Life of Edwin Forrest, the American Tragedian. Volume 1 (of 2)Alger, Horatio, Jr.
General
Life of Edwin Forrest, the American Tragedian. Volume 1 (of 2)
Alger, Horatio, Jr.
Forrest, Edwin, 1806-1872
was wholly deficient in spirit, until Mr. Forrest came to the last
member of the sentence, which was given with due and proper emphasis.
In the rencounter with Macduff, where Macbeth declares that he 'bears
a charmed life,' the passage ought to be uttered as the proud boast
of one who was confident of supernatural protection, and not in a
taunting, sneering manner. Mr. Forrest's error is on the right side,
and is very easily corrected. Doubtless, in his future performance of
the character he will assume a higher tone in those parts of the play
to which we have alluded."
The Morning Chronicle said,--
"Mr. Forrest appeared last evening in the character of Macbeth, and in
the performance of it fully sustained the reputation he has already
obtained in the parts of Othello and Lear. Mr. Forrest brings to the
performance of Shakspeare's heroes an energy and vigor, tempered
with a taste and judgment, such as we rarely find combined in any
who venture to tread the stage. There is, besides, a reality in his
acting, an actual identification of himself with the character he
impersonates, stronger than in any actor we have ever seen. If this
was remarkable in his performance of Othello and Lear, it is not less
so in the performance of Macbeth. From the first act to the last--from
his first interview with the weird sisters, whose vague prophecy
instills into the mind that feeling of 'vaulting ambition' which
leads him to the commission of so many crimes, to the last scene, in
which he finds his charms dissolved, and begins, too late, to doubt
'the equivocation of the fiend'--he carried the audience completely
with him, and made them at times wholly unmindful of the skill of the
actor, from the interest excited in the actions of Macbeth."
In addition to his renderings of Spartacus, Othello, Lear, and Macbeth,
Forrest appeared also as Damon, and achieved a success similar to that
he had won in the same part at home.
"The part of _Damon_ is decidedly beneath Mr. Forrest's acknowledged
talents. No man could, however, have made more of the character than
he did, whether he appeared as the stern, uncompromising patriot, the
deep-feeling husband and father, or the generous and devoted friend.
His rebuke of the slavish senate, who crouch at the feet of the tyrant
Dionysius, was delivered with calm and earnest dignity; but his two
great scenes were that in which he learns that his freedman, Lucullus,
has slain his horse to prevent the anxious Damon from arriving in time
to rescue his beloved Pythias from the hands of the executioner; and
that with which the piece concludes, where, breathless and exhausted,
he rushes into the presence of his despairing friend.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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