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Decision Our causebeing almost lost, something decisive& great must be done. John WilkesBooth Abraham Lincoln was enamored with the performing arts. While a young man in New Salem, Illinois, he had been introduced to the plays of William Shakespeare by the village blacksmith, Jack Kelso.' His fondness for Shakespeare became so great that he committed whole plays to memory, and like the literature of the Bible, they became a favoritesource of material for his fertile mind.' Lincoln's taste in the theater was broad, ranging from tragedy to comedy,but it was the plays of Shakespeare that he found most compelling. On a cold March night in 1863, Lincoln visited Ford's Theatre to see James W. Hackett as Falstaff in Shakespeare'sHemy the Fou~-th.~ The following day Hackett sent Lincoln a copy of a book he had recently published containing critical essays on Shakespeare and Shakespearean actors. Lincoln wrote to Hackett acknowledging receipt of the book and took the opportunity to comment on one of his favorite subjects, iWacbeth: "Some of Shakespeare plays I have never read; while others I have gone over perhaps as frequently as any professional reader. Among the latter are Lear, Richard Third, Henry Eighth, Hamlet and especiallyMacbeth. I think nothing equals Macbeth. It iswonderf~l."~ Lincoln then offered his own critique of the great bard: "Unlike you gentlemen of the profession, I think the soliloquyin Hamlet commencing '0,my offence is rank' surpasses that commencing 'To be, or not to be."" Like Macbeth, Lincoln was himself a tragic figure of enormous proportion whose life and death would have fit supremely into a Shakespearean tragedy. His love of Hamlet and ~Wacbeth was in keeping with his fatalistic view of life. His visits to the theater allowed him to find solace in the powerful stories of Shakespeare's tragic figures. It was a solace that was shared by John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln visited several of Washington's major establishments during the four years of his presidency. He attended Ford's Theatre on at least thirteen occasions prior;o the night of April 14.' On one of those occasions he Decision 107 sawJohn Wilkes Booth perform in a play titled The i14ar-bleHeart.; His most recent visit had been on the night of February 10, 1865, just two months before his death, when he saw the comedy Love in Lively starring Booth's brother-in-law, John Sleeper Clarke. It was on that night that Lincoln was accompanied by Generals Grant and Burnside and the three men sat in the presidential box without benefit of guard or attendant.8 Following Lincoln's murder eight weeks later, much ado would be made of an unprotected president. Some would see dark conspiracy in the absence of a guard."But there was no conspiracy or dark secret in the practice. The president along with his generals wanted no interference from such trappings . The absence of a guard on the night of February 10is consistent with the notion that guards were not used inside buildings. Access to the president was reasonably easy. Ford's Theatre was an impressive building located on Tenth Street between E and F Streets not far from the president's house. It was situated in the middle of the block diagonally across the street from the Metropolitan Police headquarters. The theater was large for the period, measuring 75 feet across the front by 100feet in depth. It had three floors and contained offices and a sitting room or lounge. It was one of Washington's premier theaters and a favorite of the president and his wife. The theater had been built in 1833as the First Baptist Church of Washington . In 1859,the First Baptist congregation merged with the Fourth Baptist congregation and built a new, grander church only three blocks away, giving up the Tenth Street structure. Fiscal pressure resulted in a decision by church elders to sell the old building, and in 1861John Ford was granted a five-year lease on the property with an option to purchase it outright at the end of that period. It proved to be a very profitable move for Ford. The church was already a theater of sorts able to accommodate a variety of performances . War had swelled the population of the city with younger men who craved most any form of entertainment. The first year Ford rented the building to George Christy for his famous Christy's Minstrels. Ford leased the building to Christy as a test of the...

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