"The part of Lear is one which many otherwise eminent actors have found above, or at least unsuited to, their capacities. Mr. Forrest played it decidedly better than anything he has as yet essayed in this country. His conception of the character is accurate, and his execution was uncommonly powerful and effective. If it be, as it cannot be disputed that it is, a test of an actor's skill that he is able to rivet the attention of the audience, and so to engage their thoughts and sympathies that they have not leisure even to applaud on the instant, he may be said to have succeeded most completely last night. From the beginning of the play to the end, it was obvious that he exercised this power over the spectators. While he was speaking, the most profound silence prevailed, and it was not until he had concluded that the delight of the audience vented itself in loud applause. This was particularly remarkable in his delivery of Lear's curse upon his daughters, the effect of which was more powerful than anything that has lately been done on the stage. It is not, however, upon particular passages that the excellence of the performance depended; its great merit was that it was a whole, complete and finished. The spirit in which it began was equally sustained throughout, and, as a delineation of character and passion, it was natural, true, and vigorous, in a very remarkable degree. The mad-scenes were admirably played; and the last painful scene, so painful that it might well be dispensed with, was given with considerable power. The great accuracy and fidelity with which the decrepitude of the aged monarch was portrayed was not among the least meritorious parts of the performance. The palsied head and quivering limbs were so correctly given as to prove that the actor's attention has been sedulously devoted to the attempt to make the performance as perfect as possible. A striking proof of his sense of the propriety of keeping up the illusion he had created was manifested in his reappearance, in obedience to the loud and general call of the audience, at the end of the tragedy. He came on, preserving the same tottering gait which he had maintained throughout, and bowed his thanks as much in the guise of Lear as he had acted in the drama. This would have been almost ridiculous in any but a very skilful actor: in him it served to prevent too sudden a dissipation of the dramatic illusion." The critical notices of the Macbeth of Forrest were of the same average as the foregoing estimates of his other parts, though the faults pointed out were generally of a description the exact opposite of those currently ascribed to his acting. He was considered too subdued and tame in the part: