There he began to act in a higher quality of production - though usually in roles secondary to Caldwell - and began to attract favorable responses from New Orleans audiences. In 1824 he travelled from Louisville down to New Orleans, where he had been invited to join the company of the American Theatre, under the management of William Caldwell.
His tour through a rough country-with the inconveniences of long distances, the necessity of presenting his plays in rude halls, insufficient support, and poor scenery-was not altogether successful, but the discipline to mind and body was felt in all his subsequent career. Few American actors were able to make much headway in these theaters, whose managers were highly skeptical of the quality of local talent.įorrest therefore accepted an offer from Joshua Collins and William Jones, who owned theatres in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and Lexington, and were scouting Philadelphia for actors who were willing to face the rigors of performing in the new cities along the Ohio and Mississippi River valleys. The theatres of New York and Philadelphia were already crowded with trained and successful actors, mostly the offspring of well-known British theatrical families or at least with British training. While under the influence of the gas, he broke into a soliloquy from Shakespeare's Richard III that impressed eminent Philadelphia lawyer John Swift so much that Swift arranged an audition at the Walnut Street Theatre this led to Forrest's formal stage debut on November 27, 1820, as Young Norval in John Home's Douglas. When attending a lecture in early 1820, he volunteered to participate in an experiment on the effects of nitrous oxide. After Forrest's father died in 1819, he attempted to apprentice with a printer, a cooper, and finally a ship chandler. Turnbull melodrama Rudolph: or, The Robbers of Calabria. As boys, Forrest and his brother William joined a local juvenile thespian club and participated in theatrical performances staged in a sparsely decorated woodshed.Īt the age of 11, Forrest made his first appearance on the legitimate stage at Philadelphia's South Street Theatre, playing the female role Rosalia de Borgia in the John D. A business setback led William to relocate to Philadelphia, where he married Rebecca and was able to secure a position with a local branch of the United States Bank. His mother was a member of an affluent German-American family. His father, a Scottish merchandise peddler, moved from Dumfriesshire to Trenton, New Jersey in 1791. His feud with the British actor William Macready was the cause of the deadly Astor Place Riot of 1849.įorrest was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Rebecca ( née Lauman) and William Forrest. Edwin Forrest (March 9, 1806 – December 12, 1872) was a prominent nineteenth-century American Shakespearean actor.
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