As for drama, the most important appearances occurred, and the most important criticism was written, while Leggett was one of the editors. Leggett, as Abram C. Dayton tells us in “Last Days of Knickerbocker Life,” was regarded as the especial champion of Edwin Forrest, who had made his début in 1826, and who was a warm favorite with the “Bowery Boys” and all other lovers of florid, stentorian acting. Certainly Leggett praised him highly and constantly in the _Evening Post_. In 1834 a gold medal was presented Forrest by a committee including Bryant and Leggett, who recalled in the newspaper how he had come to the city quite unknown, and had given the first electrifying demonstration of his powers when he consented, as an act of kindness to a poor actor, to appear at a benefit as Othello.
When on Sept. 18, 1832, Charles Kemble made his first American appearance as Hamlet, he was honored with the longest dramatic criticism in the journal’s history, almost three and a half columns. His towering, manly form, his Roman face, and his histrionic ability impressed Leggett, who thought that while he did not have the flashes of dazzling brilliance that Kean had, his grace, ease, and elegance almost atoned for the lack, and would have a good effect upon American acting. Fanny Kemble made her bow the following night, and was at once hailed as displaying “an intensity and truth never, we believe, yet exhibited by an actress in America, certainly never by one so young.” Later, after seeing the two in more performances, Leggett concluded that they were admirable in comedy, but uneven in tragedy.
Bryant’s interest in the theater was mainly a literary interest, yet he seems to have been the writer of a series of editorials in 1847, arguing for an _American_ theater. He spoke of the new Broadway Theater, and the sailing of the manager to England to engage talent. Why supply the new stage from abroad? protested the _Evening Post_. “Is it to be merely a house of call for such foreign artists as may find it agreeable or profitable to visit us, at such times as they may chance to select? Or is it to be an American establishment of the highest class, with a well-selected and thoroughly trained company permanently employed, varied by star engagements as a brilliant relief to the sober background, and enlivened, from time to time, by ability from abroad? Does it, in a word, propose to go on the old beaten track so often condemned, or to draw a line for a new period ...?” Bryant had no use for provincialism in any form.