"Yours truly,
"Edwin Forrest.
"Characters:
Douglas,
Octavian,
Chamont,
Zanga,
Zaphna,
Tancred."
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Among the first letters ever written by Edwin were three addressed to his brother William, who had given up working as a printer and become an actor, and was then absent on a professional engagement at Harrisburg, Reading, and York. When we remember that these letters were by a boy of sixteen, we shall not think them discreditable to him. They throw light on his character at that time, and show what he was doing. They also draw aside the veil of privacy a little, and give us some glimpses of the domestic drama of his home, the bereaved family industriously struggling to maintain itself, watched over perhaps from the other side by the still-conscious spirit of its departed head.
"Philadelphia, 4th Feb'y, 1822.
"Mr. Wm. Forrest, Harrisburg.
"Dear Brother,—On Saturday evening last I performed Zaphna, in Mahomet, at Walnut Street Theatre, to a pretty good house, which would have been better had not Phillipps, the celebrated vocalist, been announced to appear on the Monday following. I played on the above evening better than ever I did before. After the murder of my father, repeated bravos rose from all quarters. Last scene, bravos again,—curtain fell amidst bravos kept up till the farce began and was forced to be suspended. Mr. Wood called me to his apartment, and told me to go on, they were calling for me. I informed him that I had never appeared before an audience in that manner, and begged him to go on for me. He did so, and asked the audience what was their pleasure. Engagement! engagement! from every side. Mr. Wood said he had heard nothing to the contrary; he was happy that Master Forrest had pleased the audience, and if they wished it he should appear again. The people testified their approbation, and the farce was suffered to proceed in peace.
"I expect to appear with Mr. Phillipps this or next week. I anticipate that they will hiss him when he appears to-night. More of this by-and-by. Please write as early as possible, and let me know how you make out. We are well, with the exception of myself. I have a severe cold. I remain
"Your affectionate brother,
"Edwin Forrest.
"P.S.—Heavy snow falling."
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"Philadelphia, 15th April, 1822.
"Mr. William Forrest, Reading.
"Dear Brother,—I received your esteemed favor of the 13th instant, and carefully noticed its contents. My brother, you complain of my not writing to you since your arrival in Reading. The reason is this. A gentleman called at the house and informed me that you would return to the city on Saturday last. Lorman and I were on the point of coming up to you, but affairs interfered.
"Lorman called on Johnson, according to your request. He informs him that you can get work at the printing business without any difficulty, the printers being very busy at present in this city. Therefore I would advise you to quit the unfair Williams as early as possible. If you fail in getting a situation at your trade, Stanislas will engage you on your arrival to act in a good line of business. Therefore you have a double advantage. The Walnut Street Theatre closes for the season on Friday next with the new comedy of the Spy, written by a young gentleman of New York. To-morrow evening I perform Richard Third for my own benefit. Joel Barr called here a week or ten days after he had been in town, to tell us you were well. Leave that pander of a manager directly; do not stay another moment with him, is the advice of your affectionate brother,
"Edwin.
"P.S.—Henrietta says she is sorry you have two and a half shirts, but that is better than she expected.
"Billy McCorkle says $12 ought to have been an object to you. Ah, he says, it was a bad day's work when you left him!
"We expect you by the return stage. So pack up your tatters and follow the drum.
"E. F."
"Philadelphia, 1st June, 1822.
"Mr. William Forrest, York, Pa.
"Dear Brother,—I take this opportunity of addressing myself to you and asking your pardon for my ungrounded belief that you had been guilty of misusing my letters. I have every reason now to believe that Mrs. Allen must have invented some lie and told it to Stanislas.
"I have the pleasure of informing you that your friend Sam
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Barr is married. Therefore wish him joy; for you know a man entering into such a state stands in need of the good wishes of his friends. I am sorry to relate that Sinclair is dead.
"'There would have been a time for such a word.'
"The actors are not undoing themselves at Tivoli. A young gentleman by the name of Ondes makes his appearance there this evening in the character of Octavian. Mrs. Riddle has left the company.
"I leave the firm in Race Street this day. When you can spare from your salary the sum of $5, I wish you would send it to me, as I at present stand in much need, and ere long I will transmit it to you again. We are all well, and hope that this will find you so. Write as early as possible; in expectation whereof I remain
"Yours, affectionately,
"Edwin F.
"P.S.—Mother is longing for your return, and I hope it will not be long ere our wishes are fulfilled."
For the next two months he was in earnest training, developing the muscles of his body and the faculties of his mind, practising athletics and studying rôles, looking out meanwhile for some regular engagement The following letter speaks for itself:
"Philadelphia, 7th Sept., 1822.
"James Hewitt, Esq., Boston.
"Sir,—Having understood from Mr. Utt that you were about to form a company of actors to go to Charleston, I have, by the advice of the above-named gentleman, written to know whether you would afford me an engagement in your concern or not, I having a desire to visit the aforesaid city. As you must already be acquainted with the line of business I have supported in Messrs. Wood and Warren's Theatre, it is useless to say anything farther on that head, referring you to Mr. Utt, Messrs. Wood and Warren, John Swift, Esq., of Philadelphia, or to Mr. Thomas A. Cooper: the latter gentleman having procured me an engagement in Mr. Dickson's theatre, Boston, which I declined, thinking it better to be more remote, for some years at least, from the principal cities.
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"If, therefore, you have any idea of giving me a situation in a respectable line, juvenile business, you will hear farther from me by addressing a line to 77 Cedar Street, Philadelphia.
"Your most obedient servant,
"(In haste.) Edwin Forrest.
"P.S.—I should be pleased to learn your resolve as early as possible, so that in case you decline my services I may be enabled elsewhere to make arrangements."
This letter, like the one he had two years before addressed to Caldwell, was fruitless. But his mind was firmly made up that he would persevere until his efforts were successful. And, a few days later, the opportunity he sought presented itself, and he left home to enter in earnest on a regular apprenticeship to the vocation he had chosen.
Here, for a little space, we drop the thread of personal narrative for the purpose of introducing a sketch of the origin and significance of the dramatic art. As the subject of this biography is to be an actor, his character to be shaped by the peculiar influences of the theatrical profession, his career and fame to be permanently associated with the history of that profession in America, an exposition of the origin and nature of the drama, of its different forms and applications, and of its personal uses, will bring the reader to the succeeding chapters with a fuller appreciation of their various topics, and give him some data for estimating the place which the art of acting has held, now holds, and is destined hereafter to hold, in the experience of mankind.
CHAPTER IV. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ORIGIN, VARIETY, AND PERSONAL USES OF THE DRAMATIC ART.
Any one who so analyzes the Dramatic Art as to see what its basis, contents, and uses are, will be astonished to find what a deep and wide feature it is in human nature, and how extensive and important a part it plays in human life. The study of the great spectacle of human existence as a whole, from the point of view of the Stage, in the light of dramatic usages and imagery, imparts to it a keener, more diversified, more comprehensive interest and instructiveness than it can receive in any other way. The habit of thus seeing people and things group themselves in pictures, of looking on scenes and acts in their relationship as a whole, of reading character and getting at states of mind and plucking out personal secrets by an intuitive and cultivated art of interpreting the signs consciously or unconsciously given, is spontaneous in men of the highest artistic genius, like Homer, Dante, Shakspeare, and Goethe. And it lends a marvellous charm and piquancy to their experience of the world, enchanting every object with active significance, color, and mystery.
Thus the Theatre, technically so called, is but one of the lesser spheres of the dramatic art. The tragedies and comedies coldly elaborated there are often tame and poor to those enacted with the flaming passions of life itself in parlors and kitchens, in palace and hut and street. Every one of us is essentially an actor, the setting of his performance furnished independently of his will wherever he goes, all his schemes included and borne on in a divine plan deeper than he dreams. Our own organism is the primary theatre, the proscenia of brain and heart teeming with dramas which link our being and destiny with those of all other actors from the beginning to the end of the world. Every spot in which man meets his fellow-men is a secondary theatre, arrayed with its scenery of circumstances, where each has his
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rôle and all the characters and parts interplay upon one another with mixtures of truth and deceit, skill and awkwardness, aspiration and despair. One of the chief differences is that some get behind the scenes and sharply understand a little of what is going on, while most take their parts blindly, ignorant of what either themselves or others are about, alternately before the foot-lights and back of the drop. And, meanwhile, what is the blue, glittering wilderness of infinitude itself but the theatre fitted up by God, with its doors of birth and death and its curtains of day and night, for the training of the total company of living creatures with which He has stocked it, from animalcule to archangel? The Manager has assigned in the evolution of the universal plot their just rôles to all the performers, with incessant transmigrations of drudge and star, lackey and hero, sultan and beggar, while the years move on and the generations pass and return, the whole space of the stage being crowded as thickly with shifting masks and disguises as a sunbeam is with motes.
All place being thus theatrical, and all conscious existence thus having something dramatic, it is quite obvious how inadequate must be their appreciation of the art of acting who recognize its offices only in the play-house. The play-house is merely the scene of its purposed and deliberate exhibition as a professional art. In its different kinds, with its different degrees of consciousness and complexity, as a matter of instinct and culture it is practised everywhere. Freeing our minds from prejudices on the one side, and from indifference on the other, let us, then, approach the subject with an earnest effort to learn the truth and to see what its lessons are.
The history of the drama, in the usual accounts given of it, is traced back to Thespis, Susarion, and others, in Greece, about six centuries before Christ. But this has reference only to the most detached and consummate form of the art. In order really to understand its derivative basis, its ingredients, its numerous applications and the moral rank and value of its several uses, we must go much farther back, and study its gradual ascent. We must, indeed, not only go beyond the polished states of civilization, but even beyond the first appearance of man himself on the scene of this world. For the rudiments of the dramatic art, the simple germs afterwards combined and developed in human
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nature with higher additions, are manifested in the lower animals. The naked foundations, the raw materials, of the art of acting are shown in all gregarious creatures, and portions of them even in solitary creatures. They are the crude instincts of intelligence, imagination, and sympathy. Creatures who are made alike have the same inner states of consciousness when they are under the same outer conditions. They also reveal these inner states by the same outer signs, namely, attitudes, movements, colors, cries, nervous relaxations or contractions. Seeing in another creature the signals of a certain state which has always in their own experience been the accompaniment and cause of these same signals, they interpret the signals accordingly, and enter into the same state themselves by sympathy, the signals by a reversal of impulse reacting to cause the state which they primarily denoted. Thus panics spread through a swarm of birds, an army of wild horses, or a flock of sheep. Thus the leader of a herd of buffaloes coming on the track of hunters or in sight of a grizzly bear is terrified by the danger and starts off on a run in another direction. The stiffened tail, erected ears, glaring eyes, expanded nostrils, impetuous plunge, communicate the instinctive intelligence and feeling through these signs from the nearest members of the herd to those farther off, with extreme rapidity, and soon the entire multitude is in one sympathetic state of alarm and flight. The perception of danger by the leader awakened the feeling of fear and led to the movement of escape. Those who had not these states of themselves caught their signs and assumed their substance from the one who had. Thus all are reinforced and saved by one.
There are animals and insects which on being touched, or being approached by a superior enemy, instantly assume the attitude and appearance of death. They recognize their peril, and seek to elude notice by a motionless condition which simulates death. They thus pretend to be other than they are, for the purpose of preserving the power to remain what they are. The ruby-throated humming-bird of Canada, if captured, feigns death by shutting its eyes and keeping quite still, then making a vigorous effort to escape. Some birds by false pretences of agitation lure the trapper away from the neighborhood of their nest. Cats constantly feign sleep to further their design of catching birds or
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mice. This shows not only a dramatic gift, but also a clear purpose in the use of it.
