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
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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,—
"Yet, 'tis not that which ruffles me,—the gibes
And scornful mockeries of ill-governed youth,—
Or flouts of dastard sycophants and jesters,—
Reptiles, who lay their bellies on the dust
Before the frown of majesty!"
And the house was always electrified by the sudden transformation with which then, passing from the words,
"All this
I but expect, nor grudge to bear; the face
I carry, courts it!"
he towered into prouder dimensions, and, as one inspired, delivered himself in an outbreak of declamatory grandeur:
"Son of Marcus Junius!
When will the tedious gods permit thy soul
To walk abroad in her own majesty,
And throw this visor of thy madness from thee,
To avenge my father's and my brother's murder?
Had this been all, a thousand opportunities
I've had to strike the blow—and my own life
I had not valued at a rush.—But still—
There's something nobler to be done!—My soul,
Enjoy the strong conception! Oh! 'tis glorious
To free a groaning country,—
To see Revenge
Spring like a lion from the den, and tear
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These hunters of mankind! Grant but the time,
Grant but the moment, gods! If I am wanting,
May I drag out this idiot-feignéd life
To late old age, and may posterity
Ne'er hear of Junius but as Tarquin's fool!"
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.
"Brutus. I'll tell a secret to thee
Worth a whole city's ransom. This it is:
Nay, ponder it and lock it in thy heart:—
There are more fools, my son, in this wise world,
Than the gods ever made.
Titus. Sayest thou? Expound this riddle.
Would the kind gods restore thee to thy reason—
Brutus. Then, Titus, then I should be mad with reason.
Had I the sense to know myself a Roman,
This hand should tear this heart from out my ribs,
Ere it should own allegiance to a tyrant.
If, therefore, thou dost love me, pray the gods
To keep me what I am. Where all are slaves,
None but the fool is happy.
Titus. We are Romans—
Not slaves—
Brutus. Not slaves? Why, what art thou?
Titus. Thy son.
Dost thou not know me?
Brutus. You abuse my folly.
I know thee not.—Wert thou my son, ye gods,
Thou wouldst tear off this sycophantic robe,
Tuck up thy tunic, trim these curléd locks
To the short warrior-cut, vault on thy steed,
Then, scouring through the city, call to arms,
And shout for liberty!
Titus. [Starts.] Defend me, gods!
Brutus. Ha! does it stagger thee?"
The simulation had been dropped so gradually, the unconsciously waxing earnestness of purpose and self-betrayal were
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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,—
"Said I for liberty? I said it not.
My brain is weak, and wanders. You abuse it."
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.
"I was too sudden. I should have delayed
And watched a surer moment for my purpose.
He must be frighted from his dream of love.
What! shall the son of Junius wed a Tarquin?
As yet I've been no father to my son,—
I could be none; but, through the cloud that wraps me,
I've watched his mind with all a parent's fondness,
And hailed with joy the Junian glory there.
Could I once burst the chains which now enthrall him,
My son would prove the pillar of his country,—
Dear to her freedom as he is to me."
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:
"Slumber forsakes me, and I court the horrors
Which night and tempest swell on every side.
Launch forth thy thunders, Capitolian Jove!
Put fire into the languid souls of men;
Let loose thy ministers of wrath amongst them,
And crush the vile oppressor! Strike him down,
Ye lightnings! Lay his trophies in the dust!
[Storm increases.
Ha! this is well! flash, ye blue-forkéd fires!
Loud-bursting thunders, roar! and tremble, earth!
[A violent crash of thunder, and the statue of Tarquin, struck
by a flash, is shattered to pieces.
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What! fallen at last, proud idol! struck to earth!
I thank you, gods! I thank you! When you point
Your shafts at human pride, it is not chance,
'Tis wisdom levels the commissioned blow.
But I,—a thing of no account—a slave,—
I to your forkéd lightnings bare my bosom
In vain,—for what's a slave—a dastard slave?
A fool, a Brutus? [Storm increases.] Hark! the storm rides on!
Strange hopes possess my soul. My thoughts grow wild.
I'll sit awhile and ruminate."
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.
"The fiends curse you, then! Lash you with snakes!
When forth you walk, may the red flaming sun
Strike you with livid plagues!
Vipers, that die not, slowly gnaw your heart!
May earth be to you but one wilderness!
May you hate yourself,—
For death pray hourly, yet be in tortures,
Millions of years expiring!"
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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:
"She's dead! Lucretia's dead! This is her blood!
Howl, howl, ye men of Rome.
Ye mighty gods, where are your thunders now?"
Brutus, the full gale of oratoric fire and splendor swelling his frame and lighting his features, seizes the dagger, lifts it aloft, and exclaims:
"Heroic matron!
Now, now, the hour is come! By this one blow
Her name's immortal, and her country saved!
Hail, dawn of glory! Hail, thou sacred weapon!
Virtue's deliverer, hail! This fatal steel,
Empurpled with the purest blood on earth,
Shall cut your chains of slavery asunder.
Hear, Romans, hear! did not the Sibyl tell you
A fool should set Rome free? I am that fool:
Brutus bids Rome be free!
Valerius. What can this mean?
Brutus. It means that Lucius Junius has thrown off
The mask of madness, and his soul rides forth
On the destroying whirlwind, to avenge
The wrongs of that bright excellence and Rome.
[Sinks on his knees.]
Hear me, great Jove! and thou, paternal Mars,
And spotless Vesta! To the death, I swear,
My burning vengeance shall pursue these Tarquins!
Ne'er shall my limbs know rest till they are swept
From off the earth which groans beneath their infamy!
Valerius, Collatine, Lucretius, all,
Be partners in my oath."
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
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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.
"Such perfections
Might have called back the torpid breast of age
To long-forgotten rapture: such a mind
Might have abashed the boldest libertine,
And turned desire to reverential love
And holiest affection. Oh, my countrymen!
You all can witness when that she went forth
It was a holiday in Rome; old age
Forgot its crutch, labor its task,—all ran;
And mothers, turning to their daughters, cried,
'There, there's Lucretia!' Now, look ye, where she lies,
That beauteous flower by ruthless violence torn!
Gone! gone! gone!
All. Sextus shall die! But what for the king, his father?
Brutus. Seek you instruction? Ask yon conscious walls,
Which saw his poisoned brother, saw the incest
Committed there, and they will cry. Revenge!
Ask yon deserted street, where Tullia drove
O'er her dead father's corse, 'twill cry, Revenge!
Ask yonder senate-house, whose stones are purple
With human blood, and it will cry, Revenge!
Go to the tomb where lies his murdered wife,
And the poor queen, who loved him as her son,
Their unappeaséd ghosts will shriek, Revenge!
The temples of the gods, the all-viewing heavens,
The gods themselves, shall justify the cry,
And swell the general sound, Revenge! Revenge!"
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,—
"He waved aloft the bloody dagger,
And spoke as if he held the souls of men
In his own hand and moulded them at pleasure.
They looked on him as they would view a god.
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Who, from a darkness which invested him,
Sprang forth, and, knitting his stern brow in frowns,
Proclaimed the vengeful will of angry Jove."
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:
"No, fellow-citizens!
If mad ambition in this guilty frame
Had strung one kingly fibre,—yea, but one,—
By all the gods, this dagger which I hold
Should rip it out, though it entwined my heart.
Now take the body up. Bear it before us
To Tarquin's palace; there we'll light our torches,
And, in the blazing conflagration, rear
A pile for these chaste relics, that shall send
Her soul amongst the stars. On!"
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,—
