In this play Forrest presented four successive examples of that proud assertion of an independent, high-minded man which has been said to be the real type of his character as a tragedian. These specimens were differenced from one another with such clean strokes and bold colors that it was an æsthetic as well as a moral luxury to behold him enact them. The first was a trenchant, sarcastic scorn of baseness, spoken when he sees the servile peasants bow to Gesler's cap, and the hireling soldiery driving them to it: "They do it, Verner; They do it! Look! Ne'er call me man again! Look, look! Have I the outline of that caitiff Who to the outraged earth doth bend the head His God did rear for him to heaven? Base pack! Lay not your loathsome touch upon the thing God made in his own image. Crouch yourselves; 'Tis your vocation, which you should not call On free-born men to share with you, who stand Erect except in presence of their God Alone." The second example is the stern stateliness of unshaken heroism with which he confronts insult and threats of torture and death, when, chained and baited by the soldiers, Sarnem bids him down on his knees and beg for mercy. They try to force him to the ground, inciting one another with cowardly ferocity to strike him, put out his eyes, or lop off a limb. His bearing and the soul it revealed were such as corresponded with the descriptive comment wrung from the onlooking Gesler: "Can I believe my eyes? He smiles. He grasps His chains as he would make a weapon of them To lay his smiter dead. What kind of man Is this, that looks in thraldom more at large Than they who lay it on him! A heart accessible as his to trembling The rock or marble hath. They more do fear To inflict than he to suffer. Each one calls Upon the other to accomplish that Himself hath not the manhood to begin. He has brought them to a pause, and there they stand Like things entranced by some magician's spell, Wondering that they are masters of their organs And not their faculties." The third example is fearless defiance of tyrannical power, when, bound and helpless, he confronts the cowering Gesler with majestic superiority. The Austrian governor says, "Ha, beware! think on thy chains!" Tell replies, with swelling bosom and flashing eyes,-- "Though they were doubled, and did weigh me down Prostrate to earth, methinks I could rise up Erect, with nothing but the honest pride Of telling thee, usurper, to the teeth, Thou art a monster! Think upon my chains! Show me the link of them which, could it speak, Would give its evidence against my word. Think on my chains! 'They are my vouchers, which I show to heaven, as my acquittance from The impious swerving of abetting thee In mockery of its Lord!' Think on my chains! How came they on me?"