That these too ready hands may not enforce
The desperate precept of my rising heart,—
Thou most contemptible and meanest tool
That ever tyrant used!"
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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,—
"Back! back! I say. He hath his armor on,—
I am his sword, shield, helm; I but enclose
Myself, and my own heart, and heart's blood, when
I stand before him thus.
Damon. False-hearted cravens!
We are but two,—my Pythias, my halved heart!—
My Pythias, and myself! but dare come on,
Ye hirelings of a tyrant! dare advance
A foot, or raise an arm, or bend a brow,
And ye shall learn what two such arms can do
Amongst a thousand of you."
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
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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,—
"All hail, then, Dionysius the king.
Damon. Oh, all ye gods, my country! my country!
Dionysius. And that we may have leisure to put on
With fitting dignity our garb of power,
We do now, first assuming our own right,
Command from this, that was the senate-house,
Those rash, tumultuous men, who still would tempt
The city's peace with wild vociferation
And vain contentious rivalry. Away!
Damon. I stand,
A senator, within the senate-house!
Dion. Traitor! and dost thou dare me to my face?
Damon. Traitor! to whom? to thee?—O Syracuse,
Is this thy registered doom? To have no meaning
For the proud names of liberty and virtue,
But as some regal braggart sets it down
In his vocabulary? And the sense,
The broad, bright sense that Nature hath assigned them
In her infallible volume, interdicted
Forever from thy knowledge; or if seen,
And known, and put in use, denounced as treasonable,
And treated thus?—No, Dionysius, no!
I am no traitor! But, in mine allegiance
To my lost country, I proclaim thee one!
Dion. My guards, there! Ho!
Damon. What! hast thou, then, invoked
Thy satellites already?
Dion. Seize him!
Damon. Death's the best gift to one that never yet
Wished to survive his country. Here are men
Fit for the life a tyrant can bestow!
Let such as these live on."
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
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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:
"Existence! what is that? a name for nothing!
It is a cloudy sky chased by the winds,—
Its fickle form no sooner chosen than changed!
It is the whirling of the mountain-flood,
Which, as we look upon it, keeps its shape,
Though what composed that shape, and what composes,
Hath passed—will pass—nay, and is passing on
Even while we think to hold it in our eyes,
And deem it there. Fie! fie! a feverish vision,
A crude and crowded dream, unwilled, unbidden,
By the weak wretch that dreams it."
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
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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.
"Dionysius. What wonder is this?
Is he thy brother?
Damon. Not in the fashion that the world puts on,
But brother in the heart.
Dion. Oh, by the wide world, Damocles,
I did not think the heart of man was moulded
To such a purpose."
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:
"When I beheld the means of saving you,
I could not hold my hand,—my heart was in it,
And in my heart the hope of giving life
And liberty to Damon—and—
Damon. Go on!
I am listening to thee.
Lucullus. And in hope to save you
I slew your steed.
Damon. Almighty heavens!"
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
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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,—
"To the eternal river of the dead!
The way is shorter than to Syracuse,—
'Tis only far as yonder yawning gulf,—
I'll throw thee with one swing to Tartarus,
And follow after thee!"—
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.
"Mute expectation spreads its anxious hush
O'er the wide city, that as silent stands
As its reflection in the quiet sea.
Behold, upon the roof what thousands gaze
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Toward the distant road that leads to Syracuse.
An hour ago a noise was heard afar,
Like to the pulses of the restless surge;
But as the time approaches, all grows still
As the wide dead of midnight!
A horse and rider in the distance,
By the gods! They wave their hats, and he returns it!
It is—no—that were too unlike—but there!"
Damon rushes in, looks around, exclaims, exultingly,—
"Ha! he is alive! untouched!"
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,—
"I am here upon the scaffold! look at me:
I am standing on my throne; as proud a one
As yon illumined mountain where the sun
Makes his last stand; let him look on me too;
He never did behold a spectacle
More full of natural glory. Death is— Ha!
All Syracuse starts up upon her hills,
And lifts her hundred thousand hands. She shouts,
Hark, how she shouts! O Dionysius!
When wert thou in thy life hailed with a peal
Of hearts and hands like that one? Shout again!
Again! until the mountains echo you,
And the great sea joins in that mighty voice,
And old Enceladus, the Son of Earth,
Stirs in his mighty caverns. Tell me, slaves,
Where is your tyrant? Let me see him now;
Why stands he hence aloof? Where is your master?
What is become of Dionysius?
I would behold and laugh at him!
Dionysius. Behold me!
Go, Damocles, and bid a herald cry
Wide through the city, from the eastern gate
Unto the most remote extremity,
That Dionysius, tyrant as he is,
Gives back to Damon life and freedom."
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.
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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.
