Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 8.djvu/223

 EDWIN FORREST 351 opened there in the early fall, and played for the first time with Edmund Kean, then on his second visit to America. The meeting with this extraordinary man and the attention he received from him were foremost among the directing influ- ences of Forrest's life. To his last hour he never wearied of singing the praises of Kean, whose genius filled the English-speaking world with admiration. Two men more unlike in mind and hody can scarcely be imagined. Until now For- rest had seen no actor who represented in perfection the impassioned school of which Kean was the master. He could not have known Cooke, even in the de- cline of that great tragedian's power, and the little giant was indeed a revelation. He played Iago to Kean's Othello, Titus to his Brutus, and Richmond to his Richard III. In the interval which preceded the opening of the Bowery Theatre, New Vork, Forrest appeared at the Park for the benefit of Woodhull, playing Othello. He made a pronounced success, his old manager sitting in front, profanely ex- claiming, " By God, the boy has made a hit ! " This was a great event, as the Park was then the leading theatre of America, and its actors were the most fa- mous and exclusive. He opened at the Bowery Theatre in November, 1826, as Othello, and made a brilliant impression. His salary was raised from $28 to $40 per week. From this success may be traced the first absolute hold made by Edwin Forrest upon the attention of cultivated auditors and intelligent critics. The Bowery was then a very different theatre from what it afterward became, when the newsboys took forcible possession of its pit and the fire-laddies were the arbiters of public taste in its neighborhood. An instance of Forrest's moral integrity may be told here. He had been ap- proached by a rival manager, after his first success, and urged to secede from the Bowery and join the other house at a much larger salary. He scornfully refused to break his word, although his own interests he knew must suffer. His popu- larity at this time was so great that, when his contract for the season had expired, he was instantly engaged for eight nights, at a salary of two hundred dollars a night The success which had greeted Forrest on his first appearance in New York, was renewed in every city in the land. Fortune attended fame, and filled his pockets, as the breath of adulation filled his heart. He had paid the last penny of debt left by his father, and had seen a firm shelter raised over the head of his living family. With a patriotic feeling for all things American, Forrest, about this time, formed a plan for the encouragement or development of an American drama, which resulted in heavy money losses to himself, but produced such con- tributions to our stage literature as the "Gladiator," "Jack Cade," and " Meta- mora." * After five years of constant labor he felt that he had earned the right to a holiday, and he formed his plans for a two years' absence in Europe. A actor more thoroughly identify and merge himself with his part than Forrest did in ' Metamora.' He was completely transformed from what he appeared in other characters, and seemed Indian in every particular, all through and all over, from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot."
 * Of Forrest's performance of Metamora, in the play of that name, W. R. Alger says, " Never did an