Aram Schefrin

The common wisdom is that John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Abraham Lincoln, was a failed actor and a madman. But the truth is that Booth was the matinee idol of his time - and the attack on the President was not the act of a maniac, but a part of a plan developed at the highest levels of the Confederacy.

In "Consider The Elephant," the story of Wilkes' life and death is told by his brother Edwin, the greatest Shakespearean actor of his age. Soaked in the ambiance of life in the American theater in the mid ninteteenth century, it lays out the path Wilkes took to the top of the celebrity heap, his rivalry with his brother and the development in Richmond of the plot to kidnap - and later assassinate - the Union President.