While John Wilkes Booth remains infamous as the actor who assassinated Abraham Lincoln, his older brother Edwin was actually the better known of the two prior to Lincoln’s assassination as he was considered one of the greatest Shakespearean performers of the 19th century. Edwin Booth feared that his brother’s crime would destroy his own reputation and career even though he was not only a supporter of Lincoln, but also once saved the life of Lincoln’s son by grabbing him as he fell from a train. Edwin Booth’s open expression of horror at what his brother had done led to continued public support after Lincoln’s assassination and he remained a successful actor until his death. To this day, no actor has performed the role of Hamlet more times than him.
At the age of 54, Edwin Booth teamed up with fellow famous Shakespearean actor Lawrence Barrett and in 1887 they began what turned out to be a very popular and financially successful national tour.
A search for the word “Duluth” in the 1893 book The Life and Art of Edwin Booth shows Duluth as the fourth stop on this tour, after Buffalo, Detroit and Minneapolis. The actors performed for a single night at the Grand Opera House on September 26, 1887, before moving on to Eau Claire the next day.
Othello was the most common performance on the tour, with Booth playing Iago and Barrett playing Othello.
The photo below shows Edwin Booth as Iago on the left, around 1870, with an 1887 photo of Lawrence Barrett on the right. Between them is the stage of the Grand Opera House taken around the time of their performance.
A recording of Booth reciting lines from Othello three years after his Duluth performance has survived (and is the first recording of Shakespeare by an actor). The sound quality is quite poor, but it is possible to follow along with the text as given in the comments from the first link. The recording beings with, “Most potent, grave, and reverend signiors, my very noble and approved good masters, that I have ta’en away this old man’s daughter, it is most true; true, I have married her…”
The Grand Opera House, shown here under construction at the corner of Fourth Avenue West and Superior Street in 1883, was just four years old when the two actors came to Duluth and was one of the most remarkable buildings in the city.