While at Sheffield, Forrest attended a banquet given in honor of the birthday of Robert Burns. In response to a toast proposed by the chairman, "The health of Mr. Edwin Forrest, and Success to the Drama in America," he said some of his earliest human and literary memories were linked together with the story of Scotland and the genius of Burns. His own father had left the Scottish hills to seek his fortune in an American city. His earliest tutor, who had taken a generous interest in him in his opening boyhood, and taught him to recite some of the finest of the poems of Burns, was another Scottish emigrant,—Wilson the ornithologist. After a few other words, he closed by reciting the eloquent poem of his friend Fitz-Greene Halleck in memory of Burns, which was received with vociferous cheering:
"Praise to the Bard! His words are driven,
Like flower-seeds by the far winds sown,
Where'er beneath the arch of heaven
The birds of fame have flown.
"Such graves as his are pilgrim-shrines,
Shrines to no code or creed confined,—
The Delphian vales, the Palestines,
The Meccas of the mind."
The Manchester Guardian published a critique on the Spartacus of Forrest quite remarkable for its intelligent discrimination and choice diction. As a description it is very just, but utterly mistaken in its apparent implication that the spiritual should be made more distinctly superior to the physical in this part. The writer seems not to have remembered that Forrest was impersonating a semi-barbaric gladiator, in whom, when under supreme excitement, the animal must predominate over the intellectual. It would be false to nature to depict in such a man under such circumstances ideality governing sense, reason calmly curbing passion. It would be as absurd as to give a pugilist the mental splendor and majesty of a Pericles. The way in which the critic paints Forrest as representing Spartacus is exactly the way in
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which alone the character could be represented without a gross violation of truth:
"This is, perhaps, of all others, the character in which Mr. Forrest most excels; nay, stands alone. It implies and demands great physical strength, a man of herculean mould, and we doubt if ever we shall again look upon so fine a model of the lionhearted Thracian. That he is a barbarian, too, is in favor of the actor; for what would be blemishes in the polished Greek or haughty Roman are in keeping with the rude, untutored nature of the Thracian mountaineer. Since his former visit, Mr. Forrest has certainly improved, especially in the less showy passages of the play; and we admire him most in the quiet asides, the quick and clear directions as to the disposition of his troops, and any other portions of the dialogue that do not demand great emotion. In these he is natural and truthful. As before, when he comes to the delineation of the deeper passions of our nature, it is by energetic muscular action, and by the fierce shoutings or hoarse raving of his voice, that he conveys the idea,—not by any of the nicer touches of mental discrimination and expression. This course—an original one, in which perhaps he stands supreme—is most effective, or rather least defective, in this play, for the reason already given: in it his acting is of a high, but certainly not of the highest, order. It is the material seeking to usurp the throne of the ideal; physical force clutching at the sceptre of the intellectual; with what success the immutable laws of matter and mind will now, as ever, pronounce, in their irreversible decrees. Still, it is an extraordinary histrionic picture, which all lovers of the drama should contemplate. It is not a thing to be laughed at or sneered down. Power there is; at times great mental, as well as physical, power; but in the thrilling situations of the piece, that which should be the slave becomes the master; and energy of body reigns supreme over subordinated intellectual expression and mental dignity. He is the Hercules, or the Polyphemus, not the high-souled hero; and, in his fury, the raging animal rather than the goaded and distracted man."
In Ireland, the acting of Forrest, the magnetic power of his personality, the patriotic sentiments and stirring invectives against tyranny with which his Spartacus and Cade abounded, conspired
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to arouse a wild enthusiasm in his passionate and imaginative audiences, and his appearances at Cork, Belfast, Dublin, were so many ovations. The effect of his Jack Cade may be seen in this notice from the Cork Examiner:
"The object of the writer seems to be to rescue Cade from the defamation of courtly chroniclers and historians, who, either imbued with an aristocratic indifference to the wrongs of an oppressed people, or writing for their oppressors, misrepresented the motives and ridiculed the power of the Kentish rebel. In this the author has succeeded; for he flings round the shoulders of the rustic the garb of the patriot, and fills his soul not only with a deep and thorough hatred of the oppressors who ground the people to the earth and held them down in bondage, but breathes into his every thought a passionate and beautiful longing after liberty. The powerful representation of such a play must produce a corresponding impression upon any audience; how strong its appeal to the sympathies of an Irish audience, may be better imagined than described. It abounds with passionate appeals to liberty, withering denunciations of oppression, and stinging sarcasms, unveiling at a glance the narrow foundation upon which class-tyranny bases its power and usurpation. In fact, from beginning to end, it is an animated appeal to the best sympathies of MAN, stirring him to the depths of his nature, as with a trumpet's blast.
"An objection might be made to some passages, that they are too declamatory; but this is rather praise to the discrimination and fidelity of the author to nature, than a reproach. When a leader has to stir men's blood, to make their strong hearts throb, he uses not the 'set phrase of peace,'—he does not ratiocinate like a philosopher, insinuate like a pleader; he talks like a trumpet, with tongue of fire and with words of impassioned eloquence. Sufferings, wrongs, indignities, dishonor to gray hairs and outrage to tender virginhood, are not to be tamely told of, but painted with vivid imagination until the heart again feels its anguish and the brow burns at the wrong. This is the direct avenue to men's hearts,—the only way to rouse them to desperate action; and hence the justice of Cade's declamation, when addressing the crushed bondmen of Kent.
"Mr. Forrest's Aylmere had nothing in it of the actor's trick,—it
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was not acting. He seemed thoroughly and entirely to identify himself with the struggles of an enslaved people; and as every spirit-stirring sentence was dashed off with the energy of a man in earnest it seemed as if it had its birthplace in the heart rather than in the conceiving brain. One passage, in which he calls down fierce imprecations on the head of Lord Say, the torturer of his aged father and the coward murderer of his widowed mother, was magnificently pronounced by Mr. Forrest, amidst thunders of applause, as if the sympathy of the audience ratified and sanctified the curse of the avenging son. Such is the power of true genius!—such the force of passion, when legitimate and earnest!"
At Cork he received the compliments of a poet in the happy lines that follow:
"O'er the rough mass the Grecian sculptor bent,
And, as his chisel shaped the yielding stone,
Rising, the world-enchanting Venus shone,
And stood in youth and grace and beauty blent.
Thus o'er each noble speaking lineament
Of thy fine face, thy genius, Forrest, shines,
And paints the picture in perfection's lines.
With plastic skill Prometheus formed the clay;
Yet soul was wanting in the image cold
Till through its frame was shed life's glorious ray
And fire immortal lit the mindless mould.
Thus, while thy lips the poet's words unfold,
With the rough ore of thought thy fancies play,
And, with a Midas power, turn all they touch to gold!"
On his farewell night he acted Macbeth to a brilliant house. As the drop-scene fell at the close of the last act, deafening shouts re-echoed through the house, with calls for Forrest, which, on his coming in front of the curtain to acknowledge them, were renewed and kept up for a considerable time, the people rising en masse, and paying the most marked tribute of their estimation. On silence being restored, he said,—
"Ladies and Gentlemen,—Exhausted as I must necessarily feel, owing to the character I have sustained, I cannot find language adequate to express the sentiments that fill my bosom, neither am I able to return suitable acknowledgments for the kindness which you are pleased to evince towards me. I beg
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to thank you sincerely for the cordiality and courtesy which I have experienced from the hospitable citizens of Cork during my short sojourn in this 'beautiful city.' Long shall I remember it, and in returning to my native country I shall bear with me the grateful recollection of that courtesy and hospitality; and, when there, I shall often think with pleasure and pride on the flattering reception you were pleased to honor me with. I wish you all adieu, and hope that the dark cloud that overhangs this fair country will soon pass away; that a happier and brighter day will beam on her, and that Ireland and her people will long enjoy the prosperity and happiness they are so eminently entitled to, and which are so much to be desired."
He was quite as triumphant in Dublin as in Cork. The notice of his opening in Othello shows this:
"Mr. Forrest, the American tragedian, made his first appearance on Monday night, as Othello. The selection of the character was, for an actor of great power, most judicious; for in all the glorious range of Shakspeare's immortal plays there is not one so powerful in its appeal to the sympathies of our nature, so masterly in its anatomy of the human heart, or so highly-wrought and yet so beautiful a picture of passion,—nor, for the actor, is there any character requiring more delicacy of perception and personation in its details, nor so much of terrible energy of the wrung heart and stormy soul in its bursts of frenzied passion. An actor without a heart to feel and an energy to express the fearful passion of the gallant Moor, whose free and open nature was craftily abused to madness, could give no idea of the character, and must needs leave the audience as cold and unmoved as himself.
"But, to one glowing with the divine fire of genius, that wonderful electricity by which the inmost nature of man is moved, and masses are swayed as if by the wand of an enchanter, Othello is a noble character for the display of his power,—a resistless spell, by which the eye and ear and soul of the audience are held and moved and swayed. We must admit that such an actor is Mr. Forrest, and that such is the effect which his personation of the loving, tender, gentle, duped, abused, maddened Moor produced upon us, and seemed to produce upon his audience. From the rising to the falling of the curtain the house was hushed in
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stilled, almost breathless, attention; and it was not until stirred by some electrifying burst of passion that the pent-up feeling of his listeners vented itself in such applause, such recognition of the justness and naturalness of the passion, as man gives to man in real life, and when, as it were, the interests of the actor and the spectators are one. This species of involuntary homage to the genius of his personation arose not only from the power which a consummate actor acquires over the feelings of others, but from the entire absence of all those contemptible tricks of the stage, those affectations of originality, of individuality,—that is, stamping the counterfeit manner of the actor upon the sterling ore of the author,—those false readings and exaggerated declamations, which call down injudicious but degrading approbation. Mr. Forrest is free from all these defects. And yet his 'reading' is singularly telling. Not one passage—nay, not one word—of the vivid, picturesque, nervous, wondrous eloquence of the poet is lost upon the audience. What might puzzle in the closet is transparent on the stage. The quaint form in which the divine philosophy of Shakspeare clothes itself seems, by his reading, its fit and apposite garb,—as if none other could so well indicate its keen and subtile meaning. And all this is done without aiming at 'points,' or striving after 'effects.' Then his tenderness is tenderness—his passion, passion. Possessing a noble voice, running from the richest base to the sweetest tenor,—if we might so describe it,—full of flexibility, and capable of every modulation, from the hurricane of savage fury to the melting tenderness of love, Mr. Forrest can express all those varied and oftentimes opposite emotions which agitate our nature, and which Shakspeare, as its most masterly delineator, represents in all its phases in his immortal creations, and not least in Othello. We were much struck with the beautiful fidelity with which Mr. Forrest's look, gesture, tone, and manner painted the gradual growth of jealousy, from the first faint, vague doubt, to its full and terrible confirmation, and the change of Othello's nature, from the frank soldier and the doting husband to the relentless fury of the avenger. To our mind it was a noble picture,—bold, beautiful, and delicate."
An event illustrative of the spirit of Forrest occurred on his last evening in Dublin. The play was "Damon and Pythias."
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The Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland entered the theatre with a noble party, escorted by a military company with martial music. The audience rose with the curtain, and joined the whole dramatic corps in singing "God save the Queen." Forrest never once during the play looked towards the vice-regal box; and in the bows with which he acknowledged an honorary call from the audience at the close, he studiously avoided seeing the group of titularly-illustrious visitors. He was a democrat; he liked the Irish and disliked their English rulers, and he would not in his own eyes appear a snob. His taste and delicacy in the act were questionable,—his sturdy honesty unquestionable. It reminds one of Goethe and Beethoven standing together when the victorious Napoleon passed in his pomp on the way to Berlin. Both were men of genius and of nobleness; but the one was socially freed by cosmopolitan culture and health, the other socially enslaved by natural inheritance and morbidity. They acted with equal honesty, but in a very different way, as Napoleon went by. Goethe made a low bow, and stood with inclined front; Beethoven crushed his hat over his brows, and thrust himself more stiffly up. Neither he nor Forrest could play the courtier. They could not in social relations abnegate self and react impersonally on others. They must assert that they were themselves, and were democratically willing to allow everybody else the same privilege.
