The Last Full Measure
2014
The Last Full Measure opens in darkness with the final, fatal lines of Our American Cousin — "you sockdologizing old man-trap!" — the audience laughter, and then a gunshot and screams. The lights rise on two chairs, a topcoat dropped across one, a lady's handkerchief on the other. Abraham Lincoln enters, confused, walking into an unfamiliar scene. He picks up the coat, fingers a damp spot, and rubs his fingers together. "Mary?" he calls, and no one answers.
What follows is a meditation set in the strange waiting place between life and death. Unseen and unheard by the crowd gathering in the street outside the Petersen House, Lincoln struggles to piece together his last day: breakfast with Robert, the one egg and coffee, the visit with Colfax, the message sent to Ford's for the State Box, the Cabinet meeting where Stanton ran late and Grant spoke of Appomattox. He remembers the cold carriage ride, Mary's hand in his, her last whispered words — "What will Miss Harris think of my hanging on to you so?" — and his easy reply, "She won't think anything about it." "And that," he reflects, "was that. Hardly a eulogy."
As the vigil goes on below his window — Stanton, Welles, the physicians, and Robert among them — Lincoln turns philosophical, reciting from William Knox's "Mortality," the poem he loved above all others. He cares nothing for catching the assassin or for any cure. He wants only to know one thing: what will remain. The play draws on the poems, sermons, and Shakespeare Lincoln carried in memory through life, and on his deep well of remembered grief — for his son Eddie, for the war's dead — as he contemplates, at last, what his legacy will be.
Production Notes
The Last Full Measure grew out of a years-long collaboration between Ken Bradbury and Fritz Klein, the nationally known Abraham Lincoln presenter who performed the title role. The two corresponded extensively over historical detail — Lincoln's last days in Springfield and his 1861 farewell, his relationship with Mary, the separation arrangements on the inaugural journey, the death of young Eddie Lincoln, and the events of April 14, 1865 — drawing on primary sources such as Ruth Painter Randall's research and Lincoln's own letters and recitations.
Fritz Klein suggested bringing in Phil Funkenbusch, who produced and directed the staging but did not write. The script went through many drafts between 2013 and 2016, carrying titles including Farewell to Mr. Lincoln and, finally, The Last Full Measure. The folder also preserves companion material and earlier Bradbury Lincoln pieces — among them "At What Price, War?", a one-act depicting an evening with the Lincolns at the Soldiers' Home in September 1864 — that informed the larger project.