Father seems to be regretting his earlier criticism of Kean. He tells Edwin now that no human being could equal Kean for the expression of jealousy or despair. Then he says that Edwin is to take the role of Tressel when Father next plays Richard III. Not the bit-part/no-lines Tressel that Shakespeare wrote—no, they are performing Colley Cibber’s adaptation, which everyone in America so prefers, being considerably shorter and bloodier. In Cibber’s version, the princes are murdered right there on the stage.

In Cibber’s version, Tressel comes from the battle at Tewkesbury to tell King Henry, in several long, impassioned speeches, how his son has been killed at the hands of crooked Richard, Clarence, and the rest. Edwin only prays that his father will remember this offer come morning.

Later, in a letter home, Edwin will say that the actor meant to play the part was also the prompter and, finding his dual roles too demanding, he asked Edwin at the last minute to take his place. In this telling, his father knows nothing about it until Edwin visits his dressing room, already in costume and paint. This is a story that will collect details over the years the way a room collects dust.

The truth is that Father is not bringing in the audiences he once did. Despite Edwin’s efforts, his father often performs drunk, which sometimes angers the audience so much they get up and leave—a shame, as Father usually sobers and improves as the play proceeds.

So casting Edwin is a novelty act—the son debuting on the same stage as his famous father. It’s hoped this gambit will increase ticket sales.

But one can only debut once. “How did you do?” his father asks when Edwin returns to the dressing room.

“Well, I think,” Edwin says.

Few in the audience agree. His performance was said to be lacking in emotion and understanding. Also nearly inaudible.

—

Over the next year, Edwin appears onstage only seven more times but the roles he’s given grow in length and importance. He begins to play the handsome young men—Cassio in Othello, Wilford in The Iron Chest, Laertes in Hamlet. Women in the street no longer tell him to go home to his mother. Now they tell him to come inside.

Sometime during this period, in pursuit of dreamless sleep, Edwin begins to drink.

Lincoln: Fathers and Sons

Eat, Mary, for we must live.

—Abraham Lincoln, February 1850

In February of 1850, little Edward Baker Lincoln, the second son of Abraham and Mary Lincoln, dies of pulmonary tuberculosis just short of his fourth birthday. He has been gravely ill for months. “We miss him very much,” Lincoln writes in agonized understatement.