Chapter IX (2)

Damon is cast into prison and doomed to die. The curtain rises on him seated at a table, writing a last testament to be given to Pythias. The solitude, the stillness, the heavy hour, the retrospect of his life, the separation from all he loves, the nearness of death, combine to make his meditations profound and sad. The picture of man and fate which he then drew--so calm and grave and chaste, so relieved against the other scenes--was an exquisite masterpiece. He lays down his stylus. In an attitude of deep reflection--the left leg easily extended and the hand pendent by its side, the right leg drawn up even with the chair, his right elbow resting on the table, the hand supporting his slightly-bowed head, the opened eyes level and fixed, with a voice of manly and mournful music, every tone and accent faultless in its mellow and pellucid solemnity--he pronounces this soliloquy:

"Existence! what is that? a name for nothing!
It is a cloudy sky chased by the winds,--
Its fickle form no sooner chosen than changed!
It is the whirling of the mountain-flood,
Which, as we look upon it, keeps its shape,
Though what composed that shape, and what composes,
Hath passed--will pass--nay, and is passing on
Even while we think to hold it in our eyes,
And deem it there. Fie! fie! a feverish vision,
A crude and crowded dream, unwilled, unbidden,
By the weak wretch that dreams it."

The effect was comparable to that of suddenly changing the scene from the clamorous multitude, bustle, and struggle of a noonday square to the midnight sky, with its eternal stars and moon shining on a lonely lake, whose serenity not a ripple or a rustling leaf disturbs.

Pythias visits him in his dungeon. The interview is conducted in a manner so unaffected, so true to the finest feelings of the human heart, that few and hard indeed were the beholders who could remain unmoved. On the lamentation of Damon that he is denied the satisfaction of pressing his wife and child to his bosom before he dies, Pythias proposes to gain that privilege for him by being his hostage, if the tyrant will consent. He makes the request.

"_Dionysius._ What wonder is this?
Is he thy brother?

_Damon._ Not in the fashion that the world puts on,
But brother in the heart.

_Dion._ Oh, by the wide world, Damocles,
I did not think the heart of man was moulded
To such a purpose."

Six hours are granted Damon in which to reach his villa on the mountain-side, four leagues distant, take his farewell, and return, assured that if he is not at the place of execution at the moment appointed the axe falls on his substitute.

The meeting with his Hermion and their boy in the garden of his villa, his resolute adaptation of his manner to the untimely innocent prattle of the child, the various transitions of tone and topic, the pathos of the intermittent upbreaking of his concealed struggle, the gradual unveiling of the awful announcement of his impending destiny, the determined efforts at firmness in himself and consolation for her, the clinging and agonized farewell,--all these were managed with a truthfulness and a distinct setting to be attained by no player without the utmost patience of study added to the deepest sincerity of nature.

He has lingered to the latest allowable moment. Hurrying out, he calls to his freedman, Lucullus, "Where is my horse?" and receives the following reply:

"When I beheld the means of saving you,
I could not hold my hand,--my heart was in it,
And in my heart the hope of giving life
And liberty to Damon--and--

_Damon._ Go on!
I am listening to thee.

_Lucullus._ And in hope to save you
I slew your steed.

_Damon._ Almighty heavens!"

An ordinary actor would have said "Almighty heavens," at once; but Forrest, seeming taken utterly by surprise, did not speak the words till he had for some time prepared the way for them by a display of bewildered astonishment, which revealed the workings of his brain so clearly that the spectators could scarcely believe that the actor was acquainted with the plot in advance. The facts of the situation seemed presenting themselves to his inner gaze in so many pictures,--the calamity, his broken promise, the disappointment and death of his friend, the dread dishonor,--and their expressions--wonder, rage, horror, despair, frenzy--visibly came out first in slow succession, then in chaotic mixture. At last the gathered tornado explodes in one burst of headlong wrath. Every rigid muscle swollen, his convulsed face livid, his dilated eyes emitting sparks, with the crouch and spring of an infuriated tiger he plunges on the hapless Lucullus and hoists him sheer in air. Vain are the cries of the unfortunate wretch, idle his struggles. Articulating with a terrible scream the words,--

"To the eternal river of the dead!
The way is shorter than to Syracuse,--
'Tis only far as yonder yawning gulf,--
I'll throw thee with one swing to Tartarus,
And follow after thee!"--

his enraged master disappears with him in his grasp. The feelings of the audience, wound to an intolerable pitch, audibly give way in a long, loosened breath, as they sink into their seats with a huge rustle all over the house.

Meanwhile, the fatal crisis nears, and Damon, delayed by the loss of his steed, comes not. The stroke of time on the dial-plate against the temple dedicated to the Goddess of Fidelity moves unrelentingly forward. All is ready. The tyrant, his skepticism confirmed, is there, indignant at the soul that in its fling of proud philosophy had made him feel so outsoared and humbled. Pythias, agitated between a dreadful suspicion of his friend and the fear of some unforeseen obstacle, parts with Calanthe, and prepares for the beheading steel. A vast multitude on the hills stretch their long, blackening outline in the round of the blue heavens, and await the event.

"Mute expectation spreads its anxious hush
O'er the wide city, that as silent stands
As its reflection in the quiet sea.
Behold, upon the roof what thousands gaze
Toward the distant road that leads to Syracuse.
An hour ago a noise was heard afar,
Like to the pulses of the restless surge;
But as the time approaches, all grows still
As the wide dead of midnight!
A horse and rider in the distance,
By the gods! They wave their hats, and he returns it!
It is--no--that were too unlike--but there!"

Damon rushes in, looks around, exclaims, exultingly,--

"Ha! he is alive! untouched!"

and falls, with a hysterical laugh, exhausted by the superhuman exertions he has made to arrive in time. He soon rallies, and, when his name is pronounced, leaps upon the scaffold beside his friend; and all the god comes into him as, proudly erecting his form, he answers,--

"I am here upon the scaffold! look at me:
I am standing on my throne; as proud a one
As yon illumined mountain where the sun
Makes his last stand; let him look on me too;
He never did behold a spectacle
More full of natural glory. Death is-- Ha!
All Syracuse starts up upon her hills,
And lifts her hundred thousand hands. She shouts,
Hark, how she shouts! O Dionysius!
When wert thou in thy life hailed with a peal
Of hearts and hands like that one? Shout again!
Again! until the mountains echo you,
And the great sea joins in that mighty voice,
And old Enceladus, the Son of Earth,
Stirs in his mighty caverns. Tell me, slaves,
Where is your tyrant? Let me see him now;
Why stands he hence aloof? Where is your master?
What is become of Dionysius?
I would behold and laugh at him!

_Dionysius._ Behold me!
Go, Damocles, and bid a herald cry
Wide through the city, from the eastern gate
Unto the most remote extremity,
That Dionysius, tyrant as he is,
Gives back to Damon life and freedom."

Like one struggling out of a fearful dream, the phantom mists receding, horror expiring and brightening into joy, the great actor lifts himself, relaxes, staggers into the arms of his Pythias, and the curtain sinks. The people, slowly scattering to their homes, do not easily or soon forget the mighty agitation they have undergone.

BRUTUS.

The two celebrated characters of early Roman history, Brutus and Virginius, each the hero of a startling social revolution, as well as of an appalling domestic tragedy, in which personal affection is nobly sacrificed to public principle,--these imposing forms, each enveloped in his grand and solemn legend, stalking vivid and colossal in the shadows of antique time,--these sublime democratic idols of old Rome, men of tempestuous passion and iron solidity, whose civic heroism was mated with private tenderness and crowned with judicial severity,--like statues of rock clustered with ivy and their heads wreathed in retributive lightnings,--both these personages in all their accompaniments were singularly well fitted for the ethical, passionate, single-minded, and ponderous individuality of Forrest to impersonate with the highest sincerity and power. He achieved extraordinary success in them. There was in himself so much of the old Roman pride, independence, concentrated and tenacious feeling, majestic and imperious weight, that it was not hard for him to steal the keys of history, enter the chambers of the past, and reanimate the heroic and revengeful masks. He did so, to the astonishment and delight of those who beheld the spectacle.

The play of "Brutus, or the Fall of Tarquin," the best of the dramatic productions of John Howard Payne, has been greatly admired. Its title rôle was a favorite one with Kean, Cooper, Macready, Booth, and Forrest; and they all won laurels in it. The interest of the plot begins at once, and scarcely flags to the end. The murderous tyrant, Tarquin, has forced his way to the throne through treason, poison, and gore, and holds remorseless rule, to the deep though muffled indignation and horror of the better citizens. His fears of the discontented patriots have led him to murder their master-spirit, Marcus Junius, and his eldest son. The younger son, Lucius, escaped, and affected to have lost his reason, playing the part of a fool, and meanwhile abiding his time to avenge his family and his country. He kept his disguise so shrewdly that he was allowed to be much at court, a harmless butt for the mirth of the tyrant and his fellows.

Forrest kept up the semblance of imbecility, the shambling gait, the dull eyes and vacant face, the sloppy, irresolute gestures, the apparent forgetfulness, with the closest truth. He had for years studied the traits and phases of these poor beings in visits to lunatic-asylums. But in the depicting of the fool there was some obvious unfitness of his heavy bearing, noble voice, and native majesty to the shallow and broken qualities of such a character. It did not appear quite spontaneous or natural. He clearly had to act it by will and effort. Yet there was a sort of propriety even in this, as the part was professedly an assumed and pretended one. But when he cast off the vile cloud of idiocy and broke forth in his own patrician person, the effect of the foregone foil was manifest, and the new and perfect picture stood in luminous relief. When Claudius and Aruns had been badgering him, and had received some such pointed repartees as a fool will seem now and then to hit on by chance, as they went out he followed them with a look of superb contempt, and said, in an intonation of intense scorn wonderfully effective,--

"Yet, 'tis not that which ruffles me,--the gibes
And scornful mockeries of ill-governed youth,--
Or flouts of dastard sycophants and jesters,--
Reptiles, who lay their bellies on the dust
Before the frown of majesty!"

And the house was always electrified by the sudden transformation with which then, passing from the words,

"All this
I but expect, nor grudge to bear; the face
I carry, courts it!"

he towered into prouder dimensions, and, as one inspired, delivered himself in an outbreak of declamatory grandeur:

"Son of Marcus Junius!
When will the tedious gods permit thy soul
To walk abroad in her own majesty,
And throw this visor of thy madness from thee,
To avenge my father's and my brother's murder?
Had this been all, a thousand opportunities
I've had to strike the blow--and my own life
I had not valued at a rush.--But still--
There's something nobler to be done!--My soul,
Enjoy the strong conception! Oh! 'tis glorious
To free a groaning country,--
To see Revenge
Spring like a lion from the den, and tear
These hunters of mankind! Grant but the time,
Grant but the moment, gods! If I am wanting,
May I drag out this idiot-feignéd life
To late old age, and may posterity
Ne'er hear of Junius but as Tarquin's fool!"

The manner in which, in his fictitious rôle, in his interview with Tullia, the parricidal queen, whose prophetic soul is ominously alive to every alarming hint, he veered along the perilous edges of his feigned and his real character, the sinister alternation of jest and portent, was a passage of exciting interest, sweeping the chords of the breast from sport to awe with facile and forceful hand. The same effect was produced in a still higher degree in the interview with his son Titus, whose patriotism and temper he tested by lifting a little his false garb of folly and letting some tentative gleams of his true nature and purposes appear.

"_Brutus._ I'll tell a secret to thee
Worth a whole city's ransom. This it is:
Nay, ponder it and lock it in thy heart:--
There are more fools, my son, in this wise world,
Than the gods ever made.

_ Titus._ Sayest thou? Expound this riddle.
Would the kind gods restore thee to thy reason--

_Brutus._ Then, Titus, then I should be mad with reason.
Had I the sense to know myself a Roman,
This hand should tear this heart from out my ribs,
Ere it should own allegiance to a tyrant.
If, therefore, thou dost love me, pray the gods
To keep me what I am. Where all are slaves,
None but the fool is happy.

_Titus._ We are Romans--
Not slaves--

_Brutus._ Not slaves? Why, what art thou?

_Titus._ Thy son.
Dost thou not know me?

_Brutus._ You abuse my folly.
I know thee not.--Wert thou my son, ye gods,
Thou wouldst tear off this sycophantic robe,
Tuck up thy tunic, trim these curléd locks
To the short warrior-cut, vault on thy steed,
Then, scouring through the city, call to arms,
And shout for liberty!

_Titus._ [_Starts._] Defend me, gods!

_Brutus._ Ha! does it stagger thee?"

The simulation had been dropped so gradually, the unconsciously waxing earnestness of purpose and self-betrayal were carried up over such invisible and exquisite steps, that, when the electric climax was touched, he who confronted Brutus on the stage did not affect to be more startled than those who gazed on him from before it really were.

Finding his son is in love with the sister of Sextus, and in no ripe mood for dangerous enterprise, he turns sorrowfully from him, murmuring,--

"Said I for liberty? I said it not.
My brain is weak, and wanders. You abuse it."

When left alone, he soliloquizes, beginning with sorrow, and passing in the succeeding parts from sadness to repulsion, then to anxiety, afterwards to hope, and ending with an air of proud joy.

"I was too sudden. I should have delayed
And watched a surer moment for my purpose.
He must be frighted from his dream of love.
What! shall the son of Junius wed a Tarquin?
As yet I've been no father to my son,--
I could be none; but, through the cloud that wraps me,
I've watched his mind with all a parent's fondness,
And hailed with joy the Junian glory there.
Could I once burst the chains which now enthrall him,
My son would prove the pillar of his country,--
Dear to her freedom as he is to me."

Few things in the history of the stage have been superior in its way to what Forrest made the opening of the third act in Brutus. It is deep night in Rome, thunder and lightning, the Capitol in the background, in front an equestrian statue of Tarquinius Superbus. Brutus enters, revolving in his breast the now nearly complete scheme for overthrowing the despot. Appearance, thoughts, words, voice, manner, all in strict keeping with the time and place, he speaks:

"Slumber forsakes me, and I court the horrors
Which night and tempest swell on every side.
Launch forth thy thunders, Capitolian Jove!
Put fire into the languid souls of men;
Let loose thy ministers of wrath amongst them,
And crush the vile oppressor! Strike him down,
Ye lightnings! Lay his trophies in the dust!

[_Storm increases._

Ha! this is well! flash, ye blue-forkéd fires!
Loud-bursting thunders, roar! and tremble, earth!

[_A violent crash of thunder, and the statue of Tarquin, struck
by a flash, is shattered to pieces._

What! fallen at last, proud idol! struck to earth!
I thank you, gods! I thank you! When you point
Your shafts at human pride, it is not chance,
'Tis wisdom levels the commissioned blow.
But I,--a thing of no account--a slave,--
I to your forkéd lightnings bare my bosom
In vain,--for what's a slave--a dastard slave?
A fool, a Brutus? [_Storm increases._] Hark! the storm rides on!
Strange hopes possess my soul. My thoughts grow wild.
I'll sit awhile and ruminate."

Seating himself on a fragment of the fallen statue, in contemplative attitude, his great solitary presence, blending with the entire scene, presented a tableau of the most sombre and romantic beauty.

Valerius enters. Brutus cautiously probes his soul, and is rejoiced to find him worthy of confidence. As they commune on the degradation of their country, the crimes of the royal family, and the hopes of speedy redemption, we seem to feel the sultry smother and to hear the muffled rumble of the rising storm of an outraged people. As Valerius departs, Tarquin himself advances, and gives a new momentum to the movement for his own destruction. Still supposing Brutus to be an imbecile, with shameless garrulity he boasts of the fiendish violence he has done to Lucretia, the wife of Collatinus, and the near kinswoman of Brutus himself. This woman was of such transcendent loveliness and nobility of person and soul as to have become a poetic ideal of her sex throughout the civilized world in all the ages since. While Tarquin boastfully described his deed, the effect on his auditor was terrific to see. The inward struggle was fully pictured without, in the hands convulsively clutched, the eyes starting from their sockets, the blood threatening to burst through the swollen veins of the neck and temples. Finally, the quivering earthquake of passion broke in an explosion of maniacal abandonment.

"The fiends curse you, then! Lash you with snakes!
When forth you walk, may the red flaming sun
Strike you with livid plagues!
Vipers, that die not, slowly gnaw your heart!
May earth be to you but one wilderness!
May you hate yourself,--
For death pray hourly, yet be in tortures,
Millions of years expiring!"

He shrieked this fearful curse upon the shrinking criminal with a frenzied energy which so amazed and stirred the audience that sometimes they gave vent to their excitement in a simultaneous shout of applause, sometimes by looking at one another in silence or whispering, "Wonderful!"

Lucretia, unwilling to survive the purity of her name, has stabbed herself. Collatinus rushes wildly in with the bloody steel in his hand, and tells the tale of horror:

"She's dead! Lucretia's dead! This is her blood!
Howl, howl, ye men of Rome.
Ye mighty gods, where are your thunders now?"

Brutus, the full gale of oratoric fire and splendor swelling his frame and lighting his features, seizes the dagger, lifts it aloft, and exclaims:

"Heroic matron!
Now, now, the hour is come! By this one blow
Her name's immortal, and her country saved!
Hail, dawn of glory! Hail, thou sacred weapon!
Virtue's deliverer, hail! This fatal steel,
Empurpled with the purest blood on earth,
Shall cut your chains of slavery asunder.
Hear, Romans, hear! did not the Sibyl tell you
A fool should set Rome free? I am that fool:
Brutus bids Rome be free!

_Valerius._ What can this mean?

_Brutus._ It means that Lucius Junius has thrown off
The mask of madness, and his soul rides forth
On the destroying whirlwind, to avenge
The wrongs of that bright excellence and Rome.

[_Sinks on his knees._]

Hear me, great Jove! and thou, paternal Mars,
And spotless Vesta! To the death, I swear,
My burning vengeance shall pursue these Tarquins!
Ne'er shall my limbs know rest till they are swept
From off the earth which groans beneath their infamy!
Valerius, Collatine, Lucretius, all,
Be partners in my oath."

The above apostrophe to the dagger was marvellously delivered. As he held it up with utmost stretch of arm and addressed it, it seemed to become a living thing, an avenging divinity.

The next scene was given with a contrast that came like enchantment. A multitude of relatives and friends are celebrating the obsequies of Lucretia. Brutus, with solemn and gentle mien, and a delivery of funereal gloom in which admiring love and pride gild the sorrow, pronounces her eulogy. He paints her with a bright and sweet fondness, and bewails her fate with a closing cadence indescribably plaintive.

"Such perfections
Might have called back the torpid breast of age
To long-forgotten rapture: such a mind
Might have abashed the boldest libertine,
And turned desire to reverential love
And holiest affection. Oh, my countrymen!
You all can witness when that she went forth
It was a holiday in Rome; old age
Forgot its crutch, labor its task,--all ran;
And mothers, turning to their daughters, cried,
'There, there's Lucretia!' Now, look ye, where she lies,
That beauteous flower by ruthless violence torn!
Gone! gone! gone!

_All._ Sextus shall die! But what for the king, his father?

_Brutus._ Seek you instruction? Ask yon conscious walls,
Which saw his poisoned brother, saw the incest
Committed there, and they will cry. Revenge!
Ask yon deserted street, where Tullia drove
O'er her dead father's corse, 'twill cry, Revenge!
Ask yonder senate-house, whose stones are purple
With human blood, and it will cry, Revenge!
Go to the tomb where lies his murdered wife,
And the poor queen, who loved him as her son,
Their unappeaséd ghosts will shriek, Revenge!
The temples of the gods, the all-viewing heavens,
The gods themselves, shall justify the cry,
And swell the general sound, Revenge! Revenge!"

The instant change, in that presence of death, from the subdued, mournful manner to this tremendous burst of blazing eloquence was a consummate marvel of oratoric effect, in which art and nature were at odds which was the greater element. It might be said of Forrest in this scene,--as Corunna in the play itself described to Horatius the action of Brutus,--

"He waved aloft the bloody dagger,
And spoke as if he held the souls of men
In his own hand and moulded them at pleasure.
They looked on him as they would view a god.
Who, from a darkness which invested him,
Sprang forth, and, knitting his stern brow in frowns,
Proclaimed the vengeful will of angry Jove."

The throng are so possessed with him that they propose to make him king in place of Tarquin; but the patriot, his unselfish soul breathing from his countenance and audible in his accent, convinces them of his personal purity:

"No, fellow-citizens!
If mad ambition in this guilty frame
Had strung one kingly fibre,--yea, but one,--
By all the gods, this dagger which I hold
Should rip it out, though it entwined my heart.
Now take the body up. Bear it before us
To Tarquin's palace; there we'll light our torches,
And, in the blazing conflagration, rear
A pile for these chaste relics, that shall send
Her soul amongst the stars. On!"

They sweep away to their victims, deliver the State, and seal an ample vengeance.

The primary climax of the play has thus been reached. Brutus has emerged from his idiot concealment and vindicated himself as the successful champion of liberty and his country. He is next to appear in a second climax, of still greater intensity and height, by the personal sacrifice of himself as the martyr of duty. The first action has the superior national significance, but the second action has the superior human significance, and therefore properly succeeds. Titus, the only son of the liberator, corrupted by his love of power and pleasure, has, in a measure, joined the party of the Tarquins. He is therefore regarded by the victor patriots as a traitor to Rome. Brutus, torn between his parental affection and his public duty, is profoundly agitated, yet resolute. He spares the life of Tarquinia, the betrothed of Titus, at the same time warning him,--

"This I concede; but more if thou attemptest,--
By all the gods!--Nay, if thou dost not take
Her image, though with smiling Cupids decked,
And pluck it from thy heart, there to receive
Rome and her glories in without a rival,
Thou art no son of mine, thou art no Roman!"

For the defective treatment of the theme of the love of Brutus for his son by the author the actor made the very best amends in his power by improving every opportunity to suggest the depth and fervor of the tie, in look and gesture and tone, in order to exalt the coming catastrophe. Seated calmly in the curule chair as Consul, robed with purple, the lictors with their uplifted axes before him, a messenger announces the seizure of a young man at the head of an insurgent band. Valerius whispers to Brutus,--

"Oh, my friend, horror invades my heart.
I know thy soul, and pray the gods to put
Thee to no trial beyond a mortal bearing."

Mastering his agitation by a mighty effort, Brutus responds,--

"No, they will not,--they cannot."

The unhappy Titus is brought in guarded. The father, all his convulsed soul visible in his countenance and motions, turns from him, rises, walks to his colleague, and says, with tremulous, sobbing voice,--

"That youth, my Titus, was my age's hope,--
I loved him more than language can express,--
I thought him born to dignify the world."

The culprit kneels to him, and begs for clemency:

"A word for pity's sake. Before thy feet,
Humbled in soul, thy son and prisoner kneels.
Love is my plea: a father is my judge;
Nature my advocate!--I can no more:
If these will not appease a parent's heart,
Strike through them all, and lodge thy vengeance here!"

Almost overpowered, Brutus hesitates a moment, rallies, straightens himself up, and exclaims, with lofty dignity,--

"Break off! I will not, cannot hear thee further!
The affliction nature hath imposed on Brutus,
Brutus will suffer as he may.--Enough!
Lictors, secure your prisoner. Point your axes.
To the Senate--On!"

The last scene shows the Senate in the temple of Mars, Brutus in the Consular seat. He speaks, beginning with solemn air and tones of ringing firmness:

"Romans the blood which hath been shed this day
Hath been shed wisely. Traitors, who conspire
Against mature societies, may urge
Their acts as bold and daring; and though villains,
Yet they are manly villains. But to stab
The cradled innocent, as these have done,--
To strike their country in the mother-pangs
Of struggling childbirth, and direct the dagger
To freedom's infant throat,--is a deed so black
That my foiled tongue refuses it a name."

Here he pauses, falters a little, then slowly adds,--

"There is one criminal still left for judgment:
Let him approach."

Titus is led in by the lictors, with the edges of their axes turned towards him. He kneels.

"Oh, Brutus! Brutus! must I call you father,
Yet have no token of your tenderness?

_Brutus._ Think that I love thee by my present passion,
By these unmanly tears, these earthquakes here,
Let these convince you that no other cause
Could force a father thus to wrong his nature.
Romans, forgive this agony of grief,--
My heart is bursting,--Nature must have way.
I will perform all that a Roman should,--
I cannot feel less than a father ought!"

The piteous look and choking accents with which he said to his son, "Think that I love thee by my present passion," were irresistible. They seemed to betoken that his heart was breaking. The sound of weeping was usually audible in the audience, and hundreds might be seen wiping the tears from their cheeks.

Justice holds its course, and the Consul sentences the guilty citizen to the block:

"_Brutus._ The sovereign magistrate of injured Rome
Condemns
A crime, thy father's bleeding heart forgives.
Go,--meet thy death with a more manly courage
Than grief now suffers me to show in parting;
And, while she punishes, let Rome admire thee!
Farewell!

_Titus._ Farewell forever!

_Brutus._ Forever! Lictors, lead your prisoner forth.

My hand shall wave the signal for the axe;
Then let the trumpet's sound proclaim its fall.
Poor youth! Thy pilgrimage is at an end!
A few sad steps have brought thee to the brink
Of that tremendous precipice, whose depth
No thought of man can fathom. Justice now
Demands her victim! A little moment,
And I am childless.--One effort, and 'tis past!--
Justice is satisfied, and Rome is free!"

Forrest made the finale an artistic climax of superlative originality, finish, and power. He climbs the steps of the tribune to wave his hand, as agreed, in signal for the execution. His face grows pale. He struggles to lift his arm. Then, when the trumpet announces that the deed is done, he absently wraps his head up in his toga, as if it were something separate from his body which must not know what has taken place. Suddenly his whole form relaxes and sinks heavily on the stage.

VIRGINIUS.

The rôle of Virginius, as filled by Forrest, had, with many resemblances to that of Brutus, also many important differences. In the domestic pictures of the first part, the sacred innocence and artless ways of the motherless daughter and the overflowing fondness of the widowed father, an element of more varied and tender beauty is introduced. The play has a wider range of interest than that of Brutus, and, while more attractive in some portions, is quite as terrible in others. To the perfecting of his performance of it Forrest devoted as much study and labor as to any part he ever acted. It obtained a commensurate recognition and approval from the general public. In its outlines as a piece of physical realism his rendering of Virginius was as pronounced as that of his Brutus, and in its artistic finish as an example of imaginative portraiture it was unquestionably far superior. In addition to the exceptional power with which the central motives were presented, there were incidental features of extreme felicity. For instance, the vein of sarcasm which Virginius displays towards the Decemvirs and their party was worked with a master-hand, and the friendship for the crabbed but brave and good old Dentatus was exhibited with a careless and bluff cordiality direct from nature. As a complete picture of the antique passion and sublime strength of the Roman character, the whole performance stood forth in pre-eminent distinctness and vitality.

Sometimes, as an artist is lifting the curtain to expose his picture to view, with the removal of the first corner of drapery the connoisseur catches a glimpse of an exquisite bit of drawing and color which convinces him that the entire work is a great and beautiful one. When Forrest made his entrance in Virginius, with an irritated and impetuous air, the earliest sound of his voice, so deep and resonant, coining and propelling its words in air with such easy and percussive precision, seized the attention of the auditory and gave assurance that something uncommon was to come. With a quick articulation and an expostulating tone he said, "Why did you make him Decemvir, and first Decemvir, too?" He refers to the shameless Appius Claudius, and the key-note of the play is struck by his inflection of the words.

He is not displeased on seeing reason for suspecting that his daughter--an only and idolized child left him by his dead wife--is in love with the noble young Lucius Icilius, for whom he has an excellent liking. He sends for Virginia, who is still a schoolgirl, that he may question her. She comes in, and sits upon his knee, saying, "Well, father, what is your will?" At the sight of her his face lights as if a sunbeam had suddenly fallen on it, and his voice has a sweet, low, half-smothered tone, as if the words were spoken in his heart, and only their softened echoes came forth:

"_Virginius._ I wished to see you,
To ask you of your tasks,--how they go on,--
And what your masters say of you,--what last
You did. I hope you never play
The truant?

_Virginia._ The truant! No, indeed, Virginius.

_Virginius._ I am sure you do not. Kiss me!

_Virginia._ Oh! my father,
I am so happy when you are kind to me!

_Virginius._ You are so happy when I'm kind to you!
Am I not always kind? I never spoke
An angry word to you in all my life,
Virginia! You are happy when I'm kind!
That's strange; and makes me think you have some reason
To fear I may be otherwise than kind."

The parental tenderness of his manner, his speech, his kiss, seemed to combine the love of a father and a mother in one. His hand meanwhile was playing with her tresses in a way suggestive of unpurposed instinctive fondness, exquisitely touching.

The transition was perfect when, meeting Icilius, after scrutinizing him earnestly, as though to read his very soul, the rough soldier and honest man succeeds to the adoring father:

"Icilius!
Thou seest this hand? It is a Roman's, boy;
'Tis sworn to liberty,--it is the friend,
Of honor. Dost thou think so?

_Icilius._ Do I think
Virginius owns that hand?

_Virginius._ Then you'll believe
It has an oath deadly to tyranny,
And is the foe of falsehood! By the gods,
Knew it the lurking-place of treason, though
It were a brother's heart, 'twould drag the caitiff
Forth. Dar'st thou take this hand?"

And when, a little later, he led his daughter to her lover and formally betrothed them in these eloquent words, his whole frame betraying the struggle at composure, it was a consummate moral painting of humanity in one of its most sacred aspects:

"Didst thou but know, young man,
How fondly I have watched her, since the day
Her mother died, and left me to a charge
Of double duty bound,--how she hath been
My pondered thought by day, my dream by night,
My prayer, my vow, my offering, my praise,
My sweet companion, pupil, tutor, child!--
Thou wouldst not wonder that my drowning eye
And choking utterance upbraid my tongue
That tells thee she is thine!"

The plot progresses, and the air is thick with the clamor and strife of Rome, the hates of parties and the reverberation of war. Virginius is called to a distance with the army. His daughter is left under the guardianship of her uncle. One day the lustful Appius has a sight of her passing in the street.

"Her young beauty,
Trembling and blushing 'twixt the striving kisses
Of parting spring and meeting summer,"

inflames him. He charges one of his minions to seize her, under the pretext that she is the child of one of his slaves, sold to Virginius and falsely proclaimed his daughter. With details of cruel atrocity the deed is accomplished, in spite of the desperate interference of Icilius. Lucius is sent as a messenger to the camp to inform Virginius. Lucius tells him he is wanted immediately at Rome. With a start and a look of dread anxiety he demands to know wherefore. The messenger prevaricates and delays, but, on being chided and commanded to speak out, says, "Hear me, then, with patience." Virginius replies, while his restless fingers and the working of his toes, seen through the openings of his sandals, most effectually contradict the words, "Well, I am patient."

"_Lucius._ Your Virginia--

_Virginius._ Stop, my Lucius!
I am cold in every member of my frame!
If 'tis prophetic, Lucius, of thy news,
Give me such token as her tomb would,--silence.
I'll bear it better.

_Lucius._ You are still--

_Virginius._ I thank thee, Jupiter, I am still a father!"

The change of his countenance while uttering the word "father," from the expression it wore on the word "silence," was like an unexpected sunburst through a gloomy cloud. As Lucius went on in his narration, the breathing of the listener thickened with intensity of suspense, his heart beat with remittent throb, and he started at each point in the outrage like one receiving electric shocks.

He departed for Rome, where his poor daughter was guarded in the house of her uncle, Numitorius, in the deepest distress and terror. He entered; and such was his expression as he cried, "My child! my child!" and she rushed into his arms, that there were scarcely ever many dry eyes in the theatre at that moment. Then it was something divine to be seen, and never to be forgotten, to behold how he turned from his blistering and disdainful apostrophe to the villain who had dared set his panders after her, and, taking her precious head in his hands, gazed in her face, saying,--

"I never saw you look so like your mother
In all my life!

_Virginia._ You'll be advised, dear father?

_Virginius._ It was her soul,--her soul, that played just then
About the features of her child, and lit them
Into the likeness of her own. When first
She placed thee in my arms,--I recollect it
As a thing of yesterday!--she wished, she said,
That it had been a man. I answered her,
It was the mother of a race of men.
And paid her for thee with a kiss. Her lips
Are cold now,--could they but be warmed again,
How they would clamor for thee!

_Virginia._ My dear father,
You do not answer me! Will you not be advised?

_Virginius._ I will not take him by the throat and strangle him!
But I COULD do it! I could DO IT!"

They go to the Forum, where Appius is seated on the tribunal, supported by the lictors and an armed troop. The acting of Forrest in the trial-scene that followed was as genuine and moving, set in as bold relief, as anything the American theatre has known. Who that saw him can ever forget the imperial front with which, bearing Virginia on his arm, he advanced before the judgment-seat,--the firm step, the indomitable face, the parental love that seemed to throw a thousand invisible tendrils around his child to hold her up! The tableau caused a silence that was absolute, and was maintained so long that the suspense had begun to be painful, when the kingly voice of Virginius broke the spell:

"Does no one speak? I am defendant here!
Is silence my opponent? Fit opponent
To plead a cause too foul for speech! What brow
Shameless, gives front to this most valiant cause,
That tries its prowess 'gainst the honor of
A girl, yet lacks the wit to know that they
Who cast off shame should likewise cast off fear!"

The strong, lucid, cutting tones in which these words were spoken went vibrating into the breasts of the listeners, and thrilled them with sympathetic echoes. The perjured witness was summoned by the recreant judge. And the next passage of the play had a moral meaning deep enough, and was represented with a truth and power grand enough, to turn the stage for the time being into a pulpit and make the world tremble at its preaching.

"_Virginius._ And are you the man
That claims my daughter for his slave?--Look at me,
And I will give her to thee.

_Claudius._ She is mine, then:
Do I not look at you?

_Virginius._ Your eye does, truly,
But not your soul.--I see it, through your eye,
Shifting and shrinking,--turning every way
To shun me. You surprise me, that your eye,
So long the bully of its master, knows not
To put a proper face upon a lie,
But gives the port of impudence to falsehood
When it would pass it off for truth. Your soul
Dares as soon show its face to me!"

Now the interest grows yet intenser and the influence of the actor yet more penetrating in its simplicity and terrible beauty. Virginius finds that nothing can save his daughter from the last profanation of the tyrant except her immediate immolation by himself. For a moment he is lost in a reverie, striving to think what he can do. By chance he perceives a knife lying on the stall of a butcher. At the sight of this providential instrument an electric change passes over his face, revealing all his purpose with a grim joy, like the lightning-flash at night illumining the murky sky and giving an instantaneous outline of the clouds loaded with the coming storm. He moves gradually towards the stall, smiling on Virginia a tender smile, full of the consolation he sees in the prospect of her deliverance even by death. He pats her lovingly on the shoulder while changing her from his left arm, that with it he may reach the knife. He stealthily seizes it and passes it behind him from the left hand to the right. With deep fondness he breathes, "My dear Virginia," and gives her quick and fervent kisses, which he appears striving to press into her very soul. Tears seem to moisten his words,--

"There is one only way to save thine honor,--
'Tis this!"

And, swift as motion of the human arm can make it, the knife pierces her heart. The storm has burst, the lightning has wreathed its folds around the consecrated instrument of the work, and now the thunder-tones of his voice crash through the theatre in the awful exclamation,--

"Lo, Appius! with this innocent blood
I do devote thee to the infernal gods!
Make way there!
If they dare
To tempt the desperate weapon that is maddened
With drinking my daughter's blood, why, let them.
Thus, thus it rushes in amongst them. Way, there!"

His exit here used to excite the wildest huzzas, the men in the pit standing with their hats in their uplifted hands, and the women in the boxes waving their handkerchiefs.

Virginius heads the revolution, in which the revolted troops and the commons join. The tyranny is hurled to the dust, the people freed, and Appius lodged in prison. But the wronged and wretched father is broken down by the preternatural horror and excitement he has undergone, and loses his reason. He is next seen in his own desolate home, with a pale and haggard face, and a look half wild, half dreamy, talking to himself:

"'Tis ease! 'tis ease! I am content! 'Tis peace,--
'Tis anything that is most soft and quiet.
And after such a dream! I want my daughter.
Send me my daughter! Will she come, or not?
I'll call myself. Virginia!"

His call of Virginia was a call dictated by a dethroned mind. It was a sound that appeared to come from a mysterious vault. There was a kind of semi-wakefulness in it, like the utterance of a thought in a dream. It had a touch of pity. It was an inverted form of sound, that turned back whence it issued and fell dead where it was born, feeling that there was no reply for it to keep it alive. Yet, after a pause, he fancies he hears her answering; and he rapidly asks,--

"Is it a voice, or nothing, answers me?
I hear a sound so fine there's nothing lives
'Twixt it and silence."

And then, with an entranced listening, he follows the illusory voice around to different parts of the room, in the vain attempt to find its source. An apathetic stare, a blank, miserable stupor, succeeds, soon broken by the fancy that he hears her shrieking in the prison for rescue from Appius,--and he darts away. Appius, meanwhile, is planning an escape, and gloatingly counting over in imagination the victims he will pick out to expiate for his present shame, when the shattered Virginius, appalling even in his ruins, rushes in upon him, wildly crying, "Give me my daughter!" The affrighted prisoner replies,--

"I know nothing of her, Virginius, nothing.

_Virginius._ Do you tell me so?
Vile tyrant! Think you, shall I not believe
My own eyes before your tongue? Why, there she is!
There at your back,--her locks dishevelled, and
Her vestment torn,--her cheeks all faded with
Her pouring tears.
Villain! is this a sight to show a father?
And have I not a weapon to requite thee?"

In his distraught fury, feeling over his body for some weapon he _discovers_ his own hands. A wild and eager delight shudders through him as, holding these naked instruments before him, he springs on the terrified Appius and strangles him to death. Lucius, Icilius, and Numitorius enter, bearing the urn of Virginia. The wronged father and sufferer looks up, and sighs, with a bewildered gaze,--

"What a load my heart has heaved off! Where is he?
I thought I had done it."

They call him by name. He makes no response. Icilius places the urn in his right hand, with the single word, "Virginia." He looks at Icilius and the urn, at Numitorius and Lucius, seems struck by their mourning garb, looks again at the urn, breaks into a passion of tears, and falls on the neck of Icilius, exclaiming, "Virginia!"

METAMORA.

The famous prize-play of Metamora, by John Augustus Stone, is not a work of much genius, and if published would have no literary rank; yet it had all that was essential, in the striking merit of furnishing the genius of the enactor of its leading character the conditions for compassing a popular success of the most remarkable description. With his performance of Metamora, Forrest impressed the masses of the American people in a degree rarely precedented, and won a continental celebrity full of idiomatic enthusiasm. Of course there were good reasons for this warm favor from the surrendered many, despite the disdain of the squeamish few, who can generally enjoy nothing, only conceitedly criticise everything.

In the first place, the subject was indigenous, and thus came home to the American heart and curiosity. In the imagination of our people for more than a century the race of the aborigines of the land were clothed with romantic associations and regretted with a sort of national remorse. The disinterestedness of the fancy and the soul, relieved from all proximity to their squalor, ferocity, and vice, with a beautiful pity lamented their wrongs, their evanescence, and the rapid disappearance of the wigwam and papoose and war-dance and canoe of the painted tribes from hill and glen and wood and lake. In this wide-spread sentimental interest the play took hold of powerful chords. Although prosaic research and experience have so largely divested the character of the Indian of its old romance and made his actual presence a nuisance, nevertheless so long as the memories of our primeval settlements and of our bloody and adventurous frontier traditions shall live, so long will the American Indian be remembered with a sigh as the _lost human poetry_ of the nature wherein he was cradled.

Furthermore, the play was stocked with fresh suggestions and images of nature,--a store-house of those simple metaphors drawn direct from the great objects of the universe, full of a rude pathos and sublimity, and so natural to the genius of Indian chief and orator in their talk. There was a piquance of novelty and a refreshing charm to people--hived in towns and cities, and, stifled with artificial customs, almost oblivious of any direct contact of their senses with the solemn elementary phenomena of the surrounding universe--in hearing Metamora speak, in a voice that echoed and painted them, of the woods, the winds, the sun, the cliffs, the torrents, the lakes, the sea, the stars, the thunder, the meadows and the clouds, the wild animals and the singing birds. The meaning of the words so fitly intoned by the player awoke in the nerves of the audience dim reminiscences of ancestral experiences reverberating out of far ages forgotten long ago, and they were bound by a spell themselves understood not.

And then there was the interest of a style of character and life, of an idealized historic picture of a vanished form of human nature and society, all whose elements stood in strange and fascinating contrast with the personal experience of the beholders. It was the first time the American Indian had ever been dramatized and put on the stage; and this was done in a theme based on one of the romantic episodes of his history embodied in a chieftain of tragic greatness.

In a production of art whose subject and materials lie in the domain of unreclaimed nature, genius is not, indeed, permitted to falsify any fundamental principle or fact, but is free to modify and add. Otherwise, the creative function of art is gone, and only imitation left. In this respect of combined truth and originality, the acted Metamora of Forrest was a wonder never surpassed, in its own kind, in the long story of the stage. He appeared the kingly incarnation of the spirit of the scene, both of the outward landscape and of the taciturn tribe that peopled it with their gliding shapes. He appeared the human lord of the dark wood and the rocky shore, and the natural ruler of their untutored tenants; the soul of the eloquent recital, the noble appeal, and the fiery harangue; the embodiment of a rude magnanimity, a deep domestic love, an unquivering courage and fortitude, an instinctive patriotism and sense of justice, and a relentless revenge. He appeared, too, the votary of a superstition of singular attractiveness, blooming with the native wild-flowers of the human mind, a faith so unaffected and open that it seemed to be read by the stars of the Great Spirit as they looked down on the lone Indian kneeling by the mound of his fathers, the hunted patriot lying in ambush for his foes. Through all this physically-realized, wondrous portraiture of the poetic, the tender, the noble, the awful, the reverential, was mingled the glare of the crouching tiger. It was thus that Forrest in his great creation of Metamora rendered all that there was in the naturalistic poem of Indian life, to all that there was justly adding an infusion of that ideal quality by which art appeals to the nobler feelings of admiration and sympathy in preference to the meaner ones of hate and scorn. In this performance he elaborated a picture of the legendary and historic American Indian which to this day stands alone beyond all rivalry.

Never did an 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 scalp to the sole of his foot. The carriage of his body, the inflections of his voice, his facial expressions, the very pose of his head and neck on his shoulders, were new. For he had recalled all his observations while on his visit with Push-ma-ta-ha among the Choctaws, when he had adopted their habits, eaten their food, slept in their tents, echoed the crack of his rifle over the surface of their lakes, and left the print of his moccasins on their hunting-grounds. He had also patiently studied their characteristics from all other available sources. Accordingly, when he came to impersonate Metamora, or the Last of the Wampanoags, modelled by the author of the play after that celebrated New England Sachem, the son of Massasoit, known in history as King Philip of Pokanoket, it was the genuine Indian who was brought upon the stage, merely idealized a little in some of his moral features. The attributes unnoticed by careless observers were distinctly shown,--the sudden muscular movements, the repressed emotion, the peculiar mode of breathing, the deep and vigorous gutturals flung out from the muscular base of the abdomen, and the straight or slightly inward-pointing line of the footfall. With a profound truth to fact, the general bearing of Metamora on ordinary occasions was marked by a dull monotony of manner, broken with awkward abruptness, and his grand poses were limited to those times of great excitement when the human organism, if in a state of dynamic surcharge, is spontaneously electrified with heroic lines, and becomes an instrument with which impersonal passions or the laws of nature gesticulate.