Edwin Booth (1833-1893) was, contrary to the film Prince of Players , an American, not a British actor. Widely considered the greatest Hamlet of his time and the greatest American actor of the nineteenth century, he was also the brother of John Wilkes Booth, the man who assassinated Abraham Lincoln. Deeply shaken by his brother's crime, Edwin Booth briefly left the stage, but his career managed to recover from the tragedy. Although he of course made no films, he did manage to leave wax cylinder recordings of Shakespearean excerpts.