Chapter XXII (4)

But beyond the special lessons in the parts played by Forrest, he was, through his whole professional course, constantly teaching the great lesson of the beauty and value of the practice of the dramatic art for the purposes of social life itself. Should the stage decline and disappear, the art so long practised on it will not cease, but will be transferred to the ordinary walks of social life. Nothing is so charming as a just and vivid play of the spiritual faculties through all the languages of their outer signs, in the friendly intercourse of real life. But in our day the tendency is to confine expression to the one language of articulate words. This suppression of the free play of the organism stiffens and sterilizes human nature, impoverishes the interchanges of souls makes existence formal and barren. The most precious relish of conversation and the divinest charm of manners is the living play of the spirit in the features, and the spontaneous modulation of the form by the passing experience. A man grooved in bigotry and glued in awkwardness, with no alert intelligence and sympathy, is a painful object and a repulsive companion. He moves like a puppet and talks like a galvanized corpse. But it is delightful and refreshing to associate with one thoroughly possessed by the dramatic spirit, who, his articulations all freed and his faculties all earnest, speaks like an angel and moves like a god. The theatre all the time offers society this inspiring lesson. For there are seen free and developed souls lightening and darkening through free and sensitive faces. If bodies did not answer to spirits nor faces reveal minds, nature would be a huge charnelhouse and society a brotherhood of the dead. And if things go on unchecked as they have been going on, we bid fair to come to that. It is to be hoped, however, that the examples of universal, liberated expression given on the stage will more and more take effect in the daily intercourse of all classes. As a guiding hint and stimulus in that direction, the central law of dramatic expression may here be explicitly formulated. All emotions that betoken the exaltation of life, or the recognition of influences that tend to heighten life, confirm the face, but expand and brighten it. All emotions that indicate the sinking of life, or the recognition of influences that threaten to lower life, relax and vacate the face if these emotions are negative, contract and darken it if they are positive. In answer to the exalting influences the face either grasps what it has or opens and smiles to hail and receive what is offered; in answer to the depressing influences, it either droops under its load or shuts and frowns to oppose and exclude what is threatened. The eyes reveal the mental states; the muscles reveal the effects of those states in the body. In genial states active, the eyes and the muscles are both intense, but the eyes are smiling. In genial states passive, the eyes are intense, the muscles languid. In hostile states active, both eyes and muscles are intense, but the eyes are frowning. In hostile states passive, the eyes are languid, the muscles intense. In simple or harmonious states, the eyes and the muscles agree in their excitement or relaxation. In complex and inconsistent states, the eyes and the muscles are opposed in their expression. To expound the whole philosophy of these rules would take a volume. But they formulate with comprehensive brevity the central law of dramatic expression as a guide for observation in daily life.

In filling up the outlines of the majestic characters imperfectly limned in the preceding pages, exhibiting them in feature and proportion and color and tone as they were, setting in relief the full dimensions and quality of their intellect and their passion, living over again their experiences and laying bare for public appreciation the lessons of their fate, Forrest found the high and noble joy of his existence, the most satisfying employment for his faculties, and a deep, unselfish solace for his afflictions. He reposed on the grand moments of each drama, as if they were thrones which he was loath to abdicate. He dilated and glowed in the exciting situations, as if they were no mimic reflections of the crises of other souls, but original and thrilling incarnations of his own. He lingered over the nobler utterances, as if he would have paused to repeat their music, and would willingly let the action wait that the thought might receive worthy emphasis. Every inspired conception of eloquence, every delicate beauty of sentiment, every aggrandizing attitude of man contained in the plays he lifted into a relief of light and warmth that gave it new attraction and more power. And to trace the thoughts and feelings that gained heightened expression through him, echoed and working with contagious sympathy in the hearts of the crowds who hung on his lips, was a divine pleasure which he would fain have indefinitely prolonged. But the movement on the stage, that affecting mirror of life, hurries forward, the business of the world breaks in upon philosophy, and the dreams of the poet and the player burst like painted bubbles.

Meanwhile, not only do the parts played and the scenes amidst which they are shown vanish and become the prey of oblivion, but those who played them disappear also, leaving the providential and prophetic Spirit of Humanity, a sublimer Prospero, to say,—

“These, our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air.”