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- Ada Rehan as Viola in Twelfth Night. 1893. Folger Shakespeare Library.
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- Ada Rehan’s costume as Viola in Twelfth Night. 1893. Folger Shakespeare Library.
This costume was worn by Irish American actress Ada Rehan (1857-1916) for an 1893 production of Twelfth Night in New York, with Rehan in the role of Viola. (The costume is for Viola’s disguise as Cesario, a male servant). A critic called it “one of the best Shakespearean interpretations of the time.”
Born Ada Crehan in Limerick, Ireland, Ada Rehan arrived in Brooklyn with her family at age five. Her big break came in the late 1870s, when theater manager Augustin Daly hired her for his New York company. Rehan’s sweet and funny stage presence served her well in a vast number of parts over the next two decades.
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- Ada Rehan’s bungalow on the Irish sea. Folger Shakespeare Library.
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- Augustin Daly reading to his company. New York, 1884. Photograph by Napoleon Sarony. Folger Shakespeare Library.
In addition to many modern roles, she played such Shakespeare heroines as Rosalind (As You Like It), Katherine (The Taming of the Shrew), and Portia (The Merchant of Venice), always working under Daly’s famously detailed direction. After his death in 1899, she returned only once to the stage, for a brief tour in 1904–05.
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- Ada Rehan as Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew. 1887. Folger Shakespeare Library.
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- Ada Rehan as Mistress Ford, in Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor. New York, 1892. Photograph by Napoleon Sarony. Folger Shakespeare Library.
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- Ada Rehan as Rosalind in As You Like It. Folger Shakespeare Library.
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- Ada Rehan as Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing. Folger Shakespeare Library.
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Comments
Very interesting posts and emails. Thank you,please keep them coming.
Byron Ashton — March 14, 2017