Cooper, whose life has
been so well written by that ripe theatrical scholar Joseph N. Ireland,
in one of the books of the Dunlap Society, assumed Shylock in 1797 at
the theatre just then opened in Greenwich Street. The famous Miss
Brunton (then Mrs. Merry), was the Portia, and the cast included Moreton
as Bassanio, Warren as Antonio, Bernard as Gratiano, and Blissett as
Tubal. How far away and how completely lost and forgotten those once
distinguished and admired persons are! Yet Cooper in his day was
idolised: he had a fame as high, if not as widely spread, as that of
Henry Irving or Edwin Booth at present. William Creswick--lately dead at
an advanced age in London--was seen upon the New York stage as Shylock
in 1840; Macready in 1841; Charles Kean in 1845. With the latter, Ellen
Tree played Portia. Charles W. Couldock enacted Shylock on September 6,
1852, at the Castle Garden theatre, in a performance given to
commemorate the alleged centenary of the introduction of the drama into
America. The elder Wallack, the elder Booth, Edwin Forrest, G.V. Brooke,
George Vandenhoff, Wyzeman Marshall, and E.L. Davenport are among the
old local representatives of the Jew. Madam Ponisi used to play Portia,
and so did Mrs. Hoey.

In December 1858, when _The Merchant of Venice_ was finely revived at
Wallack's theatre, with the elder Wallack as Shylock, the cast included
Lester Wallack as Bassanio, John Brougham as Gratiano, A. W. Young--a
quaintly comic actor, too soon cut off--as Launcelot Gobbo, Mary
Gannon--the fascinating, the irresistible--as Nerissa, and handsome Mrs.
Sloan as Jessica. The eminent German actor Davison played Shylock, in
New York, in his own language; and many German actors, no one of them
comparable with him, have been seen in it since. Lawrence Barrett often
played it, and with remarkable force and feeling. The triumphs won in it
by Edwin Booth are within the remembrance of many playgoers of this
generation. When he last acted the Jew Helena Modjeska was associated
with him as Portia. Booth customarily ended the piece with the trial
scene, omitting the last act; and indeed that was long the stage custom;
but with the true Portia of Ellen Terry and a good cast in general the
last act went blithely and with superb effect. The comedy was not
written for Shylock alone. He is a tremendous identity, but he is not
the chief subject. The central theme is Portia and her love. That theme
takes up a large part of the pla