The Knickerbocker, Vol. 10, No. 6, December 1837Various
History
The Knickerbocker, Vol. 10, No. 6, December 1837
Various
Periodicals
PARK THEATRE--MR. FORREST.--TWO succeeding engagements of Mr.
FORREST, have given us an opportunity of witnessing his efforts in
all of his old, and in some (to him) new characters. Othello, Damon,
Richard III., Metamora, Spartacus, Lear, Carwin, in the 'Orphan of
Geneva,' and even Hamlet, have in turn been presented, through the
impersonations of Mr. Forrest. Among these, there are some characters
which long ago he made his own, and which have not since found any
other representative. Such are Metamora, Spartacus, and perhaps
Damon; Othello and Lear, too, had been previously attempted by Mr.
Forrest, and found among his many friends enthusiastic admirers. This
last engagement, however, has presented this gentleman in two new
characters, Richard and Hamlet. Of the first of these, it shall be
our province to speak in this paper.
Mr. Forrest has challenged criticism upon his conception of the
character of the Duke of Gloster, by his remarks contained in a
published letter to a friend, written during his English visit. In
this letter he boldly affirms, that the ideas which EDMUND KEAN
always held of the personage which he represented as the Duke of
Gloster, were erroneous, in one great particular, and that therefore
_he_ should portray the crook-backed tyrant in a light quite
different from that in which Kean presented him. This error of Kean
consisted, it seems, in supposing the royal cut-throat to have been
a too _serious_ villain; in presenting the early part of his career
in a shade too sombre. According to Mr. Forrest, the wily duke
was rather inclined to be jocose in his butcheries; and he should
therefore, in his personation of the character, make the jester a
sort of _basso-relievo_ to the hard, black surface of his marble
heart.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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