Edwin Forrest

Edwin Forrest (March 9, 1806 – December 12, 1872) was a nineteenth-century American Shakespearean actor whose Broadway career spanned from 1838 to 1849. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he was the son of Rebecca, née Lauman, and William Forrest, a Scottish merchandise peddler who had relocated from Dumfriesshire to Trenton, New Jersey in 1791 before settling in Philadelphia. Forrest's mother came from an affluent German-American family. As a boy, Forrest and his brother William participated in theatrical performances staged in a woodshed through a local juvenile thespian club.

Forrest made his first stage appearance at age eleven at Philadelphia's South Street Theatre, taking the female role of Rosalia de Borgia in John D. Turnbull's melodrama Rudolph: or, The Robbers of Calabria. Following his father's death in 1819, he attempted apprenticeships with a printer, a cooper, and a ship chandler. In early 1820, while attending a lecture, he volunteered for a nitrous oxide experiment and, under its influence, delivered a soliloquy from Shakespeare's Richard III that caught the attention of Philadelphia lawyer John Swift. Swift arranged an audition at the Walnut Street Theatre, leading to Forrest's formal stage debut on November 27, 1820, as Young Norval in John Home's Douglas.

Because New York and Philadelphia theaters were dominated by actors of British origin or training, Forrest accepted an offer from theatre owners Joshua Collins and William Jones to perform in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Lexington. In 1824 he traveled to New Orleans to join the company of the American Theatre under William Caldwell's management, where he began appearing in higher-quality productions and attracted favorable audience responses. By 1825 he had returned north, eventually acting at the Pearl Street Theatre in Albany, New York, where he worked alongside eminent performers including William Conway and Edmund Kean. In 1826 he achieved significant success at the Bowery Theatre in New York City playing Othello, and his reputation spread to every city he subsequently visited.

In 1829 Forrest appeared as Metamora in John Augustus Stone's Metamora; or, The Last of the Wampanoags. That same year he launched a playwriting contest, which ran from 1828 to 1847, requiring only that the lead role suit Forrest and that the plays generally follow American themes. Stone's Metamora was the first winner in 1828, followed by Robert Montgomery Bird's The Gladiator in 1829. Additional winning works included Richard Penn Smith's Caius Marius, two further plays by Bird — Oralloosa and The Broker of Bogota — and Robert T. Conrad's Jack Cade. While the contest elevated the general reputation of American playwrights, it did little to secure productions of the winning plays beyond Forrest's own performances. Metamora, The Gladiator, and Jack Cade remained fixtures of his personal repertory throughout his career, as each showcased his powerful voice and well-developed physique.

After several years of success in America, Forrest traveled to Europe and returned to Philadelphia in 1831, continuing to perform in New York and elsewhere. In September 1836 he sailed for England on a professional engagement, making his debut at Drury Lane as Spartacus in The Gladiator. Though the production itself was not a success, his performance in the title role received favorable notice. Over a ten-month season at Drury Lane he performed Macbeth, Othello, and King Lear, and was entertained socially by William Macready and Charles Kemble. The season concluded with a dinner in his honor at the Garrick Club, presided over by Thomas Talfourd. In June 1837 he married Catherine Norton Sinclair, daughter of the popular English singer John Sinclair, and returned to Philadelphia in November of that year.

Forrest's Broadway appearances included starring roles in Macbeth and performances in Richelieu and The Lady of Lyons. His second visit to London came in 1845, when he acted at the Princess's Theatre and met with considerable success in Virginius and other roles. However, a performance of Macbeth was hissed by the audience, and Forrest attributed this to the professional jealousy of Macready. Weeks later, Forrest stood in a private box during Macready's performance of Hamlet in Edinburgh and hissed the English actor, an act that drew sharp condemnation from the British press. The animosity between the two men ultimately contributed to the deadly Astor Place Riot of 1849 in New York City. Edwin Forrest died on December 12, 1872.