was marked by the truest and tenderest sensibility. Equally successful was he in that pleasing pastoral idea,—
'And Peace was tinkling in the shepherd's bells,
And singing with the reapers;'
which, had it been written in Claude's days, that great painter would undoubtedly have made the subject of one of his best landscapes.
'Famine shrieked in the empty corn-fields,'—
a striking image, which immediately follows the preceding one, was given by Mr. Forrest with an energy amounting almost to the sublime. Not less impressive was his delivery of
'There are no Gods in heaven,'
which bursts from him when he hears of the murder of his wife and child by the Roman cohorts. Mr. Forrest has made such a hit as has not been made since the memorable 1814, when Edmund Kean burst on England in Shylock. America may well feel proud of him; for though he is not, strictly speaking, what is called a classical actor, yet he has all the energy, all the in
[Pg 301]
domitable love of freedom that characterizes the transatlantic world. We say this because there were many republican allusions in the play where the man spoke out quite as much as the actor, if not more. Having seen him in Spartacus, we no longer wonder at his having electrified the New World. A man better fitted by nature and art to sustain such a character, and a character better fitted to turn the heads of a nation which was the other day in arms against England, never appeared on the boards of a theatre. At the fall of the curtain he received such a tempest of approbation as we have not witnessed for years."
The Morning Advertiser said,—
"When to the facts of a new play and a new actor is superadded the circumstance that both the author and the player of the new tragedy are Americans, and the first who ever tempted the intellectual taste of the British public by a representation on the English stage, the crowds which last night surrounded the doors long before they were thrown open are easily accounted for. The applause which Mr. Forrest received on his entrée must have been very cheering to that gentleman. He possesses a countenance well marked and classical; his figure, a model for stage effect, with 'thew and sinew' to boot. His enunciation, which we had anticipated to be characterized by some degree of that patois which distinguishes most Americans, even the best educated, was almost perfect 'to the last recorded syllable,' and fell like music on the ears. We here especially point to the less declamatory passages of the drama; in those portions of it where he threw his whole power of body and soul into the whirlwind, as it were, of his fury, his display of physical strength was prodigious, without 'o'erstepping the modesty of nature.' The inflections of his voice frequently reminded one of Kean in his healthiest days, yet there did not appear the manner of a copyist. He was crowned with loud and unanimous plaudits at least a dozen times during the representation."
The Court Journal gave its judgment thus:
"This chief of American performers is most liberally endowed by nature with all the finest qualities for an actor. With a most graceful and symmetrical person, of more than the ordinary stature, he has a face capable of the sternest as of the nicest delineations of passion, and a voice of deep and earnest power. We
[Pg 302]
have never witnessed a presence more noble and commanding,—one that, at the first moment, challenged greater respect, we may write, admiration. As an actor, Mr. Forrest is fervent, passionate, and active: there is no child's play in whatever he does; but in the most serious, as in the slightest development of feeling, he puts his whole heart into the matter, and carries us away with him in either the subtlety or the strength of his emotion. With powers evidently enabling him to outroar a whirlwind, he is never extravagant,—he is never of 'Ercles' vein; his passion is always from the heart, and never from the lungs. His last two scenes were splendidly acted, from the strength, the self-abandonment of the performer; he looked and moved as if he could have cut down a whole cohort, and died like a Hercules. The reception of Mr. Forrest was most cordial; and the applause bestowed upon him throughout the play unbounded. At the conclusion of the tragedy he was called for, and most rapturously greeted."
The Times described the figure, face, and voice of the actor, gave a long abstract of the play, and said,—
"He played with his whole heart, and seemed to be so strongly imbued with the part that every tone and gesture were perfectly natural, and full of that fire and spirit which, engendered by true feeling, carry an audience along with the performer. He made a powerful impression on the audience, and must be regarded as an able performer who to very considerable skill in his profession adds the attraction of a somewhat novel and much more spirited style of playing than any other tragic actor now on our stage."
The following extract is from the Atlas:
"If we were to estimate Mr. Forrest's merits by his performance of the Gladiator, we should, probably, underrate, or, perhaps, mistake the true character of his genius. The very qualities which render him supreme in such a part would, if he possessed no other requisites, unfit him for those loftier conceptions that constitute the highest efforts of the stage. It would be impossible to produce a more powerful performance, or one in all respects more just and complete, than his representation of the moody savage Thracian. But nature has given him peculiar advantages which harmonize with the demands of the part, and which, in almost any other character in the range of tragedy, would either encumber the delineation or be of no avail. His figure is cast
[Pg 303]
in the proportions of the Farnese Hercules. The development of the muscles, indeed, rather exceeds the ideal of strength, and, in its excess, the beauty of symmetrical power is in some degree sacrificed. His head and neck are perfect models of grandeur in the order to which they belong. His features are boldly marked, full of energy and expression, and, although not capable of much variety, they possess a remarkable tone of mental vigor. His voice is rich and deep, and susceptible of extraordinary transitions, which he employs somewhat too frequently as the transitions of feeling pass over his spirit. The best way, perhaps, of describing its varieties is to say that it reminded us occasionally of Kean, Vandenhoff, and Wallack, but not as they would be recalled by one who, in the dearth of his own resources, imitated them for convenience, but by one in whom such resemblances are natural and unpremeditated. Mr. Forrest's action is bold, unconscious, and diversified; and the predominant sentiment it inspires is that of athletic grace. In the part of Spartacus all these characteristics were brought out in the most favorable points of view; and the performance, exhausting from its length and its internal force, was sustained to the close with undiminished power. There is certainly no actor on the English stage who could have played it with a tithe of Mr. Forrest's ability."
In response to the invitation or challenge to appear in some of the great Shakspearean rôles, Forrest appeared many nights successively in Othello, Macbeth, and Lear, and in them all was crowned with most decisive and flattering triumphs. The praise of him by the press was generous, and its chorus scarcely broken by the few dissenting voices, whose tone plainly betrayed an animus of personal hostility. A few examples of the newspaper notices may fitly be cited,—enough to give a fair idea of the general impression he made.
The Globe, of October 25th:
"Mr. Forrest selected as his second character the fiery Othello, 'who loved not wisely, but too well.' There was something nobly daring in this flight, so soon, too, after he whose voice still dwells in our ears had passed from among us. To essay before an English audience any character in which Edmund Kean was remembered was itself no trifling indication of that self-confidence which, when necessary, true genius can manifest. To make
[Pg 304]
that attempt in Othello was indeed daring. And nobly, we feel proud to say, did the performance bear out the promise. In the Senate scene his colloquial voice told well in the celebrated address to the Seniors of Venice. He did not speak as if the future evils of his life had even then cast their shadows upon him. The calm equability of the triumphant general and successful lover pervaded his performance throughout the first two acts, with the exception of the scene of the drunken brawl in the second, where he first gave token of the fiery elements within him. The third act was a splendid presentment throughout. He had evidently studied the character with the judgment of a scholar, 'and a ripe and good one:' each shade of the jealous character of the easy Moor, from the first faint guessings at his tempter's meaning to the full conviction of his wife's dishonesty, was brought out with the touch of a master-hand, and embodied with a skill equalling that of any actor whom we have seen, and far, very far superior to the manner in which any other of our living performers could attempt it. This third act alone would have placed Mr. Forrest in the foremost rank of his profession had he never done anything else; and so his kindling audience seemed to feel, as much in the deep watching silence of their attention as in the tremendous plaudits which hailed what on the stage are technically called 'the points' he made.
"In the two succeeding acts he was equally great in the passages which called forth the burning passions of his fiery soul; but we shall not at present particularize; where all was good it would be difficult, and we have already nearly run through the dictionary of panegyric. In accordance with a burst of applause such as seldom follows the fall of the curtain, Othello was announced for repetition on Wednesday and Friday."
The commendation of the London Sun was still stronger:
"Mr. Forrest last night made his appearance here in the arduous character of Othello. The experiment was a bold one, but was completely successful. We entertain a vivid recollection of Kean in this part; we saw his Moor when the great actor was in the meridian vigor of his powers, and also when he was in his decline and could do justice only to the more subdued and pathetic parts of the character; and even with these recollections on our mind, we feel ourselves justified in saying that Mr. For
[Pg 305]
rest's Othello, if here and there inferior in execution to Kean's, was in conception far superior. There is an elevation of thought and sentiment,—a poetic grandeur,—a picturesqueness, if we may use such an expression, in Mr. Forrest's notion of the character, which Kean could never reach. The one could give electrical effect to all its more obvious points, turn to admirable account all that lay on its surface; the other sounds its depths,—turns it inside out,—apprehends it in a learned and imaginative spirit, and shows us not merely the fiery, generous warrior, the creature of impulse, but the high-toned, chivalrous Moor; lofty and dignified in his bearing, and intellectual in his nature,—such a Moor, in short, as we read of in the old Spanish chronicles of Granada,—and who perpetrates an act of murder not so much from the headstrong, animal promptings of revenge, as from an idea that he is offering up a solemn and inevitable sacrifice to justice. In the earlier portion of the character Mr. Forrest was rather too drawling and measured in his delivery; his address to the Senators was judicious, but not quite familiar enough; it should have been more colloquial. It was evident, however, that throughout this scene the actor was laboring under constraint; he had yet to establish himself with his audience, and was afraid of committing himself prematurely. Henceforth he may dismiss this apprehension; for he has proved that he is, beyond all question, the first tragedian of the age.... We have spoken of this gentleman's Othello in high terms of praise, but have not commended it beyond its deserts. In manly and unaffected vigor; in terrific force of passion, where such a display is requisite; but, above all, in heartfelt tenderness, it is fully equal to Kean's Othello; in sustained dignity, and in the absence of all stage-trick and undue gesticulation, it is superior. Perhaps here and there it was a little too elaborate; but this is a trivial blemish, which practice will soon remedy. On the whole, Mr. Forrest is the most promising tragedian that has appeared in our days. He has, evidently, rare intellectual endowments; a noble and commanding presence; a countenance full of varying expression; a voice mellow, flexible, and in its undertones exquisitely tender, and a discretion that never fails him. If any one can revive the half-extinct taste for the drama, he is the man."
The Carlton Chronicle said,—
[Pg 306]
"It is impossible that any actor could, in person, bearing, action, and utterance, better fulfil your fair-ideal of the noble Moor. All the passages of the part evincing Will and Power are delivered after a manner to leave the satisfied listener no faculty except that of admiration. His bursts of passion are terrifically grand. There is no grimace,—no exaggeration. They are terrible in their downright earnestness and apparent truth. Nothing could be more heart-thrilling than the noble rage with which he delivered the well-known passage,—
'I had rather be a toad,
And live upon the vapor of a dungeon,
Than keep a corner in the thing I love,
For others' uses;'
nothing more glorious than the burst in which he volleyed forth the following passage, suppressed by the barbarians of our theatres,—
'Like to the Pontic Sea,
Whose icy current and compulsive course
Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on
To the Propontic and the Hellespont;
Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace,
Shall ne'er look back, ne'er ebb to humble love,
Till that a capable and wide revenge
Swallow them up.'
Throughout the part, as he enacted it, there were several new readings, in the player's phrase. They were all good,—they all conveyed to us, who love Shakspeare, new ideas. Forrest, apart from his playing, is no common man. In many scenes of the play, in which it was the fashion to rant, Forrest contented himself with the appropriate display of dignified and quiet power. This was beyond praise."
The following extract is from the notice in the John Bull:
"It is where Iago first attempts to rouse the jealousy of Othello, and, having created the spark, succeeds in fanning it to a consuming fire, that Mr. Forrest may be said to have been truly great. Slowly he appeared to indulge the suspicion of his wife's infidelity; in silent agony the conviction seemed to be creeping upon him,—his iron sinews trembling with dreadful and conflicting emotions,—rapid as thought were his denunciations; and, with all the weakness of woman, he again relapsed into tenderness,—pain
