Death of Juliet, The. As Presented by Miss Margaret Mather in Romeo and Juliet.
Painted by Mr. Frank Russell Green, for the Sum of $6,500 [wrapper title]. [Boston?: n. p., 1884]. First edition.
8vo, unbound sheet folded to make eight pages, unopened. Somewhat foxed and spotted, with a little additional browning and wear; in very good condition.
An apparently unrecorded promotional item associated with the Boston stop on the 1883-1884 tour of famed Canadian-born (but Detroit-raised) Shakespearean actress Margaret Mather (1859-1898), whose fame as a Juliet arose in no small part from her manager J. M. Hill's assiduous publicity machine; this pamphlet trumpets both her role as an artist's model in Frank Russell Green's Death of Juliet, as well as her high culture status as an art collector (she had recently paid $6500 to purchase Green's well-known canvas Francesca da Rimini and here includes a description of the painting prior to its unveiling at Horticultural Hall on Tremont Street, an event for which the public would no doubt be admitted for but a modest fee); the pamphlet also includes the performance schedule for her February, 1884 appearances in Boston, favorable notices of Mather's recent appearances, and a critic's note on the Death of Juliet. Mather—one of the most popular American stage actresses of her era—had a suitably thespian romantic life: she married twice and saw her union with the brewing heir Gustav Pabst dissolved after she threatened to horse-whip her husband on the streets of Milwaukee. Also suitably romantic is that Mather died on-stage and was buried in Detroit amid a frenzied mob of souvenir-seekers. With a small ad for the Perfume Fountain from Clifford Perfumer of Boston.
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