On September 17, 1860, after an absence of nearly four years, Edwin Forrest appeared again on the stage. He was engaged by James Nixon, and began his contract of one hundred nights at Niblo's Garden, New York, in the character of Hamlet. The long retirement only increased the curious interest which centred round his historic name. Upon his opening night the seats were sold at auction. His success in Philadelphia rivalled that of New York. In Boston the vast auditorium of the grandest theatre in America was found too small to contain the crowds he drew.
Severe attacks of gout were beginning to tell upon that herculean form, sapping and undermining it; and in 1865, while playing Damon at the Holiday Street Theatre, in Baltimore, the weather being very cold and the theatre open to draughts, he was seized with a sudden illness, which was followed by very serious results. Suffering the most intense agony, he was able to get to the end of the part; but when his robes were laid aside and physicians summoned, it was found to his horror that he had suffered a partial paralysis of the sciatic nerve. In an instant the sturdy gait, the proud tread of the herculean actor was forever gone; for he never regained complete control of his limb, a perceptible hobble being the legacy of the dreadful visitation. His right hand was almost powerless, and he could not hold his sword.
In 1866 he went to California, urged by the manager in San Francisco. His last engagement in New York took place in February, 1871. He played Lear and Richelieu, his two greatest parts. On the night of March 25, 1872, Forrest opened in "Lear" at the Globe Theatre, Boston. "Lear" was played six nights. During the second week he was announced for Richelieu and Virginius; but he caught a violent cold on Sunday, and labored sorely on Monday evening through the part of Richelieu. On Tuesday he repeated the performance, against the advice of friends and physicians. Rare bursts of his old power lighted up the play, but he labored piteously on against his illness and threatened pneumonia. When stimulants were offered he rejected them, declaring "that if he died to-night, he should still be his old royal self."
Announced for Virginius the following evening, he was unable to appear. A severe attack of pneumonia developed itself. He was carried to his hotel, and his last engagement was brought to an abrupt and melancholy end. As soon as he was able to move, he left Boston for his home in Philadelphia, resting on his way only a day in New York. As the summer passed away, the desire for work grew stronger and stronger, and he decided to re-enter public life, but simply as a reader of the great plays in which he had as an actor been so successful. The result was a disappointment. On December 11, 1872, he wrote to Oakes his last letter, saying sadly, but fondly: "God bless you ever, my dear and much-beloved friend."
When the morning of December 12th came, his servant, hearing no sound in his chamber at his general hour of rising, became alarmed, opened his master's door, and found there, cold in death upon his bed, the form of the great tragedian. His arms were crossed upon his bosom, and he seemed to be at rest. The stroke had come suddenly. With little warning, and without pain, he had passed away.
The dead man's will was found to contain several bequests to old friends and servants, and an elaborate scheme by which his fortune, in the hands of trustees, was to be applied to the erection and support of a retreat for aged actors, to be called "The Edwin Forrest Home." The idea had been long in his mind, and careful directions were drawn up for its practical working; but the trustees found themselves powerless to realize fully the hopes and wishes of the testator. A settlement had to be made to the divorced wife, who acted liberally toward the estate; but the amount withdrawn seriously crippled it, as it was deprived at once of a large sum of ready money. Other legal difficulties arose. And thus the great ambition of the tragedian to be a benefactor to his profession was destined to come almost to naught. Of this happily little he recks now. He has parted with all the cares of life, and has at last found rest.
Forrest's greatest Shakespearean parts were Lear, Othello, and Coriolanus. The first grew mellow and rich as the actor grew in years, while it still retained much of its earlier force. His Othello suffered with the decline of his faculties, although his clear conception of all he did was apparent to the end in the acting of every one of his parts. Coriolanus died with him, the last of all the Romans. He was greatest, however, in such parts as Virginius, William Tell, and Spartacus. Here his mannerisms of gait and utterance were less noticeable than in his Shakespearean characters, or were overlooked in the rugged massiveness of the creation. Hamlet, Richard, and Macbeth were out of his temperament, and added nothing to his fame; but Richelieu is said to have been one of his noblest and most impressive performances. He was in all things marked and distinctive. His obtrusive personality often destroyed the harmony of the portrait he was painting; but in his inspired moments, which were many, his touches were sublime. He passed over quiet scenes with little elaboration, and dwelt strongly upon the grand features of the characters he represented. His Lear, in the great scenes, rose to a majestic height, but fell in places almost to mediocrity. His art was unequal to his natural gifts. He was totally unlike his great contemporary and rival, Macready, whose attention to detail gave to every performance the harmony of perfect work.
This memoir may fitly close with an illustrative anecdote of the great actor. Toward the end of his professional career he was playing an engagement at St. Louis. He was very feeble in health, and his lameness was a source of great anxiety to him. Sitting at a late supper in his hotel one evening, after a performance of "King Lear," with his friend J. B. McCullough, of the Globe-Democrat, that gentleman remarked to him: "Mr. Forrest, I never in my life saw you play Lear so well as you did to-night." Whereupon the veteran almost indignantly replied, rising slowly and laboriously from his chair to his full height: "Play Lear! What do you mean, sir? I do not play Lear! I play Hamlet, Richard, Shylock, Virginius, if you please, but by God, sir, I am Lear!"
Nor was this wholly imaginative. Ingratitude of the basest kind had rent his soul. Old friends were gone from him; new friends were but half-hearted. His hearthstone was desolate. The public, to whom he had given his best years, was becoming impatient of his infirmities. The royalty of his powers he saw by degrees torn from his decaying form. Other kings had arisen on the stage, to whom his old subjects now showed a reverence once all his own. The mockery of his diadem only remained. A wreck of the once proud man who had despised all weakness, and had ruled his kingdom with imperial sway, he now stood alone. Broken in health and in spirit, deserted, forgotten, unkinged, he might well exclaim, "I am Lear!"[Back to Contents]