[RainbowJude]

I went to watch a production of Assassins on Thursday night. Here's an interesting conundrum: why does Booth commit suicide at the end of the "The Ballad of Booth" when in fact he was shot in the neck by someone from outside the barn?

When Booth is confronting Oswald about Oswald's decision to commit suicide, Booth calls it "dumb" and compares it to Willy Loman, saying that "Willy Loman is a part that I could never play". Is it out of character for for his death to be depicted as a suicide earlier in the light of this comparison? Or is the audience meant to think that Booth is implying that suicide is pointless because he has been there?

As a footnote, one of the other things I noticed when I read about Booth's death was that he was not "27 years of age" as the song lyric in "The Ballad of Booth" says. He was 26 years old - born on May 10, 1838 and dying on April 26, 1865 - which means that he would only have been 27 two weeks after his death!

Later days
David

[Barberous]

I don't know the historical details of the real Booth's death, or why they changed it in the show. But my interpretation of the scene with Oswald is that Booth is just talking sh*t. He doesn't describe Willy Loman accurately either IMO. It's similar to the way he claims in his Ballad that he didn't do it for the fame, yet the song itself is all about insisting on being heard, vindicated by others, talked about, made much of in history. Plus he also entices Oswald with the promise of fame. He's like the devil – he adapts his destructive manipulativeness to whatever will work on whomever he's speaking to. He doesn't bother even trying to make his tempting of Zangara sound logical - “It couldn't hurt.” It shows up his other inspirational speeches as being false. He doesn't really care if assassinating makes sense or not. He just wants to destroy.