Chapter IX (3)

With the single and very proper exception of this partially heightened moral refinement, the counterfeit was so cunningly copied that it might have deceived nature herself. Many a time delegations of Indian tribes who chanced to be visiting the cities where he acted this character--Boston, New York, Washington, Baltimore, Cincinnati, New Orleans--attended the performance, adding a most picturesque feature by their presence, and their pleasure and approval were unqualified. A large delegation of Western Indians, seated in the boxes of the old Tremont Theatre on such an occasion, were so excited by the performance that in the closing scene they rose and chanted a dirge in honor of the death of the great chief.

This incident recalls one which happened in the earliest theatre in Philadelphia, when Mrs. Whitelock, the sister of Mrs. Siddons, was playing, and when Washington was present. At the beginning of the performance a group of Indians, who had come from the wilderness to conclude a treaty, made their appearance in the pit in their native costume. The dark, tall, gaunt figures glided in, and, without noticing the audience or seeming to hear the claps of welcome which greeted them, seated themselves, and fixed their eyes on the stage, as unchangingly as if they were petrified. They sat through the chief play like statues, with immovable tranquillity. But in the after-piece an artificial elephant was introduced, which so electrified these sons of the forest that they suddenly sprang up with a cry. They said there had once been a great beast like this in their land. The next day they called on the manager, inspected the mammoth of sticks, pasteboard, and cloth, and asked to see by daylight the heavenly women who had appeared on the stage the previous night.

The opening scene of Metamora was a glen, with ledges of stone, trees, bushes, running vines, and flowers, the leading character seen, in his picturesque, aboriginal costume, standing on the highest rock in an attitude that charmed the eye. Leaning forward on his firmly-planted right foot, the left foot thrown easily back on its tip, he had a bow in his hands, with the arrow sprung to its head. As the arrow sped from the twanging string he raised his eyes with eager gaze after it, gave a deep interjection, "Hah!" bounded upon a rock below, and vanished. In a few moments he re-entered, with his left arm bleeding, as if it had been bitten in a struggle with a wild beast. Oceana, a white maiden, passing, sees his wound and offers him her scarf to bind it up. The mother of Oceana had once befriended Massasoit when he was sick. Metamora, in his gratitude, had visited her grave with offerings for the dead, and, on such an occasion, had rescued Oceana from a panther. He hesitates before accepting, and fills the delay with a by-play of pantomime so true to Indian nature, so new and strange to the spectators, that it was invested with an absorbing interest. At length he says, "Metamora will take the white maiden's gift." He then gives her an eagle's feather, bids her wear it in her hair, and if she is ever in danger he will fly to her rescue at the sight of this pledge of his friendship.

As the play moves on, the audience are gradually borne back to the early days of their fathers, and their dread struggle to establish themselves on these Western shores. We see the thin and thriving settlements constantly augmenting with reinforcements, and pushing the natives before them. We are taken within the homes of the Indians, shown their better qualities, their hopeless efforts, their mixed resolution and misgiving before their coming fate. Our sympathies are enlisted, before we know it, with the defeated party against ourselves; and thus the author and actor won their just victory. For the English are made to represent power and fraud, the Indians truth and patriotism; and when their fugitive king pauses on a lofty cliff in the light of the setting sun, gazes mournfully on the lost hunting-grounds and desecrated graves of his forefathers, and launches his curse on their destroyers, every heart beats with sorrow for him.

The class of speeches in which the instinctive love of nature that unconsciously saturated the Indian soul is expressed, and the closeness of their daily life to the elements of the landscape and the phenomena of the seasons is revealed, were delivered with matchless effect. Metamora, poised like the bronze statue of some god of the antique, says, "I have been upon the high mountain-top when the gray mists were beneath my feet, and the Great Spirit passed by me in wrath. He spoke in anger, and the rocks crumbled beneath the flash of his spear. Then I felt proud and smiled. The white man trembles, but Metamora is not afraid."

And again: "The war and the chase are the red man's brother and sister. The storm-cloud in its fury frights him not; and when the stream is wild and broken his canoe is like a feather, that cannot drown."

Another class of speeches, equally unique in character, and breathing with compressed passion, were those in which the relative positions of the intruding race and the native lords of the soil were described. The style with which these were pronounced made the form of the actor seem a new tenement in which the departed Sachem of the Pequots lived and spoke again. "_Your_ lands?" he exclaims, with sarcastic disdain. "They are mine. Climb upon the rock and look to the sunrise and to the sunset,--all that you see is the land of the Wampanoags, the land of Metamora. I am the white man's friend; but when my friendship is over I will not ask the white man if I have the right to be his foe. Metamora will love and hate, smoke the pipe of peace or draw the hatchet of battle, as seems good to him. He will not wrong his white brother, but he owns no master save Manito, Master of Heaven."

And at another time: "The pale-faces are around me thicker than the leaves of summer. I chase the hart in the hunting-grounds; he leads me to the white man's village. I drive my canoe into the rivers; they are full of the white man's ships. I visit the graves of my fathers; they are lost in the white man's corn-fields. They come like the waves of the ocean forever rolling upon the shores. Surge after surge, they dash upon the beach, and every foam-drop is a white man. They swarm over the land like the doves of winter, and the red men are dropping like withered leaves."

In these passages his declamation seemed to make the whole tragedy of the story of the American Indians breathe and swell and tremble.

A wonderful interest, too, was concentrated in the personal traits of Metamora himself as an individual; so true to his word, so faithful to his friend, so devoted to his wife and child, so proud of his land and his fathers, so fearless of his foe, so reverential before his God. "To his friend Metamora is like the willow,--he bends ever at the breath of those that love him. To others he is an oak. Until with your single arm you can rive the strongest tree of the forest from its earth, think not to stir Metamora when his heart says No."

In the earliest scene with his wife, when ready to start on a hunt, he lingered, and directed her to take her child from its couch on the earth. He then lifted it in his hands, and stood for several seconds in an attitude so superbly defined in its outlines of strength and grace that several pictures of it were published at the time. He asked, with a look of fondness, suppressing his stern reserve, "Dost thou not love this little one, Nahmeokee?" "Ah, yes!" she replied. He then continued, in a caressing murmur like the runneling music of a brook, "When first his little eyes unclosed, thou saidst that they were like to mine." The expression of human love was so simple and complete, and so exquisitely set in the wild seclusion of nature, suggestive of the self-sufficingness of this little nest of affection embosomed in the wood and forgetful of all else in the world, that it made many a soft heart beat fast with an aching wish that stayed long after the scene was gone.

In a later scene he describes to his wife a vision he has had in the night. He relates it in a rich, subdued undertone, waxing intenser, and giving the hearer a mixed feeling of mysterious reverie and prophetic inspiration. "Nahmeokee, the power of dreams has been on me, and the shadows of things to be have passed before me. My heart is big with great thoughts. When I sleep, I think the knife is red in my hand and the scalp of the white man is streaming." Here he gave an additional height to his figure, a slight downward inclination to his head and eyes, dropped his left arm listlessly, and, while the two halves of his whole form were seen finely distinguished along the median line, with his right hand, extended to its fullest distance straight from the shoulder, grasped his bow, which stood perfectly erect from the ground. It was a posture of beautiful artistic precision and meaning, expressive of reflection with a quality of earnest listening in it, as if waiting for a reply. The words of Nahmeokee, not fitting his mood, slightly ruffled his temper, and then, with a crisp tone of voice which in its change of quality and accent was so unexpected that it was like a sudden sweep of the wind that rustles the dry leaves and hums through the wood, he said, "Yes, when our fires are no longer red in the high places of our fathers,--when the bones of our kindred make fruitful the fields the stranger has planted amid the ashes of our wigwams,--when we are hunted back like the wounded elk far towards the going down of the sun,--our hatchets broken, our bows unstrung, and our war-whoops hushed,--then will the stranger spare; for we shall be too small for his eye to see!"

The controversy between the natives and the new settlers having reached a perilous height, the latter dispatch a messenger asking Metamora to meet them in council. Very angry, and deeming all talk useless, he yet concludes to go. Unannounced, abruptly, he makes his peremptory appearance amidst them. Settling strongly back on his right leg, his left advanced at ease with bent knee, his right side half presented, his face turned squarely towards them, he says, with Spartan curtness, and in a manner not insolent, and yet indescribably defiant, "You sent for me, and I have come." His action was so wonderfully expressive in speaking these few words that they became a popular phrase, circulating in the mouths of men in all parts of the country.

The same result also followed in another and simpler scene. He had promised to meet the English at a certain time and place. They demanded of him, "Will you come?" By mere force of manner he gave an immense impressiveness to the simple reply, "Metamora cannot lie." The very boys in the streets were seen trying to imitate his posture and look, swelling their little throats to make the words sound big, as they repeated, "Metamora cannot lie."

In an interview with the English, after deadly hostilities have begun to rage, Aganemo, a subject of Metamora, who, for some supposed wrong, has turned against him, is called in, and bears testimony against his chief and his tribe. Metamora cries, "Let me see his eyes;" and, going close in front of him, addresses the cowering recreant: "Look me in the face, Aganemo. Thou turnest away. The spirit of a dog has entered thee, and thou crouchest. Dost thou come here with a lie in thy heart to witness against me? Thine eye cannot rest on thy chieftain. White men, can he speak words of truth who has been false to his nation and false to his friends?" Fitz Arnold says, "Send him hence." Metamora interposes with an imperial mien full of dread import, "I will do that," and strikes him dead on the spot, exclaiming, "Slave of the whites, follow Sassamon,"--Sassamon being the name of another traitor whom he had previously slain in the midst of his own braves.

Fitz Arnold orders his men to seize the high-handed executioner of their witness. Towering alone in solitary and solid grandeur, with accents and gestures whose impassioned sincerity painted every thought as a visible reality and made the excited audience lean out of their seats, Metamora hurled back his electric defiance:

"Come! my knife has drunk the blood of the traitor, but it is not satisfied. Men of the pale race, beware! The mighty spirits of the Wampanoags are hovering over your heads. They stretch their shadowy arms and call for vengeance. They shall have it. Tremble! From East to West, from the South to the North, the tribes have roused from their slumbers. They grasp the hatchet. The pale-faces shall wither under their power. White men. Metamora is your foe!"

The soldiers level their guns at him. He suddenly seizes a white man and places him before himself. The living shield thus extemporized falls, perforated with bullets. Metamora hurls his tomahawk to the floor, where it sticks quivering, while he cries, "Thus do I defy your power!" and darts away, leaving them dumb with astonishment.

The pathos with which Forrest rendered portions of the play of Metamora was one of its most remarkable excellences and one of his most distinctive trophies as a dramatic artist. No theory of the passions or mere mechanical drill in their expression can ever teach a man to be pathetic. Only a disagreeable mockery of it can thus come. Pathos is the one particular affection that knows no deceit, but comes in truth direct from the soul and goes direct to the soul. It may lie dormant in us, as music lies in the strings of a silent harp, till a touch gives it life. Speaking more or less in all, it speaks most in those who cherish it most; and when it speaks it is felt by all,--red man and white man, barbarian and philosopher. The pathos of Metamora was not like that of Damon when he parted with his family to go to his execution, not like that of Brutus when he sentenced his son to death, not like that of Virginius when he slew his daughter. It was a pathos without tears or gesture. The Indian warrior never weeps. It was almost solely a pathos of the voice, and was as broad and primitive as the unperverted faith and affection of man. The supreme example of this quality in the play was finely set off by the contrast that immediately foreran it, its soft, sad shades following a scene of lurid fury and grandeur.

A peace-runner brings Metamora the news that Nahmeokee is a captive in the power of his enemies. Leaving fifty white men bound as hostages to secure his own safety, he starts alone to deliver her. As he approaches the English camp, he hears Nahmeokee shriek. With one bound he bursts in upon them, levels his gun, and thunders,--

"Which of you has lived too long? Dogs of white men, do you lift your hands against a woman?" "Seize him!" they cry, but shrink from his movement. "Hah!" he scornfully exclaims, "it is now a warrior who stands before you, the fire-weapon in his hands. Who, then, shall seize him? Go, Nahmeokee; I will follow thee." Then, reminding them of his hostages, he turns on his heel and departs.

He is next discovered, with a slow and heavy step, approaching his wigwam, where his rescued wife waits to receive him. He has seen that the too unequal struggle of his countrymen is hopeless, and he appears sad and gloomy. Telling Nahmeokee, who looks broken with grief, that he is weary with the strife of blood, he says, "Bring me thy little one, that I may press him to my burning heart to quiet its tumult." Without his knowledge, the child had been killed by the white men a few hours previous. The mother goes where the child is lying upon the ground, lifts the skin that covers him, points at him, and drops her head in tears. Metamora looks at the child, at the mother, stoops, and, with rapid motions, feels the little face, arms, and legs. Suppressing the start of horror and the cry of grief a white man would have given, he sinks his chin slowly upon his breast and heaves a deep sigh, and then utters the simple words, "Dead! cold!" in a tone low as if to be heard by himself alone, and sounding like the wail of a sorrow in some far-away world. Having lifted the dead child and fondled it in his bosom and laid it tenderly back, he walks slowly to the weeping Nahmeokee, places his hand on her shoulder, and says, in a soft voice quivering with the tears not suffered to mount in the eyes, "Well, is he not happy? Better that he should die by the stranger's hand than live to be his slave. Do not bow down thy head. Thou wilt see him again in the happy land of the spirits; and he will look smilingly as--as--as I do now." Here the quality of smilingness was in the tones of the voice only, while his face wore the impress of intense grief. The voice and face thus contradicting each other presented a pathos so overwhelming that it seemed as if nothing human could surpass it or resist it.

His manner now changes. Some great resolution seems to have arisen in him. His words have a tender yet ominous meaning in their inflection as he asks Nahmeokee, "Do you not fear the power of the white man? He might seize thee and bear thee off to his far country, bind those arms that have so often clasped me, and make thee his slave. We cannot fly: our foes are all about us. We cannot fight, for this [drawing his long knife] is the only weapon I have saved unbroken from the strife. It has tasted the white man's blood and reached the cold heart of the traitor. It has been our best friend, and it is now our only treasure." Here he drew her still closer, and placed her head on his bosom, and, with the long knife in his hand, pointed upwards, and with an alluring, indescribably sweet and aerial falsetto tone, painted a picture that seemed to take form and color in the very atmosphere. There was a weird dreaminess in his voice and a visionary abstractness in his gaze, as with the words "long path in the thin air," he indicated the heavenward journey of his dead child, that seemed actually to dissolve the whole scene, theatre, actor, spectators, and all, into a passing vapor, an ethereal enchantment.

"I look through the long path in the thin air, and think I see our little one borne to the land of the happy, where the fair hunting-grounds never know snows or storms, and where the immortal brave feast under the eyes of the Giver of Good. Look upward, Nahmeokee! See, thy child looks back to thee, and beckons thee to follow." Drawing her closer with his left arm, and lowering his right, he whispers, "Hark! In the distant wood I faintly hear the tread of the white men. They are upon us! The home of the happy is made ready for thee!" While this picture of fear and hope is vivid before her mind, he strikes the blow, and in an instant she is dead in his arms. He clasps her to his breast, presses his lips on her forehead, and gently places her beside the dead child. He then shudders, and draws forth the knife sheathed in her side, and kisses its blade in a sudden transport, exclaiming, "She knew no bondage to the white men. Pure as the snow she lived, free as the air she died!"

At this moment the hills are covered with the white men, pointing their rifles at his heart. "Hah!" he cries. Their leader shouts, "Metamora is our prisoner!" "No," he proudly responds, dilating with the haughtiest port of defiance. "I live, the last of my race, live to defy you still, though numbers and treachery overpower me. Come to me, come singly, come all, and this knife, which has drunk the foul blood of your nation, and is now red with the purest of mine, will feel a grasp as strong as when it flashed in the glare of your burning dwellings or was lifted terribly over the fallen in battle."

The order is given to fire upon him; and he replies, "Do so. I am weary of the world; for ye are dwellers in it. I would not turn on my heel to save my life." They shoot, and he staggers, but in his dying agonies launches on them his awful malediction:

"My curses on ye, white men! May the Great Spirit curse ye when he speaks in his war-voice from the clouds! May his words be like the forked lightnings, to blast and desolate! May the loud winds and the fierce red flames be loosed in vengeance upon ye, tigers! May the angry Spirit of the Waters in his wrath sweep over your dwellings! May your graves and the graves of your children be in the path where the red man shall tread, and may the wolf and the panther howl over your fleshless bones! I go. My fathers beckon from the green lakes and the broad hills. The Great Spirit calls me. I go,--but the curses of Metamora stay with the white men!"

He crawls painfully to the bodies of his wife and child, and, in a vain effort to kiss them, expires, with his last gasp mixing the words, "I die--my wife, my queen--my Nahmeokee!"

SPARTACUS.

"The Gladiator," written by Robert Montgomery Bird, was another prize-play, in which Forrest acquired a popularity which, if less general, was more intense, than that secured for his Metamora. If the admiration and applause given to it were drawn less universally from men and women, from old and young, they were more fervent and sustained, being fed by those elementary instincts which are strongest in the robust multitude. The Spartacus of Forrest was more abused and satirized by hostile critics than any of his other parts, because it was the most "physical" and "melodramatic" of them all. Muscular exertion and ferocious passion were carried to their greatest pitch in it, though neither of these was displayed in a degree beyond sincerity and fitness or the demands of the given situations on the given embodiment of the character. There are actual types of men and actual scenes of life which are transcendently "physical" and "melodramatic." No actor can truly represent such specimens of human nature and such conjunctures of human history _without_ being highly "physical" and profoundly "melodramatic." Is it not the office of the player, the very aim of his art, correctly to depict the truth of man and life? And, recollecting what sort of a person the veritable Thracian gladiator was, and what sort of a part he played, one may well ask how he can be justly impersonated on the stage if _not_ invested with the attributes of brawny muscularity, terrific indignation, stentorian speech, and merciless revenge. Forrest was blamed and ridiculed by a coterie because he did exactly what, as an artist cast in such a rôle, he ought to do, and any deviation from which would have been a gross violation of propriety. He simply exhibited tremendous mental and physical realities with tremendous mental and physical realism. What else would the demurrer have?

The fact is, the cant words "physical" and "melodramatic," as demeaningly used in dramatic criticism, express a vulgar prejudice too prevalent among the educated and refined,--a prejudice infinitely more harmful than any related prejudice of the ignorant and coarse. They seem to fancy the body something vile, to be ashamed of, to receive as little attention and be kept as much out of sight as possible. But since God created the body as truly as he did the spirit, and decreed its uses as much as he did those of the spirit, the perfecting and glorifying of the former are just as legitimate as the perfecting and glorifying of the latter. The ecclesiastical interpretation of Christianity for these fifteen hundred years is responsible, in common with kindred ascetic superstitions of other and elder religions, for an incalculable amount of disease, deformity, vice, crime, and untimely death. The contempt for bodily power and its material conditions in a superbly-developed and trained physical organism, the foul and dishonoring notion of the superior sanctity of the celibate state, the teaching that chastity is the one thing that allies us to the angels, _with_ which every other sin may be forgiven, _without_ which no other virtue is to be recognized,--these and associated errors--discords, distortions, and inversions of nature--have been prolific sources of evil. They lie at the root of the so common prejudice against a magnificent and glowing condition of the physical organism, a prejudice which feeds the conceit of the votaries of the present mental forcing system, and causes so many dawdling idlers to neglect all use of those vigorous measures of gymnastic hygiene which would raise the power and splendor of body and soul together to their maximum.

The type of man produced by the Athenians in their best age, its unrivalled combination of health and strength, energy and grace, acumen and sensibility, organic harmony of mental peace and vital joy, was very largely the fruit of their unrivalled system of gymnastics regulated by music. Free America, with this example and so much subsequent experience, with all the conquests of modern science at her command, should inaugurate a system of popular training which will acknowledge the equal sanctity of body and soul and render them worthy of each other, a union of athletic and æsthetic culture making the body the temporary illuminated temple of its indwelling immortal divinity.

The separating of human nature into opposed parts whose respective highest welfare is incompatible must ever be productive of all kinds of morbidity, monstrosity, and horror, through the final reactions of the violated harmony of truth. Leading to the enforced culture of one side, the mental, and the enforced neglect of the other, the material, it is fatal to that rounded wholeness of the entire man which is the synonym of both health and virtue. For the helpless subsidence of the soul in the body is brutality or idiocy; the insurrectionary sway of the body over the soul is insanity; the remorseless subdual of the body by the soul is egotistic asceticism or murderous ferocity; but the parallel development and exaltation of accordant body and soul give us the ideal of health and happiness fulfilled in beauty, or the enthronement of divine order in man. Therefore such a stimulating instance of organic glory, extraordinary outward poise and inward passion, as the people, thrilled in their most instinctive depths of enthusiasm, used to shout at when they saw Forrest in his early assumptions of the rôle of Spartacus, is not to be stigmatized as something offensive, but to be hailed as something admirable.

In those happy and glowing years of his prime and of his fresh celebrity, what a glorious image of unperverted manhood, of personified health and strength and beauty, he presented! What a grand form he had! What a grand face! What a grand voice! And, the living base of all, what a grand blood! the rich flowing seed-bed of his human thunder and lightning. As he stepped upon the stage in his naked fighting-trim, his muscular coating unified all over him and quivering with vital power, his skin polished by exercise and friction to a smooth and marble hardness, conscious of his enormous potency, fearless of anything on the earth, proudly aware of the impression he knew his mere appearance, backed by his fame, would make on the audience who impatiently awaited him,--he used to stand and receive the long, tumultuous cheering that greeted him, as immovable as a planted statue of Hercules. In the rank and state of his physical organism and its feelings he had the superiority of a god over common men. The spectacle, let it be repeated, was worthy the admiration it won. And had the personal imitation of the care and training he gave himself been but equal to the admiration lavished on their result, the benefit to the American people would have been beyond estimate. But in this, as in the other lessons of the drama, the example was relatively fruitless, because shown to spectators who applaud without copying, seeking entertainment instead of instruction. This, however, is clearly the fault of the people, and not of the stage.

The play of "The Gladiator" is founded on that dark and frightful episode in the history of Rome, the famous servile war headed by the gladiators under the lead of Spartacus. Our sympathies are skilfully enlisted on the side of the insurgents, who are goaded to their desperate enterprise by insufferable wrongs and cruelties. It abounds in pictures of insolent tyranny on one side, and with eloquent denunciation and fearless resistance on the other, and the chief character is a powerful presentation of a deep and generous manhood, outraged in every fibre, lashed to fury by his injuries, and, after superhuman efforts of revenge, expiring in monumental despair and appeal to the gods. The horrors of oppression, the irrepressible dignity of human nature, the reckless luxury of the rulers, the suffering of the slaves, the revolting arrogance of despotism, and the burning passion of liberty, are set against one another; and all through it the mighty figure of Spartacus is made to fill the central place. It was just the part for a democrat, who, despising what is factitious, gloried in the ineradicable attributes of free manhood; and Forrest made the most of it. For instance, it is easy for those who knew him to imagine the energy and relish with which he would utter the following lines when he came to them in his part:

"I thank the gods, I am barbarian;
For I can better teach the grace-begot
And heaven-supported masters of the earth,
How a mere dweller of a desert rock
Can bow their crowned heads to his chariot-wheels.
Man is heaven's work, and beggars' brats may herit
A soul to mount them up the steeps of fortune,
With regal necks to be their stepping-blocks."

In the intense sincerity and elaborate as well as spontaneous truth of his performance, it was not a play that the spectators saw, but a history; not a history, but a resurrection. Entering in the garb of a slave, bound and whipped, his mighty frame and terrible aspect made the abuse seem more awful. Tortured with insulting questions, his proud spirit stung by wrong on wrong, he broke forth in desperation, and carried the passions of the audience by storm, as with clenched hands, and half erect from their seats, while the blood ran quicker through their veins, they saw him rush into combat with his enemies and chase them from the stage. They delighted to see the cruel subduer of the world humbled by her own captive, who held her haughty prætors by the heart and called on Thrace, on Africa, on the oppressed of all nations, to pour the flood of their united hates on the detested city. They rejoiced to hear him recite with bitter eloquence the story of her degradation, and heap on her with hot scorn the recollection of the time when Tiber ran blood and Hannibal hung over her like a cloud charged with ruin. Every step, every word, vibrated on their feelings, and when he fell their hearts swelled with a pang. For the actor had been lost in the slave, the insurgent, the conqueror, the victim.

His first appearance as a captive in imperial Rome was deeply affecting. "Is it a thousand leagues to Thrace?" he said, with a whispered agony, the deadly lament of hopeless exile. He has been purchased by Lentulus, an exhibitor of gladiators, on the strength of the report that he was the most desperate, skilful, and unconquerable fighter in the province. Bracchius, another proprietor of gladiators, owns one Phasarius, a Thracian, who has always been victorious in his combats. Phasarius was a younger and favorite brother of Spartacus, supposed to have been killed in battle years before, but really taken captive and brought to Rome. Now Bracchius and Lentulus propose a combat between their two slaves. Spartacus, chained, is ordered in. He asks, "Is not this Rome, the great city?" Bracchius replies, "Ay, and thou shouldst thank the gods that they have suffered thee to see it. What think'st thou of it?"

"_Spartacus._ That if the Romans had not been fiends, Rome had never been great. Whence came this greatness but from the miseries of subjugated nations? How many myriads of happy people that had not wronged Rome, for they knew not Rome,--how many myriads of these were slain, like the beasts of the field, that Rome might fatten upon their blood, and become great? Look ye, Roman, there is not a palace upon these hills that cost not the lives of a thousand innocent men; there is no deed of greatness ye can boast, but it was achieved by the ruin of a nation; there is no joy ye can feel, but its ingredients are blood and tears."

Lentulus breaks in, "Now, marry, villain, thou wert bought not to prate, but to fight."

"_Spartacus._ I will not fight. I will contend with mine enemy, when there is strife between us; and if that enemy be one of these same fiends, a Roman, I will give him the advantage of weapon and place; he shall take a helmet and buckler, while I, with my head bare and my breast naked, and nothing in my hand but my shepherd's staff, will beat him to my feet and slay him. But I will not slay a man for the diversion of Romans."

His master threatens to have him lashed if he refuses to contend in the arena. The fearful attitude and fixed look with which Spartacus received this threat, suggesting that he would strike the speaker dead with a glance, were a masterpiece of expressive art not easily forgotten by any one who saw it. Its possessing power seemed to freeze the gazer while he gazed. Still refusing to fight, in moody despair he bewails the destruction of his home by the Romans, and their murder of his wife and young child. The female slaves of Bracchius here pass by, and, to his amazement, among them Spartacus sees his lost Senona and her boy. After a touching interview of contending joy and grief with them, he agrees to enter the arena, on condition that if he is victorious his reward shall be their liberation.

The next act opens with a view of the great Roman amphitheatre, crowded with the people gathered to see those bloody games which were their horrid but favorite amusement. The first adversary brought against Spartacus is a Gaul. He soon slays him, though with great reluctance, and only as moved to it by the prospect of freedom for his wife and child. Then they propose as a second champion a renowned Thracian. He flings down his sword and refuses to fight with one of his own countrymen. But at last, on learning that liberty is to be had in no other way, he suddenly yields. The Thracian is introduced. It is Phasarius. A scene of intense pathetic power follows, as little by little the brothers are struck with each other's appearance, suspect, inquire, respond, are satisfied, and rush into a loving embrace. The prætor treats their recognition and their transport of fraternal affection as a trick to escape the combat, and orders them to begin. Spartacus proposes to his brother to die sword in hand rather than obey the unnatural command. In reply, Phasarius rapidly informs him that he has already organized the elements of a revolt among his comrades, and that it awaits but his signal to break out. Crassus angrily calls on his guards to enter the amphitheatre and punish the dilatory combatants. The manner in which Spartacus retorted, "Let them come in,--we are armed!" never failed to stir the deepest excitement in the theatre, causing the whole assembly to join in enthusiastic applause. Port, look, gesture, tone, accent, combined to make it a signal example of the sovereign potency of manner in revealing a master-spirit and swaying subject-spirits.

On the entrance of the guards, Phasarius gives a shout, and the confederate gladiators also plunge in, and a general conflict begins. In this scene the acting of Forrest absorbed his whole heart. He was so thoroughly imbued with the spirit of it that everything he did was perfectly natural, full of that genuine fire which is so much beyond all exertion by rule. It was universally agreed that more spirited and admirable fighting was hardly to be conceived, the varied postures into which he threw his massive form being worthy to be taken as studies for the sculptor.

The rebellion grows apace in success and numbers. Spartacus rescues his wife and child from the Roman camp, and seizes the niece of the prætor. Phasarius falls in love with this young woman, and demands her of his brother. Being refused because she is affianced to a youth in Rome, he insists on his demand. In the altercation occurs one of the finest and loftiest passages in the play, and it was rendered with a sublime eloquence:

"_Spartacus._ Come, look me in the face,
And let me see how bad desires have changed thee.

_Phasarius._ I claim the captive.

_Spar._ Set thine eye on her:
Lo, you! she weeps, and she is fatherless.
Thou couldst not harm an orphan? What, I say,
Art thou, whom I have carried in my arms
To mountain-tops to worship the great God,
Art thou a man to plot a wrong and sorrow
'Gainst such as have no father left but Him?"

Phasarius revolts, and takes off more than half the army. Disastrously defeated by Crassus, he returns with a broken fragment of his forces, and is generously forgiven and restored to favor by Spartacus, who intrusts him with an important separate command, and confides Senona and her boy to his keeping, with the solemn charge that he shall avoid all collision with the enemy. Phasarius, however, thirsting for Roman blood, seeks an engagement, and is totally routed, his force cut in pieces, and the mother and child both slain. The unhappy man, then, mortally wounded, presents himself before his brother, tells his fearful tale, and expires at his feet. In this interview the emotions of anxiety, deprecation, grief, wrath, and horror, were depicted in all their most forcible language in the person of Spartacus. One action in particular was effective in the highest degree. Phasarius described the crucifixion by the Romans of six thousand of their Thracian captives. The highway on both sides, he said, was lined with crosses, and on each cross was nailed a gladiator.

"I crept
Thro' the trenched army to that road, and saw
The executed multitude uplifted
Upon the horrid engines. Many lived:
Some moaned and writhed in stupid agony;
Some howled and prayed for death, and cursed the gods;
Some turned to lunatics, and laughed at horror;
And some with fierce and hellish strength had torn
Their arms free from the beams, and so had died
Grasping headlong the air."

The agitations of the soul of the listener up to this point had been delineated with fearful distinctness. But when told that his wife and child had been killed, his head suddenly fell forward on his breast and rested there, after vibrating four or five times in lessening degrees on the pivot of the neck, as if utterly abandoned to itself. It was marvellously expressive of the exhausted state, the woe-begone despair, of one who had received a shock too great to be borne, a shock which, had it been a little severer, would have prostrated his whole figure, but, as it was, simply prostrated his head.

Deprived of all his kindred and of all hope, alone on the flinty earth, rage and recklessness now seize the desolate Thracian, and he resolves to sacrifice his captive, the niece of the prætor, in retaliation for the slaughter of his own family; but a nobler sentiment restrains him, and he dismisses her to her father. In this passage he displayed the agony of generous grief subduing the desire of vengeance with a power which, as a prominent English critic said, reminded the beholder of the head of Laocoön struggling in the folds of the serpent, or of the head of Hercules writhing under the torture of the poisoned shirt.

The prætor in return for his daughter sends Spartacus an offer of pardon if he will surrender. Disdainfully rejecting the overture, he has the horses in his camp slain, and sets everything on the chance of one more battle, but against such odds as he knows can result only in his defeat. With a frenzied thirst for vengeance he fights his way to the presence of the Roman general, and, in the very act of striking him down, exhausted from the accumulated wounds received in his passage of blood, grows faint, reels, falls in the exact attitude of the immortal statue of the Dying Gladiator, and expires.

A most remarkable proof of the histrionic genius of Forrest was given in the profoundly discriminated manner with which the same mass and fury of revengeful passion, the same rude breadth and tenderness of affection and pathos, were shown by him in the two characters of Metamora and Spartacus. In the Indian there was a stoical compression of the emotions out of their revealing channels, an organic suppression of starts and surprises and lamentations, a profound impassibility of demeanor, an exterior of slow, stubborn, monotonous self-possession, through which the volcanic ferocity of the interior crept in words of slow lava, or flared as fire through a smouldering heap of cinders. In the Thracian there was more variety as well as incomparably more freedom and impulsiveness of expression. The exterior and interior corresponded with each other and mutually reflected instead of contradicting each other. In different exigencies the gladiator exhibited in his whole person, limbs, torso, face, eyes, and voice, the extremes of sullen stolidity, pining sorrow, convulsive grief, ambitious pride, pity, anger, resolution, and despair, each well shaded from the others. He had a wider gamut, as civilization is more comprehensive than barbarism. The movements and expressions of Metamora seemed to be instinctive, and originate in the nervous centres of the physique; those of Spartacus to be volitional, originating in the cerebral centres. In civilized life the body tends to be the reflex of the brain; in savage life the brain to be the reflex of the body. This historic and physiological truth Forrest knew nothing about, but the practical results of the fact he intuitively observed.

* * * * *

The seven characters, now described as fully as the writer can do it with the data at his command, were the favorite ones in which Forrest had gained his greenest laurels at the time of his visit to Europe. Jaffier, Octavian, Sir Edward Mortimer, Sir Giles Overreach, Iago, and other kindred parts, which he often acted with distinguished ability and acceptance, he liked less and less, and gradually dropped them altogether. In Febro, Cade, Melnotte, and Richelieu he had not yet appeared. His Richard, Macbeth, Othello, Lear, Hamlet, and Coriolanus will be more appropriately treated in a later chapter of his life, when he had elaborated his conceptions of them to the highest finish in his power. But his performances at the time now under consideration were, in their spiritual substance, their general treatment and outlines, what they remained to the end. The subsequent changes were merely improvements in details, in gradual climax, in grouping, in symmetry and unity. With his advancing years and experience and study, more and more the parts were made to grow before the audience, so to speak, from their roots upward, gaining strength and expansion as they rose. Gusty irregularity, crudity, misproportion, discord, were carefully struck out, and harmony secured by the just blending of light and shade. But from first to last his style was consistent, and, like his personality, knew no revolutions, only development.

In the practice of his profession it was a noble characteristic of Forrest that he disliked to impersonate essentially bad or ignoble characters. He hated to set forth passions, thoughts, or sentiments meant to be regarded as base and repulsive, unless, indeed, it was to make them odious and hold them up to detestation. Into this work he threw himself with a gusto that was extreme. He was but too vehement in the utterance of sarcastic denunciations of every form of meanness or cruelty, his relish of the excoriation being often too keen, his inflection of tone too widely sweeping, and his emphasis too prolonged for the measure of any average sympathy. All was sincere with him in it, but his expression was pitched in the scale of reality, while the appreciation of the listeners was only pitched in the calmer scale of ideality.

He loved to stand out in some commanding form of virtue, heroism, or struggle, battling with trials that would appall common souls, setting a great example, and evoking enthusiasm. This was his glory. The zeal with which he ever regarded this phase of his profession, the delight with which he revelled in the contemplation of ideal strength, fortitude, courage, devotion, was a grand attribute of his soul. Accordingly, all his favorite parts were expressions of a high-souled manhood, reverential towards God, truth, and justice, and fearing nothing; a proud integrity and hardiness competent to every emergency of life and death; an unbending will, based on right and entwined with the central virtues of honor, friendship, domestic love, and patriotic ardor. And surely these are the qualities best deserving universal respect, the democratic ideals most wholesome to be cultivated. This is what he most innately loved and stood on the stage to represent. He did it with immense earnestness and immense individuality. He did it also with a conscientious devotion to his chosen art and profession that never faltered. In none of his performances was there ever anything in the least degree savoring of pruriency or indelicacy. Never, after his boyhood was past, could he be induced to appear in any trivial or unmeaning role, destitute of moral purpose and dignity. With not one of those many innovations which have detracted so much from the rank and purity of the drama was his name ever associated. He was ever strongly averse in his own person to touching in any way any play which was not enriched and elevated by some imaginative romantic or heroic creation. And, with a world-wide removal from the so common frivolity and carelessness of his associates on the boards, he approached every one of his performances with a studious sobriety, and went through it with an undeniable dignity and earnestness, which should have lifted him beyond the reach of ridicule, whatever were the faults an honorable criticism might affirm.

The substance of the honest objections made to his acting may be designated as ascribing to it two faults, an excess and a defect. The excess was too much display of physical and spiritual force in the expression of contemptuous or revengeful and destructive passion. There was a basis for this charge, though the accusation was grossly exaggerated. The muscular and passional strength and intensity of Forrest, both by constitution and by culture, were so much beyond those of ordinary men that a manifestation of them which was entirely natural and within the bounds to him often seemed to them a huge extravagance, a wilful overdoing for the sake of making a sensation. In him it was perfectly genuine and not immoderate by the tests of nature, while to them it appeared far to transgress the modest limits of truth. Of course such explosions repelled and pained, sometimes revolted, the sensibilities of the delicate and fastidious, while the more ungirdled and terrific they were, so much the greater was the pleased and wondering approval of those whose sympathies were stormed and self-surrendered. Such was the histrionic fault of excess in Forrest, if it may not rather be called the fault of those whose natures were keyed so much below his that they could not come into tune with him.

The defect corresponding to this excess was lack of _souplesse_, physical and spiritual mobility. He was unquestionably deficient, when tried by a severe standard, in bright, alert, expectant, rich freedom of play in nerves and faculties. His disposition was comparatively obstinate in its pertinacity, and his body adhesive in its heaviness. This gave him the ponderous weight of unity, the antique port of the gods, but it robbed him in a degree of that supreme grace which is the ability to compass the largest effects of impression with the smallest expenditure of energy. It cannot be denied that he needed exactly what Garrick had in such perfection, namely, that detached personality, that quicksilver liberty and rapidity of motion, which made the great English actor such a memorable paragon of variety and charm. Yet, when these abatements are all allowed, enough remains amply to justify his large historic claim in the honest massiveness and glow of his delineations, set off alike by the imposing physique fit to take the club and pose for a Farnesian Hercules, by a studious and manly art unmarred with any insincere trickery, and by a powerful mellow voice of vast compass and flexible intonation, whose declamation, modelled on nature, and without theatrical affectation, ever did full justice to noble thoughts and beautiful words.

Cibber said, in allusion to Betterton, "Pity it is that the momentary beauties from an harmonious elocution cannot be their own record, that the animated graces of the player can live no longer than the instant breath and motion that presents them, or at best but faintly glimmer through the memory or imperfect attestation of a few surviving spectators." Could the author of this biography paint in their true forms and colors and with full completeness the once vivid and vigorous achievements of the buried master, had he with sufficient knowledge and memory command of some notation whereby he could record every light and shade of each great rôle so that they might be revived from the dead symbols in all the lustre of their original reality, even as a musician translates from the dormant score into living music an overture of Mozart or a symphony of Beethoven, then were there a deathless Forrest breathing in these pages who should stir the souls of generations of readers to rise and mutiny against the depreciating estimates of his forgotten foes and the encroachments of literary oblivion. But, alas! to such a task the pen that essays the tribute is unequal, and the writer must be content with the pale presentments he can but imperfectly produce, sighing to think how true is the refrain of regret taken up in every age by those who have mourned a departed actor, and never better worded, perhaps, than in the famous lines by Garrick:

"The painter dead, yet still he charms the eye;
While taste survives, his fame can never die.
But he who _struts his hour upon the stage_
Can scarce extend his fame for half an age.
Nor pen nor pencil can the _actor_ save,--
The art and artist share one common grave."