CHAPTER IX.
SENSATIONAL AND ARTISTIC ACTING.—CHARACTERS OF PHYSICAL
AND MENTAL REALISM.—ROLLA.—TELL.—DAMON.—BRUTUS.—
VIRGINIUS.—SPARTACUS.—METAMORA.
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 conditions favorable to spiritual enrichment and free aspiration must be developed, before it can create ideals of its own and achieve æsthetic triumphs in accordance with them. Such was the case with America. Its mental dependence on England continued long after its civil allegiance had ceased. Little by little, however, the colonial temper and servile habit were repudiated in one province after another of the national activity. Jefferson was our first audacious and fruitful original thinker in politics. In painting, Stuart arose as a bold and profound master, with no teacher but nature. In fiction, Cooper opened a rich field, and reaped a harvest of imperishable renown. In religion, the inspired genius of Channing appeared with a leavening impulse which still works. And in poetry, Bryant was the earliest who treated indigenous themes with a distinction which has made his name ineffaceable.
In no other region of the national life was the colonial dependence so complete and so prolonged as in the drama. The chief plays and actors alike were imported. Scarcely did anything else dare to lift its head on the theatrical boards. All was servile imitation or lifeless reproduction, until Forrest fought his way to the front, burst into fame, and by the conspicuous brilliance of his success heralded a new day for his profession in this country. Forrest, as an eloquent writer said a quarter of a century ago, was the first great native actor who brought to the illustration of Shakspeare and other poets a genius essentially American and at the same time individual,—a genius distinguished by its freedom from all trammels and subservience to schools, by its force in a self-reliance which seemed loyalty to nature, and by its freshness in an ideal which gave to all his efforts a certain moral elevation,—a genius which, after every deduction, still remained as a something peculiarly noble and enkindling, highly original in itself, and distinctively American. This is certainly his historic place; and it was perhaps more fortunate than calamitous that he was left in his early years so largely without teachers and without models, to develop his own resources in his early wanderings as a strolling player in the West by direct experience of the soul within him and direct observation of the impassioned unconventional life about him. He was thus forced to shape out of the mint of his own nature the form and stamp and coloring of his conceptions. There was fitness and significance in such a genius as his maturing and pouring itself out under the shade of the Western woods, rising up amid their grandeur clear and simple as a spring, till, fed and strengthened, it leaped forth fresh and thundering as a torrent.
In characterizing Forrest as a tragedian by the epithet American, it is necessary that we should understand what is meant by the word in such a connection. We mean that he was an intense ingrained democrat. Democracy asserts the superiority of man to his accidents. Its genius is contemptuous of titular claims or extrinsic conditions in comparison with intrinsic truth and merit. Its glance pierces through all pompous circumstances and pretences, to the personal reality of the man. If that be royal and divine, it is ready to worship; if not, it pays no false or hollow tribute, no matter what outward prestige of attraction there may be or what clamor of threats. That is the proper temper and historic ideal of our republic; and that was Forrest in the very centre of his soul, both as a man and as an actor.
But his individuality was in the general sense as deeply and positively human as it was American or democratic. That is to say, he was an affirmative, believing, sympathetic character, not a skeptical, negative, or sneering one. He so vividly loved in their plain and concrete reality his own parents, brothers and sisters, friends, native land, that he could give vivid expression to such sentiments in abstract generality without galvanizing his nerves with any artificial volition. His affections preponderated over his antipathies. He was not fond of badinage, but full of downright earnestness. He loved the sense of being, enjoyed it, was grateful for its privileges, and delighted to contemplate the phenomena of society. He had the keenest love for little children, and the deepest reverence for old age. He valued the goods of life highly, and labored to accumulate them. He had a vivid sensibility for the beauties of nature. He had an enthusiastic admiration of great men, and a ruling desire for the prizes of honor and fame. His soul thrilled at the recital of glorious deeds, and his tears started at a great thought or a sublime image or a tender sentiment. Friendship for man, love for woman, a kindling patriotism, a profound feeling of the domestic ties, a burning passion for liberty, and an unaffected reverence for God, were dominant chords in his nature. He had no patience with those vapid weaklings, those disappointed aspirants or negative dreamers, who think everything on earth a delusion or a temptation, nature a cheat, man a phantom or a fool, history a toy, life a wretched chaos, death an unknown horror, and nothing between worth an effort. He was, on the contrary, a wholesome realist, full of throbbing vitality and eagerness, embracing the natural goods of existence with a sharp relish, and putting a worshipful estimate on the ideal glories of humanity. Intellect, instinct, and affection in him were all alive,—free and teeming springs of personal power. This rich fulness of positive life and passion in himself both opened to him the elemental secrets of experience and enabled him to play effectively on the sympathies of other men.
Let such a man, trained under such circumstances, endowed with a magnificent physique, overflowing with energy and fire, become an actor, and it is easy to see what will be the leading ideal exemplified in his personations. Exactly what this dominant ideal was will be illustrated in the descriptions which are to follow. But a clear statement of it in advance will aid us the better to appreciate those descriptions.
The rank of any work of art is determined by the ideal expressed in it, and the accuracy of its expression. As has been well said, no art better illustrates this fact than the art of acting. Take, for instance, the genius of Kemble. His ideal was authority. He was never so impressive as in the illustration of a king or ruler. In Coriolanus, in Macbeth, in Wolsey, in every character that gave opportunity for it, he was ever expressing the sense of mental or official power as the noblest of human attributes. So the ideal of Cooke was skepticism. He was always best as a social infidel, uttering the bitterest sarcasms. It was this faculty that rendered his Man of the World so great a triumph. The ideal of Kean, again, was retribution. He was grandest as the sufferer and avenger of great wrongs. And the ideal of Macready was that of Kemble modified by its more fretful and impatient expression, making him ever most effective in the display of some form of pride or wounded honor, as in Werner, Richelieu, Melantius.
In distinction from the special ideals of these and the other most celebrated tragedians of the past, the ideal of Forrest was unquestionably the democratic ideal of universal manhood, a deep sense of natural and moral heroism, sincerity, friendship, and faith. This imperial self-reliance and instinctive honesty, this unperverted and unterrified personality poised in the grandest natural virtues of humanity, is the key-note or common chord to the whole range of his conceptions, on which all their varieties are modulated, from Rolla and Tell to Metamora and Spartacus, from Damon and Brutus to Othello and Lear. Fearless, faithful manhood penetrates them all, is the great elevating principle which makes them harmonics of one essential ideal. To have exemplified so sublime an ideal, in so many grand forms, each as clearly defined as a sculptured statue, during a half-century, before applauding millions of his countrymen, is what stamps Forrest and makes him worthy of his fame, singling him out in the rising epoch of his country's greatness as one of the most imposing and not unworthiest of her types of nationality.
There are two contrasted styles of the dramatic art which have long been recognized and discriminated in the two schools of acting, the Romantic and the Classic. Before proceeding to the best rôles of Forrest in his earlier period, it is indispensable that we clearly seize the essence of the distinction between these two schools. Otherwise we shall fail to see the originality and importance of the relation in which he stood to them.
The one school, in its separate purity, is sensational or natural, exhibiting characters of physical and mental realism; the other is reflective or artistic, representing characters of imaginative portraiture. The former springs from strong and sincere impulses, the latter from clear and mastered perceptions. That is based on the instincts and passions, and is predominantly imitative or reproductive; this rests on the intellect and imagination, and is predominantly creative. The one projects the thing in reflex life, as it exists in reality; the other reveals it, as in a glass. That is nature brought alive on the stage; this is art repeating nature refined at one mental remove. They resemble and contrast each other as the hurtless image of the bird mirrored in the lake would correspond with its concrete cause above, could it, while yet remaining a mere reflection, address our other senses as it now does the eye alone. The sensational acting of crude nature is characteristically sympathetic and mimetic in its origin, enslaved, expensive of force, and mainly seated in the nervous centres of the body. The artistic acting of the accomplished master is characteristically spiritual and self-creative in its origin, free, economical of exertion, and mainly seated in the nervous centres of the brain. The one actor lives his part, and is the character he represents; the other plays his part, and truly portrays the character he imagines.
The Classic style is self-controlled, stately, deliberately does what it consciously predetermines to do, trusts as much to the expressive power of attitudes and poses as to facial changes and voice. It elaborates its rôle by systematic critical study, leaving nothing to chance, to caprice, or to instinct. The Romantic style permeates itself with the situations and feeling of its rôle, and then is full of impetuosity and abandon, giving free vent to the passions of the part and open swing to the energies of the performer. The one is marked by careful consistency and studious finish, the other by impulsive truth, abrupt force, electric bursts. That abounds in the refinements of polished art, this abounds in the sensational effects of aroused and uncovered nature. The former is adapted to delight the cultivated Few, the latter thrills the unsophisticated Many.
Now, it was the originality of Forrest that he combined in a most fresh and impressive manner the fundamental characteristics of both these schools,—in his first period with an undoubted preponderance of the characters of physical realism, but in his second period with an unquestionable preponderance of the characters of imaginative portraiture. He was from the first both an artistic and a sensational actor. None of his great predecessors ever came upon the stage with conceptions more patiently studied, wrought up with a more complete consistency in every part, or with the perspective, the foreshortening, the lights and shades, arranged with more conscientious fidelity. His idea of a character might sometimes, perhaps, be questioned, but the clearness with which he grasped his idea, and the thorough harmony with which he put it forth and sustained it, could not be questioned. In this respect he was one of the most consummate of dramatic artists. And as for the other side of the picture, the spontaneous sincerity and irresistible force of his demonstrations of the great passions of the human heart were almost unprecedented in the effects they wrought.
In an accurate use of the words, sensational acting would be acting that took its origin in the senses and passed thence through the muscles without the intervention of the mind. This is the acting learned by the parrot, the dog, or the monkey, and by the mere mimic. Artistic acting, on the other hand, is acting which originates in the creative mind and is freely sent thence through the proper channels of expression. The true definition of art is feeling passed through thought and fixed in form. When the intellectualized feeling is fixed in its just form, it should be made over to the automatic nerves, and the brain be relieved from the care of its oversight and direction. Then playing becomes beautiful, because it is at ease in unconscious spontaneity. Otherwise, it often becomes repulsive to the delicate observer, because it is laborious. This was the one defect of Forrest which lamed him in the supreme height of his great art. His brain continued to do the work. There was often too much volition in his play, causing a muscular friction and an organic expense which made the sensitive shrink, and which only the robust could afford. But no one was more completely an artist in always passing his emotions through his thought, knowing exactly what he meant to do and how he would do it.
The word melodramatic properly describes an action in which the movement is physical rather than mental, and in which more is made of the interest of the situations than of the revelation of the characters. For example, the pantomimic expression of great passions is melodramatic. In this sense Forrest often produced the highest effects where the subject and the scene, the logic of the situation, required it. But in the popular sense of the term, which makes it synonymous with crudity and falsity, hollow extravagance, a vulgar aiming at a sensation by exaggeration or artifices which disregard the harmonious fitness of things, no actor could be more free from the vice. He was always sincere, always earnest, always careful of the sustained congruity of his representation. And within these limits, surely the more intense the sensation he could produce, the better. Sensation is the very thing desired in attending a play. The spectators know enough for their present purpose; they want to be made to feel more keenly, more purely, more nobly. Power and perfection on the lowest level are superior to weakness and failure on that level, and are not incompatible with power and perfection on all the higher levels, but rather tributary to them. Did we not desire to be strong rather than weak, to be handsome rather than ugly, to be admired rather than scorned, all aspiration would cease, and the human race stagnate and end. To be capable of such astounding outbursts of power and passion as to electrify all who behold, curdle their very marrow, and cause them ever after to remember you with wondering interest and fruitful imitation, is a glorious endowment, worthy of our envy. To sneer at it as sensationalism gives proof of a mean disposition or a morbid soul.
In the same sense in which Forrest was melodramatic, God and Nature themselves are so. What can be more genuinely sensational than Niagara, Mont Blanc, the earthquake, the tempest, the forked flash of the lightning, the crashing roll of the thunder, the crouch of the tiger, the dart of the anaconda, the shriek of the swooping eagle, the prance of the war-horse in his proud pomp? And the attributes of all these belong to man, with additions of nameless grandeur, terror, and beauty beside, making him an incarnate representative of God on the earth. To see Forrest in Lear, or Salvini in Saul, is to feel this. True sensationalism, banished in our tame times from the selfish and servile walks of common life, is the very desideratum and glory of the Stage.
ROLLA.
One of the first characters in which Forrest enjoyed great popularity was that of Rolla, the Peruvian hero. The play of "The Spaniards in Peru," by Kotzebue, as rewritten by Sheridan from a paraphrase in English, was for a long time a favorite with the public. It brought the adventurers and wonderful achievements of the most romantic kingdom in Christendom into picturesque combination with the strange scenes, simplicity, and superstition of the newly-discovered transatlantic world, and was full of music, pomp, pictures, poetic situations, and processions. In literary style, the knowing critics call it tawdry and bombastic; in ethical tone, sentimental and inflated. But the average audiences, especially of a former generation, were not fastidious censors. They went to the theatre less to judge and sneer than to be moved with sympathy, enjoyment, and admiration. And they found this play rich in strong appeals to the better instincts of their moral nature. What the blasé found turgid, affected, or ludicrous, the unsophisticated felt to be eloquent, poetic, and noble. For the fair appreciation of a piece of acting, assuredly this latter point of view is preferable to the former; for tragedy is a form of poetry, and has as one of its purest functions the revelation of the moral ingredients of man, lifted, enlarged, and glorified in its mirror of art.
Rolla is depicted as simple, grand, a nobleman of nature, frank, ardent, impulsive, magnanimous,—his own truth and heroism investing him with an invisible robe and crown of royalty. It was a rôle precisely adapted to the young tragedian whose own soul it so well reflected. Endowed with all the chivalrous sentiments, expansive and kindling, uncurbed by the nil admirari standards of fashionable breeding, he could fill up every extravagant phrase of the part without any feeling of extravagance.
Pizarro and his followers are pictured throughout the play in an odious light, as tyrants assailing the Peruvians without provocation and slaughtering them without mercy. The sympathies of Las Casas and of the noble Alonzo have been alienated from their own countrymen and transferred to the barbarians, who are represented in the most favorable colors as honest, affectionate, brave, standing in defence of their liberty and their altars. Alonzo, disgusted and shocked by the atrocities of Pizarro, has joined the Peruvians, and has been placed in conjunction with Rolla at the head of their forces. The aged Orozembo, seized by the Spaniards and brought before their leader, is questioned, "Who is this Rolla joined with Alonzo in command?" He replies, "I will answer that; for I love to repeat the hero's name. Rolla, the kinsman of the king, is the idol of our army; in war, a tiger; in peace, more gentle than the lamb. Cora was once betrothed to him; but, finding she preferred Alonzo, he resigned his claim, to friendship and her happiness." Pizarro exclaims, "Romantic savage! I shall meet this Rolla soon." "Thou hadst better not," replies Orozembo; "the terrors of his eye would strike thee dead."
In the next scene the way is still further prepared for the impression of his appearance. His beloved Alonzo and Cora are discerned playing with their child in front of a wood. They talk of Rolla, of his sacrifice for them, and of his noble qualities. Shouts arise, when Alonzo says, "It is Rolla setting the guard. He comes." At that instant the sonorous tones of his voice are heard from outside the stage, like the martial clang of a trumpet, uttering the words, "Place them on the hill fronting the Spanish camp." Every eye is fixed, the whole audience lean forward as he enters, and in a flash the magnetic spell is on them, and they breathe and feel as one man. The stately ease of his athletic port, his deep square chest, broad shoulders, and columnar neck, his frank brow, with the mild, glowing, open eyes, the warm blood mantling the brave and wooing face, seize the collective sympathy of the assembly, and they break into wild cheering. He seems to stand there, in his barbaric costume and majestic attitude, as a romantic picture stereoscoped by nature herself. And when, in reply to the exclamation of Alonzo, "Rolla, my friend, my benefactor, how can our lives repay the obligations which we owe thee?" he says, "Pass them in peace and bliss; let Rolla witness it, and he is overpaid,"—the very soul of friendship and nobility seems to flow in the sweet music of his liquid gutturals, and the charm is complete.
From this point onward to the close all was moulded and wrought up in perfect keeping. He had fashioned to himself a complete image of what Rolla should be in accordance with the conception in the play, his carriage, walk, and attitudes, his style of gesture, his physiognomy, his tone and habit of voice. He had imprinted this idea so deeply in his brain, and had trained himself so carefully to its consistent manifestation, that his portrayal on the stage had all the unity of design and precision of detail which characterize the work of a masterly painter. Instead of using canvas, pigment, and brush, he painted his part in the air in living pantomime. In all his rôles this was his manner more and more up to the crowning period of his career.
He gave extraordinary effectiveness to the famous address which Rolla pronounces to the Peruvian warriors on the eve of battle, by the manly truth and simplicity of his delivery,—"My brave associates, partners of my toil, my feelings, and my fame." Instead of launching forth in a swollen and mechanical declamation, he spoke with the straightforward truth and the varied and hearty inflection of nature; and his honest earnestness woke responsive echoes in every breast. Like Macklin and Garrick on the English stage, Talma on the French, and Devrient on the German, Forrest on the American was a bold and original innovator on the inveterate elocutionary mannerism of actors embodied in what is universally known as theatrical delivery. For the mouthing formality, the torpid noisiness, the strained monotony and forced cadences of the routine players, these men of genius substituted—only enlarging the scale of power—the abruptness, the changes, the conversational vivacity of tone, emphasis, and inflection, which are natural to a free man with a free voice played upon by the genuine passions of life. This was one of the chief excellences and attractions of Forrest throughout his professional course. He was ever a man uttering thoughts and sentiments,—not an elocutionist displaying his trade.
Alonzo, filled with a presentiment of death, charged his friend, in such an event, to take Cora for his wife and adopt their child. Rolla, finding after the battle that Alonzo was a prisoner, repeated his parting message to his wife. Cora's suspicion was aroused, and she accused him of deserting his friend for the sake of securing her. Then was shown a fine picture of contending emotions in Rolla. Disinterested and heroic to the last degree, to be charged with such baseness, and that, too, by the woman whom he loved and revered,—it stung him to the quick. Injured honor, proud indignation, mortified affection, and magnanimous resolution were seen flying from his soul through his form and face. He determines to rescue Alonzo by piercing to his prison and assuming his place. Disguised as a monk, he asks the sentinel to admit him to the prisoner. Being refused, he tries to bribe the sentinel. This fails, and he appeals to him by nobler motives, revealing himself as the friend of Alonzo, who has come to bear his last words to his wife and child. The sentinel relents. Rolla lifts his eyes to heaven, and says, "O holy Nature, thou dost never plead in vain!" and rushes into the arms of his friend. After an earnest controversy, Alonzo changes dress with him, and escapes, Rolla exclaiming, with a sigh of satisfaction, "Now, Cora, didst thou not wrong me? This is the first time I ever deceived man. If I am wrong, forgive me, God of Truth!"
All this was done with a sincerity and energy irresistibly contagious. And when Elvira has armed him with a dagger and led him to the couch of the sleeping Pizarro, when, instead of slaying his foe, he wakens him and drops the weapon, showing how superior a heathen can be to a Christian, and when the tyrant calls in his guards and orders them to seize the hapless Elvira, the contrast of the confronting Rolla and Pizarro, the example of godlike magnanimity and its foil of unnatural depravity, stands in an illumination of moral splendor that thrills every heart.
Two more scenes remained to carry the triumph of Forrest in the part to its culmination. The child of Alonzo and Cora, in ignorance of who he is, has been captured by the Spanish soldiers, and is brought in. Pizarro bids them toss the Peruvian imp into the sea. With a start and look of alternating horror and love, Rolla cries, "Gracious Heaven, it is Alonzo's child!" "Ha!" exclaims Pizarro: "welcome, thou pretty hostage. Now is Alonzo again in my power." After vain expostulation, Rolla prostrates himself before the cruel captain, saying, "Behold me at thy feet, thy willing slave, if thou wilt release the child." Other actors, including the cold and stately Kemble, as they spoke these words, sank directly on their knees. But Forrest introduced a by-play of startling power, full of the passionate warmth of nature. Regarding Pizarro with an amazement made of surprise and scorn waxing into noble anger, he is seen making the strongest exertion to refrain from rushing on the tyrant and striking him down. He begins to kneel. Half-way in the slow descent, repugnance to stoop his manhood before such baseness checks him, and he partly rises, when a glance at the child overcomes his hesitation, and he sinks swiftly on his knees. The Spaniard replies, "Rolla, thou art free to go; the boy remains." With the rapidity of lightning, Rolla snatches the child and lifts him over his left shoulder, and, waving his sword, cries, in clarion accents, "Who moves one step to follow me dies on the spot!" He strikes down three of the guards who oppose him, and rushes across a bridge at the back of the stage. The soldiers fire, and a shot strikes him as he vanishes with the child held proudly aloft. The view changes to the Peruvian court. The king is seen with his nobles, and with Alonzo and Cora distracted at the loss of their child. Shouts are heard. "Rolla! Rolla!" The hero staggers in, bleeding, ghastly, and faint, and places the child in its mother's arms, with an exquisite touch of nature first drawing the little face down to his own and planting a kiss on it, staining it from his bleeding wounds in the act. She exclaims, "Oh, God, there is blood upon him!" He replies, "'Tis mine, Cora." Alonzo says, "Thou art dying, Rolla." He answers, faintly, "For thee and Cora." One long gasp, a wavering on his feet, a convulsion of his chest, and he sinks in an inanimate heap.
The truth and power with which all this was done were attested by the crowds that thronged to see it, their intense emotion, and the universal praise for many years awarded to it.
TELL.
Another chosen part of Forrest, in which he was received with extraordinary favor, was that of William Tell. This play, like the former, had a basis of untutored love and magnanimity; but the romantic heroism of the character was less remote to the American mind, less strained in ideality, than that of Rolla. The plot was simpler, the language more eloquent, domestic love more prominent, and patriotic enthusiasm more emphatic. In fact, the three constant keys of the action are parental affection, ardent attachment to native land, and the burning passion for liberty, corresponding with three central elements of strength in the personality of the actor now drawn to the part with a hungry instinct.
In preparation for this rôle, Forrest had first the native congruity of his own soul with it. Then he studied the character in the text of Knowles with the utmost care, analyzing every speech and situation. Furthermore, he saturated his imagination with the spirit of the life and legends of Switzerland, by means of histories, books of travel, and engravings, till its people and their customs, its torrents, ravines, pastures, chalets, cloud-capped peaks, and storms, were distinct and real to him. In the next place, he paid great attention to his make-up, arraying himself in a garb scrupulously accurate to the fashion of a Switzer peasant and huntsman.
No actor placed greater stress on a fitting costume than Forrest. He knew its subtle influences as well as its more obvious effects. The more vital unity and sensitiveness we have, the more important each adjunct to our personality becomes. A man who is a sloppy mess of fragments is not influenced much by anything, and in return does not much influence anything; but to a man whose body and soul form, as it were, one vascular piece, the action and reaction between him and everything with which he is in close relation is of great consequence. The dress of such a person is another self, corresponding in some sort with the outer man as his skin does with the inner man.
When Forrest came upon the stage with his bow and quiver, belted tunic and tight buskins, with free, elastic bearing, and high tread, deep-breathing breast, resounding voice, his whole shape and moving moulded to the robust and sinewy manners of the archer living in the free, open airs between the grass and the snow, he was an embodied picture of the legendary Swiss mountaineer. At the first sight a keen sensation was produced in the audience, for it kindled all the enthusiastic associations fondly bound up with this image in the American imagination.
It is morning, the sunrise creeping down the flanks of the mountains and spreading over the lake and valley, in the background Albert shooting at a mark, as Tell appears in the distance returning from an early chase. Approaching, he sees the boy, and pauses to watch him shoot. Poised on a crag, leaping with eager gaze of fondness fixed on the little marksman, he looks like the statue of a chamois-hunter on the cliffs of Mont Blanc, carved and set there by some superhuman hand. Then the magic voice, breathing love blent in freedom, is heard:
The lad, with a glad cry of "Ah, my father!" flies into his embrace, while in unison, from pit to gallery, a thousand hearts throb warmly.
One point of very great beauty and power in this tragedy is the remarkable manner in which the author has combined the impassioned love of national liberty with the impassioned love of the natural scenery associated with that liberty. To these numerous descriptions, marked by the highest declamatory merit, Forrest did ample justice with his magnificent voice.
Indeed, elocutionary force and felicity were ever a central charm in his acting. He did not thrust the gift ostentatiously forward for its own sake, but kept it subordinated to its uses. His first aim in vocal delivery was always to articulate the thought clearly,—make it stand out in unmistakable distinctness; his second, to breathe the true feeling of the words in his tones; his third, by rate, pitch, inflection, accent, and pause, to give some imaginative suggestion of the scenery, of the thought, and thus set it in its proper environment. In the first aim he rarely failed; in the second he generally succeeded; and he often triumphed in the third. One example, which no man of sensibility who heard him pronounce it could ever forget, was this:
And the following is another example, still happier in the climax of its eloquence:
Old Melctal, the father of Tell's wife, is led in by Albert, blind and trembling, his eyes having been plucked from their sockets by order of Gesler. As Tell, horror-struck, listened to the frightful story from the lips of the old man, the revelation of the feelings it stirred in him was one of the most genuine and moving pieces of emotional portraiture ever shown to an audience. It was an unveiled storm of contending pity, amazement, wrath, tenderness, tears, loathing, and revenge. Every muscle worked, his soul seemed wrapt and shaken with thunders and lightnings of passion, which alternately darkened and illumined his features, and he seemed going mad, until at last he seized his weapons and darted away in search of the monster whose presence profaned the earth, crying, as he went, "Father, thou shalt be revenged, thou shalt be revenged!" The power of this effort is shown in the fact that more than one critic compared his struggle with his own feelings under the narrative of Melctal to his subsequent struggle with the guards of Gesler, when, like a lion amidst a pack of curs, he hurled them in every direction, and held them at bay till overpowered by sheer numbers. The mental struggle was quite as visibly defined and terrible as the physical one.
In this play Forrest presented four successive examples of that proud assertion of an independent, high-minded man which has been said to be the real type of his character as a tragedian. These specimens were differenced from one another with such clean strokes and bold colors that it was an æsthetic as well as a moral luxury to behold him enact them. The first was a trenchant, sarcastic scorn of baseness, spoken when he sees the servile peasants bow to Gesler's cap, and the hireling soldiery driving them to it:
The second example is the stern stateliness of unshaken heroism with which he confronts insult and threats of torture and death, when, chained and baited by the soldiers, Sarnem bids him down on his knees and beg for mercy. They try to force him to the ground, inciting one another with cowardly ferocity to strike him, put out his eyes, or lop off a limb. His bearing and the soul it revealed were such as corresponded with the descriptive comment wrung from the onlooking Gesler:
The third example is fearless defiance of tyrannical power, when, bound and helpless, he confronts the cowering Gesler with majestic superiority. The Austrian governor says, "Ha, beware! think on thy chains!" Tell replies, with swelling bosom and flashing eyes,—
The fourth example is that of a grand, positive exultation in the moral beauty and glory of human nature in its undesecrated experiences. In response to the contemptible threat of the despot that his vengeance can kill, and that that is enough, Tell raises his face proudly, stretches out his arm, and says, in rich, strong accents,—
The capacities of parental and filial affection in tragic pathos are wrought up by Knowles in the last two acts with consummate and unrelenting skill. The varied interest and suspense of the dialogue and action between Tell and Albert are harrowing, as, neither knowing that the other is in the power of Gesler, they are suddenly brought together. Instinct teaches them to appear as strangers. The struggle to suppress their feelings and play their part under the imminent danger is followed with painful excitement as the plot thickens and the dread catastrophe seems hurrying. Tell, ordered to instant execution, seeks to speak a few last words to his son, under the pretext of sending a farewell message to his Albert by the stranger boy. In a voice whose condensed and tremulous murmuring betrays all the crucified tenderness it refuses to express, he says,—
Here he turns away with a slight convulsive movement mightily held down, and Sarnem exclaims, "Mark, he weeps!" The whole audience weep with him, too; as well they may, for the concentration of affecting circumstances in the scene forms one of the masterpieces of dramatic art. And Forrest played it in every minute particular with an intensity of nature and a closeness of truth effective to all, but agonizing to the sympathetic. His last special stroke of art was the natural yet cunningly-prepared contrast between the extreme nervous anxiety and agitation that marked his demeanor through all the preliminary stages of the fearful trial-shot for life and liberty, and his final calmness. Until the apple was on the head of his kneeling boy, and he had taken his position, he was all perturbation and misgiving. Then this spirit seemed to pass out of him with an irresolute shudder, and instantly he confirmed himself into an amazing steadiness. Every limb braced as marble, and as motionless, he stood, like a sculptured archer that looked life yet neither breathed nor stirred. The arrow flies, the boy bounds forward unhurt, with the transfixed apple in his hand. Tell then slays Gesler, and, dilating above the prostrated Austrian banner, amidst universal exultation both on and off the stage, closes the play with the shouted words,—
DAMON.
The Damon of Forrest perhaps surpassed, in popular effect, all his other early performances. The romantic story of the devotion of the ancient Greek pair of friends, as narrated by Valerius Maximus, has had a diffusion in literature and produced an impression on the imaginations of men almost without a parallel. This is because it appeals so penetratingly to a sentiment so deep and universal. Above the mere materialized instincts of life there is hardly a feeling of the human heart so profound and vivid as the craving for a genuine, tender, and inviolable friendship. After all the disappointments of experience, after all the hardening results of custom, strife, and fraud, this desire still remains alive, however thrust back and hidden. Remove the disguises and pretences, even of the aged and worldly-minded, and it is surprising in the souls of how many of them the spring of this baffled yet importunate desire will be found running and murmuring in careful concealment. In the hurry and worry of our practical age, so crowded with toil, rivalry, and distraction, the sentiment is less gratified in real life than ever, a fact which in many cases only makes the ideal still more attractive. Accordingly, when the sacred old tale of the Pythagorean friends was wrought into a play by Banim and Shiel, it struck the taste of the public at once. The play, too, had exceptional rhetorical merit, and was constructed with a simple plot, marked by a constant movement full of moral force and pathos.
Forrest had seen the rôle of Damon filled by Cooper with transcendent dignity and energy, and the remembrance had been burned into his brain. It was one of the most finished and famous impersonations of that celebrated actor, who charged it with honest passion and clothed it with rugged grandeur. The representation by Cooper, though unequal and careless, was so just in its general outlines to the idea of the author, that when Forrest first hesitatingly essayed the character, he had as a disciple of truth, perforce, largely to repeat the example. But he came to the part with a fresher youth, a more concentrated nature, a keener ambition, and a more elaborate study; and, original in many details as well as in the more conscientious working up of the harmony of the different scenes, it was soon conceded that in the portrayal as a whole and in the unprecedented excitement it produced he had eclipsed his distinguished English forerunner on the American stage. He entered into the spirit and scenery of the subject with so intelligent and vehement an earnestness that he seemed not to act, but to be, Damon, speaking the words spontaneously created in his soul on the spot, not uttering any memorized lesson. It was like a resurrection of Syracuse, with the despot and his tools plotting the overthrow of its republican government, and the faithful friends seeking to prevent the success of the scheme. The spectators forgot that the Sicilian city had vanished ages since, and Dionysius and Pythias and Procles and Calanthe all gone to dust. The reality was before them, and its living shapes moved and spoke to the spell-bound sense.
The Damon of Forrest was in every respect grandly conceived and grandly embodied. His noble form carried proudly aloft in weighty ease, clad in Grecian garb, with long robe and sandals, corresponded with the justice and dignity of his soul. He was in no sense a sentimentalist or fanatic, but a man with intellect and heart balanced in conscience,—equally a patriot, a philosopher, and a friend,—his sentiments set in the great virtues of human nature loyal to the gods, his convictions and love not mere instincts but embedded in his reason and his honor. Yet, trained as he had been in the lofty ethics of Pythagoras, the austere discipline deadened not, but only curbed, the tremendous elemental passions of his being. Beneath his cultivated stateliness and playfulness the impetuous volume and energy of his natural feelings made them, reposing, grand as mountains clad with verdure, aroused, terrible as volcanoes spouting fire. An inferior actor would be tempted to weaken or slur everything else in order to give the higher relief to the great central topic of friendship. It was the rare excellence of Forrest that he gave as patient an attention and as sustained a treatment to the gravity and zealous devotion of the senator, the thoughtful habit of the scholar, the fondness of the husband and father, as he did to the touching affection of the friend, in his portraiture of Damon.
He makes his appearance in the street, on his way to the Senate, when he encounters a crowd of venal officers and soldiers thronging to the citadel, brandishing their swords and cheering for the despot. He says, with a musing air first, then quickly passing through indignant scorn to mournful expostulation,—