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 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 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