Category: Plays/Films/Dramas

Life of Edwin Forrest, the American Tragedian. Volume 1 (of 2)

THE AUTHOR of the following work apologizes for the delay of its publication on the ground of long-continued ill health which unfitted him for mental labor. He has tried to make amends by sparing no pains in his effort to do justice to the subjects treated. The plan of the ens...

Chapters

1. VOLUME I.

THE AUTHOR of the following work apologizes for the delay of its publication on the ground of long-continued ill health which unfitted him for mental labor. He has tried to make...

2. CHAPTER IV.

3. CHAPTER VIII.

4. CHAPTER IX.

5. CHAPTER X.

6. CHAPTER XII.

7. CHAPTER XIII.

8. CHAPTER XIV.

9. CHAPTER XV.

10. CHAPTER XVI.

11. CHAPTER XIX.

12. CHAPTER XX.

13. CHAPTER XXI.

14. CHAPTER XXII.

15. CHAPTER XXIII.

16. CHAPTER I.

EDWIN FORREST has good claims for a biography. The world, it has been said, is annually inundated with an intolerable flood of lives of nobodies. So much the stronger motive, th...

17. CHAPTER II.

EDWIN FORREST made his first appearance on the stage of this world the ninth day of March, 1806, in the city of Philadelphia. His father, William Forrest, was a Scotchman, who h...

18. CHAPTER III.

WHEN Edwin was born, his father, encumbered and oppressed by the debts which his failure some years before had entailed on him, was serving in a bank, at a small salary. The fam...

19. CHAPTER IV.

ANY one who so analyzes the Dramatic Art as to see what its basis, contents, and uses are, will be astonished to find what a deep and wide feature it is in human nature, and how...

20. CHAPTER V.

WHEN Edwin was nine years old, he was thin, pale, and had a slight forward stoop of the chest and shoulders. He was full of fire, courage, impulsive force, but had a quick pulse...

21. CHAPTER VI.

FORREST made his first appearance in New Orleans, at the American Theatre, as Jaffier in Venice Preserved, February 4th, 1824, Caldwell sustaining the part of Pierre. His indivi...

22. CHAPTER VII.

ONE morning, early in August, 1825, a young man of fine figure and stately bearing, with bright dark-brown eyes, raven hair, and a clear, firm complexion like veined marble, app...

23. CHAPTER VIII.

THE next marked division in the biography of Forrest covers the period between his twenty-first and his twenty-eighth year, from the close of his first engagement at the Bowery...

24. CHAPTER IX.

A NATION beginning its career as a colony is naturally dependent on the parent country for its earliest examples in culture. Some time must elapse; wealth, leisure, and other co...

25. CHAPTER X.

The parting cheers died into silence, the ship began to speed through the spray, the forms of his friends receded and vanished, the roofs and spires of the city lowered and fade...

26. CHAPTER XI.

Two weeks of rest in his Philadelphia home, in delightful reunion with his mother and sisters, and two weeks more devoted to the banquets and parties with which his rejoicing fr...

27. CHAPTER XII.

The interest of his friends and of the public at large in the returning actor was increased by the laurels he had won in the mother-country, and the prize hanging on his arm, wh...

28. CHAPTER XIII.

Few persons have any adequate idea of the prevalence, the force, the subtile windings of envy and jealousy among men, especially among those classes into whose life the principl...