the best of taste.
Munsey's Magazine (July)


TELLING A STORY






HONEST ABE AT THE WHITE HOUSE

Extract from the Brooklyn Citizen, Feb. 21, 1909.
Strange Ideas of the Yogis and Mahatmas
The Religion of Lincoln Stirs the Hindu
The mahatmas and yogis of Manhattan are puzzled over the strange case of Benjamin Chapin, as to who and what the Honest Abe actor is.  The New Thought leaders were thrown into a flutter of excitement by Mr. Chapin's appearance and address on The Religion of Lincoln, at an up-town church on the Lincoln Centennial Day.  Several Hindu adepts who were present were startled by the actor's make-up, voice and gestures.  It is the living Lincoln, whispered the swamis.  The spirit of your great President has reappeared in this man!

Most of the American novices laughed outright when this Hindu dictum was repeated to them.  Metempsychosis is a delightful theory when thought of 11,000 miles away, but it strikes the American mind as ridiculous when some one comes up and tells you in sober earnest that the astral body of a deceased person is to be found in a living, breathing personage who stands before you.

The skeptics and doubters hied themselves to the Hackett theater to study Chapin more closely.  The swamis scored a big point Wednesday night when GEN. O. O. HOWARD spoke from a stage box.  The general said that Mr. Chapin's Lincoln impersonation in previous years had been marred by only one defect, the dissimilarity of his voice to that of Lincoln.  Now, however, said the general, it is no longer the voice of Chapin, the Ohioan, but the voice of Lincoln, the Illinoisian.  The general hill lived through the scenes set forth in the play, and on seeing them reenacted he said it was as if Lincoln himself stood before them.

The Swami Mahagarata, a recent arrival in New York from British India, explained the Hindu viewpoint to a reporter as follows:

According to our view there is no such thing as death, but merely the transfer of the personality from one corporeal frame to another.  The average man often descends the scale.  His spirit passes through many stages of animal life before reassuming human shape.  But the great spirits, on the contrary, pass into other human forms.  To us the most logical explanation of Mr. Chapin's art is that the personality of Lincoln has passed into his.  There will be many Lincolns in the future eons of the world's history, just as there have been many Brahmas and many Buddhas.  This probably is one of the first Lincoln reappearances.

Mr. Chapin's representative was asked whether the views of the actor's Oriental friends have influenced the Lincoln impersonator.  He answered:  While Mr. Chapin does not adopt the extreme theosophic view, he believes himself to have inherited much of Lincoln.  Not a few of the men of genius, from the early times to the present, either felt another personality within them or felt themselves guided by a controlling spirit of destiny which was theirs yet not theirs. Science may explain this as self-hypnotism.  Indeed, most historians agree that the world's prophets and extraordinary commanders have been self-hypnotized.  In this case, the man who portrays Lincoln is growing more like Lincoln every year.



One View of a Miracle
by Mark Twain
In the beginning of the first act, while Mr. Chapin did seem to me to be a very close and happy imitation of Mr. Lincoln, it was only an imitation.  But at that point the miracle began.  Little by little, step by step, by an imperceptible evolution the artificial Lincoln dissolved away and the living and real Lincoln was before my eyes and remained real until the end.  I apply to it that strong word 'miracle' because I think it justified.  I think that I have not before seen so interesting a spectacle as this steady growth and transformation of an unreality into a reality.

S. L. Clemens
Mark Twain.


Pleasure, Not Pain
Teachers and Students should see Mr. Chapin's Lincoln.
by Richard Watson Gilder
I went to see Mr. Chapin's 'Lincoln' with many misgivings.  I feared a shock to my conception of the personality which in all secular history most attracts me.  But it gave me pleasure and not pain.  It certainly presents a true interpretation of many sides of that manysided and most racy and interesting man.  Later, a group of my youngest friends were taken to see the play; and on questioning them I found that they had a better idea than ever before of Lincoln's wit, his good-humor, his tenderness, his unselfish patriotism, the annoyances and difficulties of his position, and the heavy weight he had to carry, I wish all our young people could see Mr. Chapin's 'Lincoln.'—(Signed)

Richard Watson Gilder Editor of the Century Magazine



Below Are Given Opinions of Mr. Chapin's Lincoln Portrayal written before he produced the play.

From President Hadley
YALE UNIVERSITY

Mr. Chapin's Lincoln in the Yale Public Lecture Course was well done, both from the dramatic and from the historical standpoint.

(NOTE:  Since the above was written Mr. Chapin has given seventeen performances of Lincoln in New Haven, Conn.)



From President Hyde
BOWDOIN COLLEGE
Mr. Chapin reveals the tremendous strain to which Lincoln was subjected, and the moral earnestness, the human tenderness, the consummate tact and skill with which he met it.  The impersonation is a source of instruction and delight.



From Sir Robert Ball
Brilliantly conceived, wonderfully done.



From Gen. Horatio King
I was delighted — most remarkable and lifelike, instructive, enjoyable, unique.



From Elbert Hubbard
Mr. Chapin's Lincoln is masterful.  It will never disappoint.  It is strong, vivid, splendid and full of soul.



From Charles Battell Loomis
A realization of Lincoln's personality.  Worth a whole season's reading.



From Rev. S. Parke Cadman
Beautiful, impressive.  Should be heard by all Americans.



From Newell Dwight Hillis
PLYMOUTH CHURCH BROOKLYN, N. Y.
I have heard Mr. Chapin's representation of President Lincoln three times in Plymouth Church.  He could fill the church many times more with the same programme.  In the interest of patriotism and civic virtue, and for the incitement of the highest ideal of character, I wish that all might hear this character study.  It is inspiring, brilliant and profound.

(NOTE:  Since the above was written Mr. Chapin has given over fifty performances in Brooklyn including churches, schools, Y. M. C. A. and eight performances in the great new Academy of Music.)


From Washington (D. C.) Star
The audience were of one mind—intensely interested — giving vent to their approval by enthusiastic and spontaneous applause.  Mr. Chapin's Lincoln is along wonderful realistic lines - appearance, mannerism, style of expression, all true — a sincere, unique, and lifelike interpretation of a wonderful personality.





A REAL LINCOLN OF TODAY
By Homer Davenport
(With original cartoon of Chapin's Lincoln
I have just seen a young man about thirty-six years old, by the name of Benjamin Chapin, play Abraham Lincoln.  It was a thrilling play of people of a different age than the one we now live in, and and it gave me the best idea of Lincoln I have ever had—and I have had several.

It wasn't an imitation of Lincoln, as he was dead

Reduced from a half-page cartoon in The New York Evening Mail, of February 12th, 1909.
 before this young man was born.  Rather, all through the play you were impressed that it was Lincoln himself, and you felt that you wanted to run out to the street and yell to the busy throng to hurry in to the Garden theatre, that Abe Lincoln was there, not as an actor, but the immortal, in his room in the White House, telling stories, while Stanton fled; Lincoln, mild, gentle and sarcastic, while Mrs. Lincoln fretted and fumed; Lincoln, shedding tears as he walked the room night after night because he was forced to bring about a war between brothers that the Union might be preserved.

And now for the tragedy after the last curtain.  A man came to me and led me back through the dark passage to a dressing room, and there, among battered trunks and old props of other shows, among face paint and false whiskers, I met this Lincoln who had made my eyes red.

I had one important question I desired to ask him, and that was if he found that this daily life of portraying a character so grand as Lincoln's affected his own life.

He said it did—that he found himself asking himself this question, What would Lincoln do under these circumstances?  He said he found he was a better man by asking that question when he was in doubt.

Mr. Chapin gives us a great picture of a unique character—one who, though awkward and homely, glided over things as smoothly as though on some ball-bearing axle; one who at all times weighed out justice with the least friction and much love.

The type is so simple and homely that one would imagine it would repeat itself again.

The audience was a fitting one—there were many men of the type of Grant and Sherman, old soldiers, and women, of whom two or three looked like Martha Washington.  But the boys should see this Abraham Lincoln, and the girls, too.

I imagine from half an hour's talk with Mr. Chapin that as a character he is of a Lincoln type.



Mr. Chapin has given his Lincoln in the Lyceums and Theatres of Greater New York over 450 times and will fill over 25 Lyceum engagements there the coming season in the leading Schools, Churches and Lyceum Courses.

He will give the Lincoln Monologue Portrayal at Chautauqua Lake, N. Y., Pontiac, Ill., Bay View, Mich., and other large assemblies this coming summer.

LYCEUMITE PRESS PRINTERS & ENGRAVERS CHICAGO