Actor's Equity Association, SAG, AFTRA
 

A Glimpse of Theater History

  

William Warren, Actor and Gentleman (1812-88)

Perhaps no actor of the 19th Century was held in higher regard by his peers and known to such a limited audience as William Warren. He spent more than thirty-six years of his fifty year career at the Boston Museum. Legend had it that he "studied seven hundred roles." He was best known as a low comedian who could somehow capture both the laughter and the pathos of his characters, which ran the gamut from Shakespeare to Dickens to the pot boilers of the day.

Son of the prominent actor/manager William Warren, our younger William was supposed to become a merchant. But when the senior Warren died, leaving his family virtually destitute, a benefit was organized at the Arch Street Theater in Philadelphia in which young William took the role of Young Norval in the ubiquitous Douglas, the role in which his father had made his own debut. Young William's favorable reception encouraged him to abandon a mercantile career to become an actor to support his family. Accordingly, he went on the road eventually settling at John B. Rice's Eagle Theater in Buffalo where he stayed polishing his craft for four years.

In 1846, he joined J. H. Hackett & Co. under the direction of W. H. Chippendale in the inaugural performance at Howard's Athenaeum in Boston, playing Lucius O'Trigger in The Rivals. Clapp tells us of his debut, "No actor ever won the approbation of a Boston audience more rapidly than Mr. Warren."

Twenty weeks later he began his association with the Boston Museum, touring for only one season (1864-65) as a "star" in association with Miss Josie Orton, Charles Barron and Emily Westayer. Apparently Mr. Warren found the road not to his liking, for he returned to the Boston Museum the following season and remained there until his retirement. Kate Ryan reports that when a younger member of the Museum company complained of life at the Boston Museum, she heard Mr. Warren say, "Take my word for it, it is preferable to one night stands in Osh-Kosh, Peoria or Skowhegan." The relative ease and comfort of a settled position might have made a lesser artist complacent, but Warren continued to dominate the stage with roles like Polonius, Dogberry, and Touchstone from Shakespeare; Micawber and Joe Gargery from Dickens; leads from comedies of manners like Sir Peter Teazle (Right) and countless characters now forgotten that delighted audiences in his time, roles like Dr. Pangloss from "The Heir-at-law" or Jefferson Scattering Batkins in "The Silver Spoon." Those who saw him rhapsodized years afterward about his ability to make them laugh and cry at the same time.

Evelyn Greenleaf Sutherland, writing as "Dorothy Lundt," hints at the probable reason for his unparalled success:

...[Warren] made the daring innovation of ridding the first gravedigger in "Hamlet," of the foolish and catch-grin "business" which tradition had long fastened upon him, of removing a dozen or so waistcoats before settling to his work. It was very characteristic of the great comedian to let neither the authority of stage tradition, nor the risk of unpopularity with the galleries, balked of their expected laugh, sway him a feather's weight from his conscientious carrying out of the intent of the author whom he was set to interpret. That little incident struck with sure, if unconscious hand, the key-note of his artistic career. Though caring heartily for applause, -
as what right-hearted worker does not ? - he
" … never stooped
To pick it up, in all his days. "
His artistic conscience was quick and inexorable throughout his long and splendid career. To have called the attention of the audience to himself, when the character he impersonated was naturally in the background, would have seemed to him to turn traitor to the art of his vowed allegiance. To steal the situation, the smile, the "point," which belonged to a fellow-player, would have been as impossible to him as to steal a fellow-player's purse. So should it be with every actor who would sign himself artist and gentleman...

William Winter, writing nearly two decades after Warren's death, called him "an old school actor:"

...a typical figure, representative of all that was most admirable in the Theatre of the Past and exemplary of all thiat is most essential in the Theatre of the present. He was reticent, dignified, courteously formal in social intercourse, faithful to every duty, and scrupulously correct in the conduct of life, and there was in his acting a peculiar charm of personality, a union of intellect, temperament, character, humor, taste, and seemingly spontaneous art, which made it exceedingly delightful. In my young days in Boston (and I believe the public attitude never changed toward him), everybody knew Warren as an actor, and everybody loved him. His professional career extended through a period of nearly fifty-one years, ending on May 12, 1883, when at the Boston Museum, he made his last appearance, acting Eccles, in the fine comedy of "Caste." In the course of those years he acted all the current parts of importance in the lines of old men, low comedy, and eccentric comedy, and also many parts in farce. His repertory was rich in parts of the Shakespearean drama. He was the best Touchstone of his professional period,--wise, quaint, and philosophical behind the smile and the jest; admirable as Polonius; incomparable as Dogberry; proficient in every respect as Launcelot Gobbo, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, and Autolycus. In the comedy of manners, signified by such parts as Sir Peter Teazle and Lord Ogleby, he was unrivalled, except by John Gilbert. His versatility was amazing; he was equally fine as Triplet, Michonnet, and Jesse Rural, on the one hand, and Dr. Pangloss, Eccles, and Batkins, on the other.