"Let fate do her worst, there are relics of joy,
Bright dreams of the past, which she cannot destroy,
Which come in the night-time of sorrow and care
And bring back the features that joy used to wear.
Long, long be my heart with such memories filled!
Like the vase in which roses have once been distilled,—
You may break, you may ruin the vase, if you will,
But the scent of the roses will hang round it still."
While he thus sang, he was, to the fancy of his moved and admiring listener, himself the vase broken and ruined, and his genius, still blooming over the ruins of the man, distilled its holy perfume around him.
The Othello of Kean was his unapproachable masterpiece, crowded with electric effects in detail and crowned with a masterly originality as a whole. It left its general stamp ineffaceably on the young actor who that night confronted it with his Iago in such a manner as to win not only the vehement applause of the house but likewise the warm approval of the Othello himself. Forrest had carefully studied the character of Iago in the independent light of what he knew of human nature. And he conceived the part in what was then quite an original reading of it. The current Iago of the stage was a sullen and sombre villain, as full of gloom as of hate, and with such sinister manners and malignant bearing as made his diabolical spirit and purposes perfectly obvious. One must be a simpleton to be deceived by such a style of man. A man like Othello, accustomed to command, moving for many years among all sorts of men in peace and war, could be so played on only by a most accomplished master of the arts of hypocrisy. Forrest accordingly represented Iago as a gay and dashing fellow on the outside, hiding his malice and treachery under the signs of a careless honesty and jovial good humor. One point, strictly original, he made which powerfully affected Kean. Iago, while working insidiously on the suspicions of Othello, says to him,—