The intermediate, or Melodrama, mixed of the other two and presented on the ever-varying level between comic lowness and tragic height, brings forward a medley of characters, greater and lesser, good, bad, and indifferent, portraying life not truly as it is in fact, but exaggeratedly, in heterogeneous combination, so set off in extravagant relief and depression, emphasis of lights and shades, as to give it a more than natural attraction for the senses. Without taxing any faculties in the audience, it piques the curiosity of all by turns, and exercises and refreshes them with its rapid changes and its glaring effects, which provide strong sensations yet with small exaction on the mind. Any explicit instruction it contains is incidental, since its real business is to serve as a spiritual alterative directed to the soul through the senses, to beguile heavy thoughts and cares, to entertain and rest weary faculties with fresh objects, and fill idle hours with pleasurable amusement. All this is certainly legitimate, needed, and useful, although it may be abused by the employment of illegitimate means, and thus perverted into an injury. But every good thing is likewise capable of perversion, and ought to be judged by its true intent, not by its aberrations.
Furthermore, it is to be said—and it is an important truth which should in no wise be overlooked—that even when the play is petty and worthless in plot, full of absurdities as many of our gaudy modern pantomimes and spectacles are, and pernicious in its exhibitions of nudity, impure postures, and prurient accessories,—even then a twofold good may be derived from the show, in addition to the mere recreative diversion and pleasure yielded. First, the sight of the superb power, grace, and skill of the trained performers, disciplined and perfected to the highest point of energy, self-possession, and easy and joyous readiness for the execution of their functions, is a charming and edifying
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sight. It is the display of models of human nature developed to an extreme degree of strength, beauty, and flexibility,—a display which tends to mould the eyes of the spectators, and through their eyes to affect their souls and to exert educational influence on future generations. Every spectator should be kindled by the sight to secure for himself, for the highest fulfilment of life under the eyes of God, the exemplary development which these performers have so laboriously won for the mere purpose of exhibition and pay. The sacrifice and toil they have devoted for the sake of applause, should we not be willing to devote for the sake of entering on our full heritage in the universe?
Second, the melodrama, by its artistic groupings, colors, and movements, its scenic processions, its magic pictures, its orderly evolution of romantic adventures, the multiform interplaying of the characters and fortunes of its actors upon one another, draws our attention from ourselves, enlists our feelings in the fates of others, and thus exercising our faculties, disciplines, purifies, and emancipates them, making them readier and more competent for whatever exigencies we may be called on to meet. This great good and use of the dramatic art, its moral essence, is afforded to the profiting beholder by almost every theatrical representation, namely, that, in showing life concentrated and intensified, it holds up for imitation the instructive spectacle, in its trained actors, of men passing from themselves into the personalities and situations of others, mutually appropriating one another's traits and experiences, supplementing themselves with one another. This varied practice of reason, imagination, and sympathy in assuming inner states and their outer signs is the most effective culture and drill there is for freeing human nature from the slavery of routine, and perfecting its entrance on that heritage of unlimited sympathetic fellowships which will at last realize the hydrostatic paradox in morals, and make one man commensurate with all humanity. A drop balances an ocean by its dynamic translation and interplay with all the drops!
Whatever dissent or qualification may be made by some to the foregoing view, there will scarcely be any hesitation or difference of opinion when we turn from the representation of bad characters or neutral characters, the vile and the insignificant, to the grandest forms of the drama, where we encounter the most
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pathetic and brilliant impersonations of ideal excellence,—those patterns of loveliness and heroism with which the Stage abounds in its pictures of stainless and queenly women, fearless and kingly men. The natural influence of weeping over the misfortunes and wrongs or worshipping the virtues of a saintly sufferer, who resists not, complains not, resents not, but bears all with angelic patience, sweetness, and fortitude, is to soften and expand the heart and cultivate the tenderest graces of human nature. The natural influence of tracing the indomitable enterprise, valor, disinterestedness, and perseverance of a great genius, an illustrious patriot or martyr, thrilling with the deepest admiration at his virtues, is to foster in the susceptible breast burning aspirations after kindred worth and distinction. This tendency may be neutralized or prevented, but it is the natural influence, by which alone it is fair to judge the best specimens of the drama. And he who should undertake to estimate the total influence of the Stage in the model characters it has held up as ideals for honor and imitation, would have a task not less difficult than genial.
While War and Work, with the rehearsing discipline they exact, occupy and ravage the fairest fields and promises of Human Life, and create Weariness, Crime, Lust, and Death, as the horrid Reapers who tread close in their steps, the Theatre—one bright home of Freedom, Art, and Beauty, planted in a paradisal place—is prophetic of the time to come when Love and Leisure shall have room to people the redeemed world with their fair and sweet offspring, Play and Joy.
In the mean time, while the spirit of doubt, banter, and insincerity is so rife,—while we meet on every hand that arid, cynical, and contemptuous temper which thrives on mockery and badinage, fosters an insolent complacency and laughter by degrading superior persons and subjects in parodies and lampoons,—while our young men and women are infested with a boastful conceit of superiority to all sentiment and enthusiasm, and even our rising authors are so disenchanted, so knowing, that persiflage and the ridicule of illusion and devotion are their highest tests of experience and power,—under such conditions, surely we shall all agree that the ideal revelations, the impassioned music and eloquence, the free elevation above commonplace, the por
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trayals of ingenuous faith and energy, that still linger on the Stage, are to be held precious. Amidst so much formality and hypocrisy, it is a boon to have a great actor break into us through the crust of custom and startle our noblest powers into life.
The actor, in laboring to fit himself for the highest walk in his profession, studies all forms of human nature and experience, discriminates their ranks and worth, sees what is congruous and becoming, or the contrary, and reproduces their powers in himself by the practice of putting on their states and showing their signals. This done disinterestedly, with a sovereign eye to duty and the Divine Will, is the way for every one to educate himself towards that personal perfection the pursuit of which is his supreme business on earth. He thus learns to assume and absorb the ascending ideals that brighten the pathway to heaven. Herein the dramatic art becomes glorified into identity with religion.
The lowest range of the histrionic inhabitations of the soul is obsession, where the man is insanely held by some inferior or evil spirit, as when Nebuchadnezzar went out and ate grass, like an ox. The next grade is sympathetic domination, where the idea of another being is so vividly seated in the imagination of a person that for the time it makes him its involuntary agent. The intermediate or neutral level, half-way from the lowest to the highest, is the region of voluntary assumption, or acting properly so called, where the player by his own free intelligence and will reproduces or imitates foreign characters. Then there is the ascent into inspiration, where loftier influences or spirits than are native to the impersonator take possession of him, enhancing his powers, animating and guiding him beyond his own knowledge or volition. And lastly, there is the supreme height of divine incarnation, where some deity stoops into the cloud of mortality, or the infinite God in varying degrees deigns to inflesh and enshrine himself in man. Christendom owns one unapproachable and incomparable example in its august Founder. But in India, Egypt, Greece, were mystic men, who, too wise and grand to be thought lunatics, have claimed to be of a lineage divine and dateless. This is a realm for silence. But every unique, whether Gautama or Jesus, is only the transcending culmination of a rule that rises through levels below. Either great men have played the rôles of incarnate gods or descending gods have assumed the rôles of men on earth.
CHAPTER V. THE DRAMATIC APPRENTICE AND STROLLING PLAYER.
When Edwin was nine years old, he was thin, pale, and had a slight forward stoop of the chest and shoulders. He was full of fire, courage, impulsive force, but had a quick pulse, a nervous habit, a sensitive brain and skin. The tears came easily to his eyes, and under severe exertion his endurance quickly gave out. At that time he seemed a fair candidate for consumption and an early grave. His father is known, on several occasions, to have expressed fears that he should not be able to raise him.
A fortunate occurrence set the boy at work just at the right time and in the right direction. Wherever a Circus travels through the country, its performances take powerful effect on the impressible sympathies of energetic and ambitious youths. As it departs, it often leaves behind it a line of emulous lads, in mimic repetition of its scenes, climbing ropes, leaping bars, walking on their hands, standing on their heads, throwing somersaults, or posturing, balancing, and wrestling. Such an experience befell Edwin, and his physical improvement under it was rapid. It deepened his breathing, invigorated the circulation of his blood, and straightened him up, bringing out his breast and throwing back his shoulders. And in his seventeenth year, the period which we have now reached, he was as fine a specimen of a manly youth as one might wish to see. He had a free, open bearing, with steadily-confronting eyes, and a clear, deep voice. He had never been bashful; neither was he ever impudent or shameless. He was at once self-possessed and modest, combining an air of sincerity and justice with an expression of democratic independence. Such was the result, in his outward appearance, of his character, his parental inheritance and training, his dramatic practice, and his gymnastic exercises.
Accordingly, when, early in the September of 1822, it was
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announced that the proprietors of the three theatres at Pittsburg, Lexington, and Cincinnati had come to Philadelphia for the purpose of engaging a company to perform alternately in those cities, and young Forrest, depressed and impatient from the failure of his previous attempts to secure a regular engagement, made personal application to manager Jones, that gentleman was so much pleased with his words and his bearing that he at once struck a bargain with him. The agreement was that for a compensation of eight dollars a week he should play, without a question, whatever parts he was cast in, no matter how high or how low the parts were. He was willing now, despite his precocious starring experiences, to take this humble position and hold himself ready for anything at the beck and call of his superior, because he had come keenly to feel how little he knew and how much he had to learn. And his sound sense, with the good advice he had received, taught him that there offered no other way so thoroughly and rapidly to master his profession as by submitting to a regular drill in the miscellaneous parts of the working stage, from top to bottom. He saw his path to the dramatic throne through the steps of a docile and patient apprenticeship.
It was always a characteristic of him that he was unwilling to utter words while ignorant of their meaning. He studied what he was to speak, that he might speak it with intelligence and propriety. Whether right or wrong, he would, as a rule, always know what he meant to do, and why and how. In illustration of this teachable spirit an incident may be adduced which he ever gratefully remembered as one of the most influential in his life.
When he was but fourteen, he was one evening in front of one of the Philadelphia theatres, when his attention was fixed on two large statues, or mythological figures, each carved from a single block of wood, pedestal and all, placed in niches at each side of the entrance. Under them were inscribed the names Thalia and Melpomene. "Who are Thallea and Melpomeen?" he asked of an elder comrade with whom he was wont to practise histrionics in the Thespian Club. "Oh, I don't know; a couple of Grecian queens, I guess," was the reply. A gentleman, handsomely dressed, with a benignant face and graceful mien, who had overheard the question and the answer, stepped
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forward, took Edwin by the hand, and said, "My lad, these figures, whose names you have not pronounced correctly, represent two characters in the old Greek mythology. This one, with the mask and the mirror, is Thalia, the Muse of Comedy. That one, with the dagger and the bowl, is Melpomene, the Muse of Tragedy. They are appropriately painted here, because the theatre is the home of the drama, where both comedies and tragedies are performed. Now, my boy, if you like to learn, there is a book, which you can get at any book-store, called Walker's Classical Pronouncing Dictionary, to which on all such occasions you can refer and find just what you want to know." It was a beautiful action. And it fell on good soil. Edwin bought the volume, and he never ceased to practise the lesson or to be thankful to him who gave it, and on whose unknown head, even to the end of life, his grateful heart showered benedictions. When, many years later, that theatre was taken down, Forrest, in memory of the incident above related, had the two statues purchased for him, intending to set them up in his own private theatre.
Edwin was an affectionate boy, who won affection from others notwithstanding his somewhat reckless spirit of adventure, frequent coarseness of speech, and violence of temper. He was sympathetic, as dramatic genius perforce must be, quick in intelligence, keen and eager in observation, and of an honest manner and make throughout. He was throbbing with hope and aspiration before the new prospect opened to him as he went around to say farewell to those he loved, his favorite companions among the amateur Thespians, and his benefactors. As he took the hand of one after another and said good-bye, the cuff of his sleeve repeatedly went to his eyes, and he felt those bitter twinges of pain familiar to boyish bosoms on such partings in all generations and all over the world. He went to the tannery, where, on the old stone table, his declamations as a proud and happy child had been applauded by Lorman and his fellow-workmen. He visited the tomb of his father, and the house of his kind old pastor. Then came the last and severest trial of his fortitude, the taking leave of his sisters, and, above all, of his mother, who was always enshrined in his inmost soul as an object of the most tender and sacred love. He girded himself up and got through with it, he hardly knew how.
