In the old style, actors were evaluated on their delivery of the big speeches, the ones the audience knew and were waiting for. This was called making the points. Reviewing Edwin’s Hamlet, a later critic will write, “From first to last, he not only does not make points where points are usually made, but he does not make a point at all.”

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In the summer of 1858, Ned and Ad, Romeo and Vagabond, take a trip to Tudor Hall, which has stood empty since the Booths returned to Baltimore. This trip is Adam’s idea. Edwin will show him the farm where he grew up. He’ll share stories of his childhood and his famous father. Adam will turn the whole thing into an essay for Noah’s Sunday Times. It will feed the public appetite for backstage stories about actors. It will remind readers who Edwin’s father is. It will solidify his position as a rising star.

Their departure is delayed by Mother’s insistence on serving Adam breakfast and keeping him talking around the table. Keeping Adam talking is the world’s easiest task. “We have a long drive ahead,” Edwin says finally, as if his family doesn’t know exactly how long it takes to get to Bel Air. Even that doesn’t bring the gab to a close. Edwin swallows his annoyance with his third cup of coffee.

They don’t get on the road until noon and then they encounter a series of further delays. A harness breaks and has to be knotted together with shoelaces. A wheel gets stuck in a puddle and Edwin must hand the reins to Adam, by far the better dressed of the two, and leap down, add his shoulder to the work of the horses. Now his boots are muddy as well as laceless. Edwin begins to feel that the whole trip has been a mistake, as if he cannot run faster than the earth turns and will end farther from his destination than he began.

But when one of the horses loses a shoe, the whole adventure tips to comedy. What can they do but laugh? “A farrier, a farrier, my kingdom for a farrier,” Edwin says. The sun is hot and high and the horses’ backs show dark streaks of sweat. Edwin’s shirt is damp and soiled.

When they drive at last through the trees on the long approach to the house, the temperature drops. In that coolness, Edwin feels his welcome. “Your foot is on your native heath,” he hears his father say. These woods, these streams are home to him.

A man comes to take the horses. “Master Edwin,” he says. “It surely is good to see you,” and Edwin returns the pleasantry, hoping he’s managed to conceal the fact that he can’t, for the life of him, remember the man’s name. He retrieves his shoelaces.