Edwin Forrest, the great American tragedian, most renowned and best abused of actors, was born in Philadelphia, March 9, 1806. His early life was a history of poverty, struggles, and vicissitudes as circus rider, negro minstrel, and ambitious actor, until his energy and industry conquered and he became the idol of the people. No man on the stage made warmer friends or more bitter enemies, nor was made the subject of more enthusiastic adulation and severe critical censure during the thirty years he was the acknowledged head of his profession.
In early life his great characters were Othello, Rolla, Carwin, Mark Antony, Damon, William Tell and in the pieces written for him in which he has never had a successor—Spartacus, Metamora, and Jack Cade. Later he improved with care and study, and discarding much of the "ranting" he was charged with, became the Lear, Richelieu, Virginius, and Coriolanus of his admiring countrymen. His superb physique and magnificent voice were not appreciated in England, which he visited in 1836 and 1845, the last visit leading to the quarrel with Macready and consequently to the memorable Astor Place riot of May 10, 1849.
Forrest clubs and Forrest associations, filled with youthful enthusiasts, deified him and defied his traducers, and after the verdict in the Forrest divorce case in 1852, crowds at "Christy's Minstrels" nightly, for months, encored the song of the evening "Jordan am a Hard Road to Trable" for one verse:
"For sixty-nine nights the immortal Forrest played,
And sixty-nine crowds he had accordin';
In Macbeth, Damon, and Jack Cade
He's the greatest actor on this side of Jordan."
His proud, spoiled spirit almost broke with infirmities of age and temper, when his last performances and readings in 1871 and 1872 were comparative failures, and on December 12, 1872, the great, generous, magnetic, but lonely and unhappy man, died.
