All this was done with a sincerity and energy irresistibly contagious. And when Elvira has armed him with a dagger and led him to the couch of the sleeping Pizarro, when, instead of slaying his foe, he wakens him and drops the weapon, showing how superior a heathen can be to a Christian, and when the tyrant calls in his guards and orders them to seize the hapless Elvira, the contrast of the confronting Rolla and Pizarro, the example of godlike magnanimity and its foil of unnatural depravity, stands in an illumination of moral splendor that thrills every heart.
Two more scenes remained to carry the triumph of Forrest in the part to its culmination. The child of Alonzo and Cora, in ignorance of who he is, has been captured by the Spanish soldiers, and is brought in. Pizarro bids them toss the Peruvian imp into the sea. With a start and look of alternating horror and love, Rolla cries, "Gracious Heaven, it is Alonzo's child!" "Ha!" exclaims Pizarro: "welcome, thou pretty hostage. Now is Alonzo again in my power." After vain expostulation, Rolla prostrates himself before the cruel captain, saying, "Behold me at thy feet, thy willing slave, if thou wilt release the child." Other actors, including the cold and stately Kemble, as they spoke these words, sank directly on their knees. But Forrest introduced a by-play of startling power, full of the passionate warmth of nature. Regarding Pizarro with an amazement made of surprise and scorn waxing into noble anger, he is seen making the strongest exertion to refrain from rushing on the tyrant and striking him down. He begins to kneel. Half-way in the slow descent, repugnance to stoop his manhood before such baseness checks him, and he partly rises, when a glance at the child overcomes his hesitation, and he sinks swiftly on his knees. The Spaniard replies, "Rolla, thou art free to go; the boy remains." With the rapidity of lightning, Rolla snatches the child and lifts him over his left shoulder, and, waving his sword, cries, in clarion accents, "Who moves one step to follow me dies on the spot!" He strikes down three of the guards who oppose him, and rushes across a bridge at the back of the stage. The soldiers fire, and a shot strikes him as he vanishes with the child held proudly aloft. The view changes to the Peruvian court. The king is seen with his nobles, and with Alonzo and Cora distracted at the loss of their child. Shouts are heard. "Rolla! Rolla!" The hero staggers in, bleeding, ghastly, and faint, and places the child in its mother's arms, with an exquisite touch of nature first drawing the little face down to his own and planting a kiss on it, staining it from his bleeding wounds in the act. She exclaims, "Oh, God, there is blood upon him!" He replies, "'Tis mine, Cora." Alonzo says, "Thou art dying, Rolla." He answers, faintly, "For thee and Cora." One long gasp, a wavering on his feet, a convulsion of his chest, and he sinks in an inanimate heap.
The truth and power with which all this was done were attested by the crowds that thronged to see it, their intense emotion, and the universal praise for many years awarded to it.
TELL.
Another chosen part of Forrest, in which he was received with extraordinary favor, was that of William Tell. This play, like the former, had a basis of untutored love and magnanimity; but the romantic heroism of the character was less remote to the American mind, less strained in ideality, than that of Rolla. The plot was simpler, the language more eloquent, domestic love more prominent, and patriotic enthusiasm more emphatic. In fact, the three constant keys of the action are parental affection, ardent attachment to native land, and the burning passion for liberty, corresponding with three central elements of strength in the personality of the actor now drawn to the part with a hungry instinct.
In preparation for this rôle, Forrest had first the native congruity of his own soul with it. Then he studied the character in the text of Knowles with the utmost care, analyzing every speech and situation. Furthermore, he saturated his imagination with the spirit of the life and legends of Switzerland, by means of histories, books of travel, and engravings, till its people and their customs, its torrents, ravines, pastures, chalets, cloud-capped peaks, and storms, were distinct and real to him. In the next place, he paid great attention to his make-up, arraying himself in a garb scrupulously accurate to the fashion of a Switzer peasant and huntsman.
No actor placed greater stress on a fitting costume than Forrest. He knew its subtle influences as well as its more obvious effects. The more vital unity and sensitiveness we have, the more important each adjunct to our personality becomes. A man who is a sloppy mess of fragments is not influenced much by anything, and in return does not much influence anything; but to a man whose body and soul form, as it were, one vascular piece, the action and reaction between him and everything with which he is in close relation is of great consequence. The dress of such a person is another self, corresponding in some sort with the outer man as his skin does with the inner man.
When Forrest came upon the stage with his bow and quiver, belted tunic and tight buskins, with free, elastic bearing, and high tread, deep-breathing breast, resounding voice, his whole shape and moving moulded to the robust and sinewy manners of the archer living in the free, open airs between the grass and the snow, he was an embodied picture of the legendary Swiss mountaineer. At the first sight a keen sensation was produced in the audience, for it kindled all the enthusiastic associations fondly bound up with this image in the American imagination.
It is morning, the sunrise creeping down the flanks of the mountains and spreading over the lake and valley, in the background Albert shooting at a mark, as Tell appears in the distance returning from an early chase. Approaching, he sees the boy, and pauses to watch him shoot. Poised on a crag, leaping with eager gaze of fondness fixed on the little marksman, he looks like the statue of a chamois-hunter on the cliffs of Mont Blanc, carved and set there by some superhuman hand. Then the magic voice, breathing love blent in freedom, is heard:
"Well aimed, young archer!