"Mr. Forrest's Lear is, from beginning to end, a very masterly, intelligent, and powerful performance, giving evidence of the most careful and attentive study of the author's meaning, steering clear, at the same time, of all fine-drawn subtleties and tricky point-making, and affording a well-grasped and evenly-sustained impersonation of that magnificent and soul stirring creation. He is certainly a better Lear than any our own stage has afforded for some time. Although, from Mr. Forrest's personal appearance, one would with difficulty imagine him capable of looking the old man, fourscore and upwards, all the attributes of age and feebleness, the palsied head and tottering walk, are admirably assumed, and are never lost sight of throughout the performance. At his first appearance he was received with considerable applause, which was repeatedly renewed as he continued with the scene,—commencing in a tone of kingly dignity and paternal affection, and, after Cordelia's reply, gradually giving place to the suppressed workings of his rage, which at last burst forth, at Kent's interference, into an ungovernable storm, and lit up his features with the most withering expression of fury. The curse at the end of the second act, which was pronounced by Mr. Forrest in one scream of rage, his body tremulously agitated with the violence of his emotion, brought down burst after burst of applause, which lasted considerably after the fall of the drop; and indeed an attempt was made to introduce that very unusual compliment when the play is still unfinished, a call for the actor. Such displays of physical power, although in this instance perfectly called for and necessary, are not, however, the chief or the best points on which the merits of Mr. Forrest's performance rest. The scene where he discovers Kent in the stocks, and is subsequently confronted with his two daughters, whose insults finally drive him off distracted, was acted with great play and variety of expression,—Mr. Forrest passing from one emotion to the other with childish fitfulness, and displaying a keen and discriminate perception. The mad scenes also in no less degree evinced the higher qualities of the actor. The declamatory bursts of passionate satire on the vices and weaknesses of the world, chaotically mingled with the incoherences of madness, had evidently been a subject of minute study, and were shaded with admirable nicety, the features constantly expressing the alternate return of light and darkness on the old man's brain. In the last act, the touching simplicity and tenderness of his manner, when too exhausted for violent emotion, and the last burst of feverish energy over the body of Cordelia, were equally well conceived. If there be any fault to find, it was with the death, which was, perhaps, too minutely true in its physical details.
"Mr. Forrest was called for at the conclusion, and received enthusiastic marks of approbation."
The following extract is from a notice of his Othello by the John Bull:
"Mr. Forrest's former visit to this country must be fresh in the memory of theatrical amateurs. His talents were then generally admitted; but it was remarked that, though he possessed force, it was more of a physical than a moral kind, and that his action was more akin to melodrama than to tragedy. Since that time Mr. Forrest seems considerably changed, and for the better. His action has become more quiet, chaste, and subdued. It is now, perhaps, too careful and measured, and we rather missed something of his former rough and somewhat extravagant energy. We cannot help thinking that one or two of our contemporaries have relied rather on their remembrance of what Mr. Forrest was than their perception of what he is. On the whole, his representation of Othello well merited the immense applause it received."
Scores of notices like these in the best portion of the English press prove conclusively enough the malignity of writers who could denounce their American visitor as a theatrical impostor, worthy of nothing but contempt. The London Observer, for example, could find nothing better to say of the Metamora of Forrest than this: "His whole dramatic existence is a spasm of rage and hatred, and his whole stage-life one continuous series of murder, arson, and destruction to life and property in its most hideous form. What a pity he could not be let loose upon the drab-colored swindlers of Pennsylvania! Mr. Forrest did not indicate one of the characteristics of the American Indian except that wretched combination of sounds between a whine, a howl, and a gobble, which is designated the war-whoop by those who think more of poetry than of truth. Besides this sin of omission, he has to answer for those sins of commission which so sadly deface his impersonation of every part he has appeared in, namely, that cool, nonchalant manner, that slow motion, and that ridiculous style of elocution, now whispering, now conversational, ever and anon screaming, roaring, bellowing, and raving, but never sustained, truthful, or dignified:
"'List to that voice! Did ever discord hear
Sounds so well fitted to her untuned ear?'"
The Age and Argus spoke of the most extraordinary contrast of the conduct of a part of the press towards Mr. Forrest to the treatment he received when he acted at Drury Lane in 1836, and said, "Many persons intimate that had he been now engaged there instead of appearing at the Princess's, the theatrical reporters would have been unable to discover a single fault in his performances,—managerial tact being competent to guide the honest opinions of most of these gentry. The 'Observer' endeavors to depict Mr. Forrest as a fool, an idiot, whose performance is simply ludicrous; albeit we have reason to believe the writer is the self-same person who seven years ago tried to write him up as a first-rate tragedian."
Forrest thought, from some direct proofs and a mass of circumstantial evidence, he could trace the fierce hostility with which he was met to its chief source in Macready. He may have been mistaken; but such was his belief. Macready, returning from America irritated towards him as a more than formidable rival before the people, was now idle, and had repeatedly failed to draw a remunerative audience in London. In fact, such was the temper of the man that when manager Bunn was nightly losing money by him, and, in order to make him break his engagement, purposely vexed him by casts which he disliked, he one night rushed off the stage in a fury, and, without a word of provocation, fell on Bunn, a much smaller and weaker man, and beat him so dreadfully that the poor manager lay in bed in frightful agony for two weeks. He was prosecuted, convicted, and forced to pay a hundred and fifty pounds damages. Macready was the intimate friend of the theatrical critic who abused Forrest the most unrelentingly. He was the intimate friend of Bulwer Lytton, who refused the request of Forrest to be allowed to appear in his two plays of "Richelieu" and "The Lady of Lyons." He was the intimate friend of Mitchel, the manager of the English theatrical company in Paris, who rudely refused to see Forrest when he applied to him for an interview. This last circumstance was especially mortifying, as he had informed his friends before leaving home that he intended to perform in Paris, and flattering notices of him and of his purposed appearance among them had been published in the French press.[A] Macready himself had failed to make an impression in Paris, and the English company there was not pecuniarily successful. Forrest believed, whether correctly or not, that his rival had interfered to prevent his engagement there. Thus his antagonism was edged with a sharper hate.