Stephen C. Massett was a one-man show – he was known to play a medley of songs, dramatic recitations, and comic imitations, including imitations of seven different persons who had assembled for the purpose of suppressing the press, a hit in San Francisco – he took his act to the mining camps. He played bijoux and then Opera Houses – Twain fretted that when Artemus Ward wasn’t the one-man-act, that audiences would settle for and accept acts like Massett. It helped Twain go on the “lecture circuit” – basically standup.
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Major Dramatic Actors like James Stake (1818-1875) a pupil of Macready teamed up with Sarah Kirby to manage San Francisco’s Jenny Lind Theatre where they performed Shakespeare tragedies, standards like Payne’s “Brutus”, Massinger’s “A New way to Pay Old Debts”, and Knowles’s “Virginius”. Popular shows in Rep were: The Hunchback, London Assurance, The Iron Chest, Hamlet, Othello, Much Ado about Nothing, and The Taming of the Shrew
Male stars got more lucrative deals when they paired up with a leading lady – because of the heavily male population, young attractive actresses were in demand. Mediocre talents like Matilda Heron, Agnes Booth, Laura Keene, Jean Margaret Davenport Lander, Julia Dean (Hayne) all later became East Coast stars. Lola Montez, Ada Isaacs Menken went West after making it in New York.