In those happy and glowing years of his prime and of his fresh celebrity, what a glorious image of unperverted manhood, of personified health and strength and beauty, he presented! What a grand form he had! What a grand face! What a grand voice! And, the living base of all, what a grand blood! the rich flowing seed-bed of his human thunder and lightning. As he stepped upon the stage in his naked fighting-trim, his muscular coating unified all over him and quivering with vital power, his skin polished by exercise and friction to a smooth and marble hardness, conscious of his enormous potency, fearless of anything on the earth, proudly aware of the impression he knew his mere appearance, backed by his fame, would make on the audience who impatiently awaited him,—he used to stand and receive the long, tumultuous cheering that greeted him, as immovable as a planted statue of Hercules. In the rank and state of his physical organism and its feelings he had the superiority of a god over common men. The spectacle, let it be repeated, was worthy the admiration it won. And had the personal imitation of the care and training he gave himself been but equal to the admiration lavished on their result, the benefit to the American people would have been beyond estimate. But in this, as in the other lessons of the drama, the example was relatively fruitless, because shown to spectators who applaud without copying, seeking entertainment instead of instruction. This, however, is clearly the fault of the people, and not of the stage.
The play of "The Gladiator" is founded on that dark and frightful episode in the history of Rome, the famous servile war headed by the gladiators under the lead of Spartacus. Our sympathies are skilfully enlisted on the side of the insurgents, who are goaded to their desperate enterprise by insufferable wrongs and cruelties. It abounds in pictures of insolent tyranny on one side, and with eloquent denunciation and fearless resistance on the other, and the chief character is a powerful presentation of a deep and generous manhood, outraged in every fibre, lashed to fury by his injuries, and, after superhuman efforts of revenge, expiring in monumental despair and appeal to the gods. The horrors of oppression, the irrepressible dignity of human nature, the reckless luxury of the rulers, the suffering of the slaves, the revolting arrogance of despotism, and the burning passion of liberty, are set against one another; and all through it the mighty figure of Spartacus is made to fill the central place. It was just the part for a democrat, who, despising what is factitious, gloried in the ineradicable attributes of free manhood; and Forrest made the most of it. For instance, it is easy for those who knew him to imagine the energy and relish with which he would utter the following lines when he came to them in his part:
"I thank the gods, I am barbarian;
For I can better teach the grace-begot
And heaven-supported masters of the earth,
How a mere dweller of a desert rock
Can bow their crowned heads to his chariot-wheels.
Man is heaven's work, and beggars' brats may herit
A soul to mount them up the steeps of fortune,
With regal necks to be their stepping-blocks."