The dread shrinking and anxiety felt by Mrs. Siddons on the night of her first successful appearance in London, after her earlier failure, were such as common natures cannot imagine, and such as nothing but a holy love for her young dependent children could have nerved even her heroic nature to bear. The dying away of the frenzied shouts and plaudits left her half dead, as she wrote to a friend. “My joy and thankfulness were of too solemn and overpowering a nature to admit of words or even tears. My father, my husband, and myself sat down to a frugal supper in a silence uninterrupted except by exclamations of gladness from Mr. Siddons. My father enjoyed his refreshments, but occasionally stopped short, and, laying down his knife and fork, and lifting up his venerable face, and throwing back his silver hair, gave way to tears of happiness.”
The essence of the ecclesiastical and theatrical quarrel lies in the relation of the natural passions to duty. It is especially concentrated and prominent in regard to the passion of love, concerning which the opposed views are seen on the one side in the prurient plays constantly produced on the boards, and on the other side in the repressive injunctions as constantly iterated from the pulpit. The latter loudly commands denial, the former silently insinuates indulgence. The one is inflamed with the love of power, the other is infected with the love of pleasure. The battle can never be ended by the victory of either party. The strife is hopeless so long as the ascetic ideal is proclaimed alone, kindling the bigoted mental passions, and the voluptuous ideal is exhibited alone, inflaming the loose sensual passions. Each will have its party, and they will keep on fighting. The only solution lies in the appearance and triumph of that juster and broader ideal which shows that the genuine aim and end of life are not the gratification of any despotic separate passions, whether spiritual or physical, but the perfection of individual being in social unity. The two combatants, therefore, must be reconciled by a mediator diviner than either of them, armed with a truer authority than the one and animated by a purer mind than the other. That mediator is Science, unfolding the psychological and physiological laws of the subject, and bringing denial and indulgence into reconciliation by giving wholesomeness and normality to every passion, which shall then seek fulfilment only in accordance with the conditions of universal order, securing a pure harmony at once of all the functions of the individual and of all the interests of society. The incomplete and vain formula of the church is, Deny thyself. The equally defective and dangerous formula of the theatre is, Indulge thyself. But the perfect and bridging formula of science is, So deny or rule in the parts of thy being and life as to fulfil thyself in the whole.
Virtue is not confined to the votaries of the pulpit, but is often glorified in the votaries of the stage. Vice, if sometimes openly flaunted in the theatre, is sometimes secretly cherished in the church. Neither should scorn the other, but they should mutually teach and aid each other, and combine their methods as friends, to purify, enlighten, and free the world. Each has much to give the other, and as much to receive from it. For, while the mischief of the ascetic ecclesiastic ideal of repression and denial is the breeding of a spirit of sour and fanatical gloom, its glory is the earnest conscience, the trimmed lamp, and the girt loins. Add this sacred self-restraint, which allows no indulgence not in accordance with the conditions of universal order, to the genial dramatic ideal of man and life,—a perfect organism and perfect faculties in perfect conditions of fulfilment and liberty, or the greatest amount of harmonious experience rooted in the physical nature and flowering in the spiritual,—and it is the just ideal.
The true business of the church is to inculcate morality and religion. Its perversions are traditional routine, creed authority, and ceremony. The true business of the theatre is to exhibit characters and manners in their contrasts so as to secure appropriating approval for the best, condemnation and avoidance for the worst. Its perversions are carelessness, frivolity, and license. When the church purifies itself for its two genuine functions,—truth and consolation,—and the theatre cleanly administers its two genuine functions,—wholesome recreation and earnest teaching,—their offices will coincide and the strife of priest and player cease.
CHAPTER XXII.
FORREST IN SEVEN OF HIS CHIEF ROLES.—CHARACTERS OF IMAGINATIVE PORTRAITURE.—RICHELIEU.—MACBETH.—RICHARD.—HAMLET.—CORIOLANUS.—OTHELLO.—LEAR.
At the date of this writing, although there are many good actors in America, there are none who are generally recognized as great. There also appears for the time to be a decline in the popular taste for the serious and lofty drama, and a general preference for sensational, comic, and spectacular plays. In vain does the call-boy summon the sublime characters and parts that entranced the audiences of a bygone generation. They seem to have died with the strong and stately actors who gave them such noble life and motion. The sceptred pall of gorgeous tragedy has vanished from the stage, it may almost be said, and for the poet and the thinker have been substituted the carpenter, the scene-painter, the upholsterer, and the milliner. Nudity, prurience, broad appeals to sensual passion, extravagant glare and movement and noise, have largely thrust aside tragic action, romantic sentiment, and moral grandeur. Even though the depravation be but temporary, marking a transitional crisis, it is a feature unpleasant to contemplate. And it may be of some service, not only in completing the picture of the life of Forrest, but likewise in revealing the higher social uses and lessons of his art, to give a description of the chief of those massive and heroic rôles he loved best to fill in the ripest period of his professional career. The accounts must be brief and fragmentary, and very inadequate at the best. To preserve or re-create the full impression of a great actor in a great part, he should be sculptured in every attitude and movement, with every gesture and look, and painted in every tone, emphasis, and inflection of his voice. Yet, without attempting this impossible feat in the case of Forrest, enough may be rapidly indicated in general sketches to enable intelligent readers to form some approximate conception of his leading impersonations and of the influences they were calculated to exert.
The pictures of the acting of Forrest now to be essayed must be tantalizingly faint and imperfect, in the absence of an art to translate and reproduce all the other eight dramatic languages of human nature in the one language of words. But to appreciate even these poor attempts at their worth one preliminary condition on the part of those who read is pre-eminently necessary. They must remember that Forrest was one of those rare men profusely endowed with that mysterious power to interest and impress which is popularly called personal magnetism. He was signally charged with that secret spell, that loaded and swaying fascination, which all feel though no one understands, which contagiously works on those who come within its reach, seizing curiosity, enlisting sympathy, or evoking repulsion. The distinguishing differences of men in this respect are indescribable and fatal. No art can efface them or neutralize them. For an artist who makes direct personal appeal to an audience the having or the not having this magnetic gift is as the hidden core of destiny. With it obstacles are removed as by magic, friends won, enemies overthrown, and wherever the possessor sails through the community he leaves a wide phosphorescent wake of social interest and gossip. Without it, though flags are waved and trumpets are blown and all pains taken to make an impression and secure a victorious career, yet the efforts prove futile and public attention wanders listlessly away. One seems created to be the victim of perpetual slights, dry, trivial, destitute of charm, nobody caring anything about him; while another, freighted with occult talismans, strangely interests everybody. The recognition of such contrasts is one of the most familiar facts of experience. These phenomena are suggested by the word sphere as applied to the characteristic influence of personality. The spiritual sphere or signalling power of an individual is described as attractive or repulsive, strong or weak, vast or little, harmonious or discordant. The mystery is not so blankly baffling as it has been supposed, but is in a large degree susceptible of rational explication.
Out of a hundred accomplished singers, beautiful in person and marvellous in voice, one prima donna shall surpass all the rest in fascinating the public. There is a nameless distinction in her bearing, there is an indescribable charm in her song, which bewitch and enthrall, are her irresistible passports to public enthusiasm, and make her sure of a long and dazzling career; while one after another of the rest with desperate exertions and fitful plaudits disappear. Here is a tragedian who exercises the same spell and quickly obscures his distanced rivals. He advances on the stage with a quiet step, his mantle negligently crossing his breast, his countenance calm. Without a start, without a gesture, without a word, he simply is and looks. Yet, as he approaches, awe spreads around him. Why this breathless silence all over the theatre, this rooted attention from every one? He seats himself, he leans on the arm of the chair; his voice, quick and deep, seems not to utter common words, but to pronounce supernatural oracles. By what transcendent faculty does he render hate so terrible, irony so frightful, disdain so superhuman, devotion so entrancing, love so inexpressibly sweet, that the whole assembly rivet their eyes and hold their breath while their hearts throb under the mystic influence of his action? The secret is purely a matter of law without anything of chance or whim or caprice in it. It is the profound and universal law which regulates the exercise of sympathetic influence by one person on another. It has two elements, namely, beauty and power. Beauty and power both can be expressed in shapes, features, motions, and tones. Shapes, features, and tones are results and revelations of modes of motion. The face is shaped and modulated by the ideal forces within, the rhythmical vibrations which preside over the processes of nutrition. All those shapes or movements in a person which in their completeness constitute, or in their segments imply, returning curves or undulations, such as circles, ellipses, and spirals, are beautiful. They suggest economy of force, ease of function, sustained vitality, and potency. But abrupt changes of direction, sudden snatches and breaks of movement, sharp angles, are ugly and repellent, because they suggest waste of force, difficulty of function, discord of the individual with the universal, and therefore hint evil and death. The serpent was anciently considered a symbol of immortality on account, no doubt, of all its motions being endless lines or undulations circling in themselves. This is the law of beauty which just in proportion to its pervasive prevalence and exhibition in any one gives its possessor charm. The subtile indication of this in the incessant and innumerable play of the person fascinates and delights all who see it; and those who do not consciously perceive it are still influenced by it in the unconscious depths of their nature.
The element of power is closely allied in its mode of revelation and influence with that of beauty. Every attitude, gesture, or facial expression is composed of contours and lines, static and dynamic, latent and explicit, fragmentary and complete, straight, curved, or angularly crooked. Now, the nature of these lines, the degree in which their curves return or do not return into themselves, the nature and sizes of the figures they describe, or would describe if completed according to their indicative commencements, determine their beauty or ugliness and decide what effect they shall produce on the spectator. The beauty and the pleasure it yields are proportioned to the preponderance of endless lines suggestive of circulation of force without waste, and therefore of perfect grace and immortal life. But that sense of power which breeds awe in the beholder is measured by the proportion of exertion made to effect produced. All force expended passes off on angular lines. The angles of movement may be obtuse or sharp in varying degrees, and consequently subtend lines of different lengths. All attitudes and gestures compose curves and figures, or cast lines and form angles, which constitute their æsthetic and dynamic values, those measuring beauty, these measuring power. For, on the principle of the lever and momentum, the power expended at the end of a line is equal to that exerted at the beginning of the line multiplied by its length. The amounts of exertion and the lengths of lines are unconsciously estimated by the intuitions of the observer, and the unconscious interpretations to which he is led are what yield the impressions he experiences on seeing any given actor. The greatest sense of power is received when the minimum of initial effort is seen with the maximum of terminal result; when the smallest weight at the central extremity balances the largest one at the distal extremity. The law of combined beauty and power of action, then, is contained in the relations of returning lines and lengths of straight lines. The measure of dramatic expression is this: impression of grace is according to the preponderance of perpetuating curves, and impression of strength according to the degrees of the angles formed by the straight lines. That actress or actor in whose organism there is the greatest freedom of the parts and the greatest unity of the whole, the most perfect co-operation of all the nerve-centres in a free dynamic solidarity and the most complete surrender of the individual will to universal principles, will make the deepest sensation,—in other words, will have the largest amount of what has been vaguely called personal magnetism. The divinest character expresses itself in softly-flowing forms and inexpensive movements. The most royal and august majesty of function indicates its rank of power by the slightest exertions implying the vastest effects. Frivolous, false, and vulgar characters are ever full of short lines, incongruous, fussy, and broken motions, curves everywhere subordinated and angles obtrusive. Such persons are, as it is said, destitute of magnetism. They do not interest. They cannot possibly charm or awe. It is a law of inexpressible importance that the quality, grade, and measure of a personality are revealed primarily in the proportions, secondarily in the movements, of the physical organism. These proportions and movements betray alike the permanent features of the indwelling character and all its passing thoughts and emotions. The truth is all there, though the spectator may be incompetent to interpret its signals. The most harmonious and perfect character will show the most exquisite symmetry and grace of repose and action. The irregulated, raw, and reckless type of character expresses itself in awkward, violent, or incongruous movements, wasteful of energy yet not impressive in result. Beauty of motion, the implication of endless lines, is the normal sign of loveliness of soul. Grandeur of soul or dynamic greatness of mind is indicated by implicit extent and ponderous slowness of motion. When the smallest displays of motion at the centres suggest the most sustained and extended lines, the impression given of power is the most mysterious and overwhelming. The most tremendous exertions, in lines and angles whose invisible complements are small, produce a weak impression, because they make no appeal to the imagination. The beauty of the figures implied in the forms of the movements of a man is the analogue of his goodness; the dimensions of the figures, the analogue of his strength. And in the case of every one the spectators are constantly apprehending the forms of these figures and how far they reach, and emotionally reacting in accordance with the results thus attained. It is not a conscious and critical process of the understanding or the senses, but a swift procedure of the intuitions or organic habits, including the sum of ancestral experiences deposited in instinctive faculty. Many who are ignorant of this law of the revelation of human nature, and of the sympathetic influence of man on man involved in it, may feel that the whole conception is merely a fine-spun fancy, with no solid basis in fact. But a perfect parallel to the process here described as taking place through the eye has been both mathematically and visibly demonstrated in the case of the ear. The beauty of form as perceived by the eye depends on implicit perception of geometric law, and is proportioned to the simplicity of the law and the variety of the outline embodying it, just as the harmony of colors or the harmony of sounds depends on the implicit perception of arithmetical ratios, and is proportioned to the harmony of times in which the vibrations of the visible or audible medium occur. We distinguish the beauty and the quality of a tone of the same pitch produced by different instruments or voices, and our feelings are differently affected with pleasure or pain as we listen to them. But the beauty of a tone consists in the equidistance of the pulsations of air composing it, and the quality of a tone consists in the forms of the pulsations. The auditory apparatus reports the symmetry or asymmetry of the pulsations in form and rate, and the soul, intuitively grasping the secret significance, is delighted or disturbed accordingly. The charm of a delicious, musical, powerful voice has these four elements, beautiful forms in its vibrations, perfect rhythm or equidistance in its vibrations, varying breadth in its vibrations, and varying extent of vibratory surface in the sounding mechanism. Without knowing anything about any of these conditions, the sensitive hearer, played on by them through his ear, accurately responds in feeling. It is exactly the same, in the case of the eye, with the geometrical lines and figures involved in the bearing of a person. If these are beautiful in forms, graceful in motions, sublime in implicit dimensions, the impression is delightful and profound; while if they are petty and incoherent, or clumsy and unbalanced, their appeal is superficial and disagreeable. This is the law of personal magnetism, which always exerts the vastest swing of power from the most exactly centred equilibrium. The mysteries of God are revealed in space and time through form and motion. They are concentrated in rhythm, which, as defined by Delsarte, is the simultaneous vibration of number, weight, and measure. We are creatures of space and time; all our experience has been written and is organized in that language. Our whole nature therefore in its inmost depths corresponds and thrills to the mystic symbols of harmony or discord with love and pleasure or with fear and pain. The secret of the delight that waits on the perception or feeling of beauty and power is the recognition of sequent ratios which express symmetry in time or algebraic law, and coexistent ratios which express symmetry in space or geometric law. Spatial symmetry is the law of equilibrium, the adjustment of the individual with the universal, and measures power. Temporal symmetry is the law of health, the pulsating adjustment of function with its norm, and measures the melodious flow of life. Rhythm is the constant dynamic reproduction of symmetry in space and time combined. It is the secret of personal magnetism. Its charm and its power are at their height when the symmetries are most varied in detail and most perfect in unity.
Now, Forrest ever possessed this magnetic temperament, this firmly poised and ingravidated personality, and ever wielded its signals with startling effect. The tones and inflections of his sweet and majestic voice in its wide diapason were felt by his hearers palpitating among the pulses of their hearts. His attitude, look, and gesture in great situations often produced on a whole assembly the electric creep of the flesh and the cold shudder of the marrow. His fearlessness and deliberation were conspicuous and proverbial. A censorious critic said, “Mr. Forrest is the most painfully elaborate actor on the stage. He swings in a great slow orbit, and, though he revolves with dignity and sublimity, the sublimity is often stupid and the dignity a little pompous. He dwells so long on unimportant passages that one might imagine he intended to take up an everlasting rest on a period, to go to sleep over a semicolon, or spend the evening with a comma. His pauses are like the distances from star to star, and if he continues in his course people will have time to stroll in the lobbies between his sentences. His performances might be defined by his enemies as infinite extensions of silence with incidental intervals of speech.” Through this enveloping burlesque one discerns the poise, sang-froid, and grandeur of the man.