Life of Edwin Forrest, the American Tragedian. Volume 1 (of 2)

by William Rounseville Alger; Jr. Horatio Alger

In characterizing Forrest as a tragedian by the epithet American, it is necessary that we should understand what is meant by the word in such a connection. We mean that he was an intense ingrained democrat. Democracy asserts the superiority of man to his accidents. Its genius is contemptuous of titular claims or extrinsic conditions in comparison with intrinsic truth and merit. Its glance pierces through all pompous circumstances and pretences, to the personal reality of the man. If that be royal and divine, it is ready to worship; if not, it pays no false or hollow tribute, no matter what outward prestige of attraction there may be or what clamor of threats. That is the proper temper and historic ideal of our republic; and that was Forrest in the very centre of his soul, both as a man and as an actor.

But his individuality was in the general sense as deeply and positively human as it was American or democratic. That is to say, he was an affirmative, believing, sympathetic character, not a skeptical, negative, or sneering one. He so vividly loved in their plain and concrete reality his own parents, brothers and sisters, friends, native land, that he could give vivid expression to such sentiments in abstract generality without galvanizing his nerves with any artificial volition. His affections preponderated over his antipathies. He was not fond of badinage, but full of downright earnestness. He loved the sense of being, enjoyed it, was grateful for its privileges, and delighted to contemplate the phenomena of society. He had the keenest love for little children, and the deepest reverence for old age. He valued the goods of life highly, and labored to accumulate them. He had a vivid sensibility for the beauties of nature. He had an enthusiastic admiration of great men, and a ruling desire for the prizes of honor and fame. His soul thrilled at the recital of glorious deeds, and his tears started at a great thought or a sublime image or a tender sentiment. Friendship for man, love for woman, a kindling patriotism, a profound feeling of the domestic ties, a burning passion for liberty, and an unaffected reverence for God, were dominant chords in his nature. He had no patience with those vapid weaklings, those disappointed aspirants or negative dreamers, who think everything on earth a delusion or a temptation, nature a cheat, man a phantom or a fool, history a toy, life a wretched chaos, death an unknown horror, and nothing between worth an effort. He was, on the contrary, a wholesome realist, full of throbbing vitality and eagerness, embracing the natural goods of existence with a sharp relish, and putting a worshipful estimate on the ideal glories of humanity. Intellect, instinct, and affection in him were all alive,—free and teeming springs of personal power. This rich fulness of positive life and passion in himself both opened to him the elemental secrets of experience and enabled him to play effectively on the sympathies of other men.

Let such a man, trained under such circumstances, endowed with a magnificent physique, overflowing with energy and fire, become an actor, and it is easy to see what will be the leading ideal exemplified in his personations. Exactly what this dominant ideal was will be illustrated in the descriptions which are to follow. But a clear statement of it in advance will aid us the better to appreciate those descriptions.

The rank of any work of art is determined by the ideal expressed in it, and the accuracy of its expression. As has been well said, no art better illustrates this fact than the art of acting. Take, for instance, the genius of Kemble. His ideal was authority. He was never so impressive as in the illustration of a king or ruler. In Coriolanus, in Macbeth, in Wolsey, in every character that gave opportunity for it, he was ever expressing the sense of mental or official power as the noblest of human attributes. So the ideal of Cooke was skepticism. He was always best as a social infidel, uttering the bitterest sarcasms. It was this faculty that rendered his Man of the World so great a triumph. The ideal of Kean, again, was retribution. He was grandest as the sufferer and avenger of great wrongs. And the ideal of Macready was that of Kemble modified by its more fretful and impatient expression, making him ever most effective in the display of some form of pride or wounded honor, as in Werner, Richelieu, Melantius.

In distinction from the special ideals of these and the other most celebrated tragedians of the past, the ideal of Forrest was unquestionably the democratic ideal of universal manhood, a deep sense of natural and moral heroism, sincerity, friendship, and faith. This imperial self-reliance and instinctive honesty, this unperverted and unterrified personality poised in the grandest natural virtues of humanity, is the key-note or common chord to the whole range of his conceptions, on which all their varieties are modulated, from Rolla and Tell to Metamora and Spartacus, from Damon and Brutus to Othello and Lear. Fearless, faithful manhood penetrates them all, is the great elevating principle which makes them harmonics of one essential ideal. To have exemplified so sublime an ideal, in so many grand forms, each as clearly defined as a sculptured statue, during a half-century, before applauding millions of his countrymen, is what stamps Forrest and makes him worthy of his fame, singling him out in the rising epoch of his country's greatness as one of the most imposing and not unworthiest of her types of nationality.

There are two contrasted styles of the dramatic art which have long been recognized and discriminated in the two schools of acting, the Romantic and the Classic. Before proceeding to the best rôles of Forrest in his earlier period, it is indispensable that we clearly seize the essence of the distinction between these two schools. Otherwise we shall fail to see the originality and importance of the relation in which he stood to them.

The one school, in its separate purity, is sensational or natural, exhibiting characters of physical and mental realism; the other is reflective or artistic, representing characters of imaginative portraiture. The former springs from strong and sincere impulses, the latter from clear and mastered perceptions. That is based on the instincts and passions, and is predominantly imitative or reproductive; this rests on the intellect and imagination, and is predominantly creative. The one projects the thing in reflex life, as it exists in reality; the other reveals it, as in a glass. That is nature brought alive on the stage; this is art repeating nature refined at one mental remove. They resemble and contrast each other as the hurtless image of the bird mirrored in the lake would correspond with its concrete cause above, could it, while yet remaining a mere reflection, address our other senses as it now does the eye alone. The sensational acting of crude nature is characteristically sympathetic and mimetic in its origin, enslaved, expensive of force, and mainly seated in the nervous centres of the body. The artistic acting of the accomplished master is characteristically spiritual and self-creative in its origin, free, economical of exertion, and mainly seated in the nervous centres of the brain. The one actor lives his part, and is the character he represents; the other plays his part, and truly portrays the character he imagines.

The Classic style is self-controlled, stately, deliberately does what it consciously predetermines to do, trusts as much to the expressive power of attitudes and poses as to facial changes and voice. It elaborates its rôle by systematic critical study, leaving nothing to chance, to caprice, or to instinct. The Romantic style permeates itself with the situations and feeling of its rôle, and then is full of impetuosity and abandon, giving free vent to the passions of the part and open swing to the energies of the performer. The one is marked by careful consistency and studious finish, the other by impulsive truth, abrupt force, electric bursts. That abounds in the refinements of polished art, this abounds in the sensational effects of aroused and uncovered nature. The former is adapted to delight the cultivated Few, the latter thrills the unsophisticated Many.

Now, it was the originality of Forrest that he combined in a most fresh and impressive manner the fundamental characteristics of both these schools,—in his first period with an undoubted preponderance of the characters of physical realism, but in his second period with an unquestionable preponderance of the characters of imaginative portraiture. He was from the first both an artistic and a sensational actor. None of his great predecessors ever came upon the stage with conceptions more patiently studied, wrought up with a more complete consistency in every part, or with the perspective, the foreshortening, the lights and shades, arranged with more conscientious fidelity. His idea of a character might sometimes, perhaps, be questioned, but the clearness with which he grasped his idea, and the thorough harmony with which he put it forth and sustained it, could not be questioned. In this respect he was one of the most consummate of dramatic artists. And as for the other side of the picture, the spontaneous sincerity and irresistible force of his demonstrations of the great passions of the human heart were almost unprecedented in the effects they wrought.

In an accurate use of the words, sensational acting would be acting that took its origin in the senses and passed thence through the muscles without the intervention of the mind. This is the acting learned by the parrot, the dog, or the monkey, and by the mere mimic. Artistic acting, on the other hand, is acting which originates in the creative mind and is freely sent thence through the proper channels of expression. The true definition of art is feeling passed through thought and fixed in form. When the intellectualized feeling is fixed in its just form, it should be made over to the automatic nerves, and the brain be relieved from the care of its oversight and direction. Then playing becomes beautiful, because it is at ease in unconscious spontaneity. Otherwise, it often becomes repulsive to the delicate observer, because it is laborious. This was the one defect of Forrest which lamed him in the supreme height of his great art. His brain continued to do the work. There was often too much volition in his play, causing a muscular friction and an organic expense which made the sensitive shrink, and which only the robust could afford. But no one was more completely an artist in always passing his emotions through his thought, knowing exactly what he meant to do and how he would do it.