Pictorial Shakespeare, 1880-1890 - eTheses Repository - University ...

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Irving wrote to Austin Brereton towards the end of this tour:
The seed we have sown I mean to reap - our
work has been a revelation & our success beyond
precedent.
In his second engagement in Boston receipts totalled
$24,089 for ceven performances - £4,800 by Irving's reckoning.^
These figures, if accurate, are sensational indeed: in 1865-
1866 it took Charles Kean two hundred and twenty-nine performances
to realise (590,000 (£18,000), including $969.50 for his
farewell . enefit in New York, when the gross tokings were
#3,000. 6
Not all criticism of the American performances was as
complimentary as winter's: Henry James and E.Ranken Towse, the
critic of The New York Bvening Post.had considerable reservations
concerning Irving 1 s technical abilities. Some less
respectable critics upheld the spirit of the 1840s, ;