The soldiery shout,—

And then he slowly leans towards them with dilating front, and sways the whole crowd away from him as if by the invisible momentum of some surcharging magnetism.

Procles in a rage calls on his soldiers to advance and hew their upbraider in pieces. At this moment Pythias enters, sees how affairs stand, and, hastening to the side of his friend, calls out,—

A brief altercation follows, and the mob are appeased and depart, leaving the two friends alone together. They proceed to unbosom themselves, fondly communing with each other, alike concerning the interests of the State and their private relations, especially the approaching marriage of Pythias with the beautiful Calanthe. The unstudied ease and loving confidence of the dialogue, in voice and manner, plainly revealing the history of love that joined their souls, their cherished luxury of interior trust and surrender to each other, formed an artistic and most pleasing contrast to the hot and rough passages which had preceded. And when the fair Calanthe herself breaks in upon them, and Damon, unbending still more from his senatorial absorption and philosophic solemnity, changes his affectionate familiarity with Pythias into a sporting playfulness with her, the colloquial lightness and tender banter were a delightful bit of skill and nature, carrying the previous contrast to a still higher pitch. It was a lifting and lighting of the scene as gracious and sweet as sunshine smiling on flowers where the tempest had been frowning on rocks.

Learning that the recreant servants of the State are about to confer the dictatorship of Syracuse on Dionysius, Damon speeds to the capitol, to resist, and, if possible, defeat, the purpose. Undaunted by the studious insolence of his reception, almost single-handed he maintains a long combat with the conspirators, battling their design step by step. It was a most exciting scene on all accounts, and was steadily marked by delicate gradations to a climax of overwhelming power. He wielded by turns all the weapons of argument, invective, persuasion, command, and defiance, exhibiting magnificent specimens of impassioned declamation, towering among the meaner men around him, an illuminated mould of heroic manhood whereon every god did seem to have set his seal.

Finally, they pass the fatal vote, and cry,—

Forrest was so absolutely possessed by the sentiment of these passages, that if, instead of standing in the Senate of Syracuse and representing her little forlorn-hope of patriots, he had been standing in the capitol of the whole republican world as a representative of collective humanity, his delivery could not have been more proudly befitting and competent. Such was the immense contagious flood of inspiration with which he was loaded, that repeatedly his audiences rose to their feet as one man and cheered him till the dust rose to the roof and the very walls seemed to quiver.

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:

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.

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:

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,—

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.

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

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,—

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,—

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

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

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.

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,—

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.

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:

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.

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:

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

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.

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,—

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:

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,—

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,—

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

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,—

The culprit kneels to him, and begs for clemency:

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

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:

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

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

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:

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.