Belasco’s feeling about “The Music Master” and his esteem of and loyalty to his friend Warfield are pleasantly shown in a declaration which he made about them several years ago:

A SHEAF OF OLD LETTERS: IN THE MATTER OF THE THEATRICAL SYNDICATE.

All of the following letters by Belasco were written during the first year of “The Music Master,” and they well characterize the purposes of the Theatrical Syndicate and well indicate Belasco’s lively opposition to that oppressive monopoly. The second of them is addressed to his cousin, the son of the famous English actor David James, and it refers to a proposal made by the younger actor so named that he should be brought to America, to act in some of his father’s parts, under the management of Belasco.

(David Belasco to Blanche Bates.)

(David Belasco to David James, Jr., in London.)

(David Belasco to Peter Robertson, San Francisco.)

(Peter Robertson to David Belasco, in New York.)

Belasco, I surmise, must have smiled a little grimly at this airy admonition “not to work himself up” about the active antagonism of the Syndicate: the cheery advice to the weaker party in a conflict, “Go in and win,” is doubtless excellent, but often, unhappily, it is somewhat more difficult to follow than it is to give. Viewed from the secluded tranquillity of the old Bohemian Club—that genial harbor of congenial spirits—a struggle with the Syndicate may have seemed like a fight with a phantom. For Belasco it was, and for many years remained, a hard reality, and had it not been for his wary vigilance and indomitable resolution he would certainly have been defeated, overwhelmed, and ruined.—Poor Robertson never realized his “hope of better fortune”: for several years after 1904 he continued to be the dramatic critic of “The San Francisco Chronicle”: then, the whole duty of the managing editor (as defined by my old friend, the journalist William Seaver—“first, to wring your brains dry; second, to throw you away”) having been performed, he was dismissed from his employment and, after two or three years of anxious, dispirited, lonely waiting, he died—and, save by a few old friends, he is thought of no more.

METHOD OF COLLABORATION.

The tragedy of “Adrea,” begun in 1903, was completed before September, 1904, and it was put into rehearsal, at the Belasco Theatre, in October of the latter year. The following letters which passed between Belasco and his friend and associate John Luther Long afford an informing glimpse of their methods of collaboration in authorship, which Belasco has described in these words: “Before the actual writing of ‘Adrea’ we had the story [worked out] to the smallest detail. He lived in Philadelphia, but spent the latter part of each week with me. After the plot was finished we adopted a new system of collaboration. Mr. Long and I worked on the scenes apart, then met and joined them together. Then he revised the result and then I revised the result, and so on, until the sixth or seventh version found the scene in very good condition.”

(John Luther Long, in Philadelphia, to David Belasco, in New York.)

(David Belasco to John Luther Long, in Philadelphia.)

(John Luther Long to David Belasco.)

MRS. CARTER AND THE TRAGEDY OF “ADREA.”

The tragedy of “Adrea,” by Belasco and Long, is a composition of exceptional imaginative scope and of great dramatic power. Its scene is a royal court of a conjectural kingdom, situated on an imaginary island in, perhaps, the Adriatic Sea. Its time is named as about the fifth century of the Christian era,—a time well chosen for poetic and romantic purposes; for the vast Roman Empire had then become extinguished in Western Europe and was slowly crumbling to pieces in the East, and minor monarchies can credibly be supposed to have flourished in such an era of transition and a martial chieftain out of Noricum to have dallied with the daughters of a Roman Prince. It is a play without historic basis; an authentic creation of the inventive brain; a vigorous and splendid work of art, moving freely in a broad field. It deals with great themes,—great passions, crimes, and sorrows; great and terrible punishments of sin, and the spectacle of great character made sublime by grief. Much of its movement proceeds in the open air: some of it beneath the vault of night; and its web involves the terrors of tempest and the mystery and dread of spectres from the realm of death. The form and color of it are modern,—a form and color of rosy amplitude and voluptuous luxuriance; but the feeling that pervades it is the ominous feeling of the old Greek tragedies of fate and doom. Its defect is excess—an excess of persons, objects, pictures, emotions, and words; the superflux that proceeds from intensely passionate feeling in the conception of the story and especially in the conception and development of its central character. An affluence of fancy is, however, more grateful than the frigid sense of want. This is a synopsis of it:

The action begins in a spacious scene, in front of the royal palace of the monarchs of the island kingdom. The Princess Adrea is the blind daughter of Menethus, King of the Adrean Isles. She is older than her sister, the Princess Julia, and on the death of her father she would succeed to the throne, if she were not blind: for the law of Menethus has ordained that “No sovereign shall wear the crown who is not, both in mind and body, sound.” The play opens on the hundredth day after the death of Menethus. The King is dead, and the hour has come for the crowning of his successor. The Princess Julia, long known as “the imperial wanton,” with a company of her kind, is holding a festival. Kaeso, born a barbarian, but later a pretorian tribune, having come to Adrea, with his troops, intent on usurping the throne of Menethus, sees a readier way of conquest, in a marriage with the Princess Julia, soon to be Queen. He has been made her favorite, and marriage with him is to follow her coronation.

In the course of the revel the blind princess, Adrea, passes, led by an Egyptian named Garda, on her way to the temple, in which she is to be secluded, so that her presence at court may not trouble her sister Julia, whom the people of the kingdom detest. It is premised that in Arcady, where Adrea had dwelt with her father, she had known and loved Kaeso, then one of the King’s martial chieftains, and that he had sworn to marry her, but had proved faithless. Now, at the Princess Julia’s festival, Kaeso and Adrea meet again, and Kaeso kindly greets the blind girl. This enrages the Princess Julia, who thereupon commands him to declare to Adrea that he does not love her, but loves her sister Julia. This cruelty he must commit, as the price of the kingdom. He submits; the imperious Julia leads her train away; and he is left alone with Adrea, to whom he discloses himself, and who receives him with the deepest tenderness of faithful love. To her his presence can mean only that he has come to keep his oath by marrying her. Kaeso forgets Julia, his ambitions—everything but the woman who has come into his arms. The watchful Princess Julia, apprised by a spy, the Court Fool,—Mimus, the Echo,—returns to see the lovers in their ecstasy of reconciliation, and she at once determines on a terrible revenge. Kaeso, seeing Julia, starts away from Adrea, and Mimus, who madly loves the blind princess, takes his place. This Mimus happens to be in an armor like that of Kaeso, which he has put on in a frolic; and when Adrea reaches to find Kaeso her hands touch Mimus, and she eagerly claims him, believing him to be her plighted lover. “And you shall marry him!” says the Princess Julia; grimly adding, as a response to Kaeso’s look of horror: “It is the price of Adrea!”

A lapse of five hours is supposed. The scene is the same. The time is near dawn. Soldiers are on guard. Challenges pass. Rumors have been heard of ill to the beloved Princess Adrea. Kaeso’s lieutenant, Arkissus, devoted to Adrea, has heard these rumors, and he demands an explanation of them from the now drunken and frenzied Kaeso. They quarrel, and are about to fight, when a fearful cry is heard and they halt. Then, staggering down the palace steps, moaning in agony, comes the Princess Adrea, alone. Her prayer, like that of Ajax, is for light. She beseeches the gods to grant her one moment of sight, so that she may see the man to whom she has been given. The Fool enters, to drag her away,—for the Princess Julia, now Queen, has decreed banishment of Adrea and the Fool, and they must leave her kingdom before the dawn. There is an ominous roll of thunder. The Fool seizes Adrea. Suddenly the heavens seem to answer her agonized supplication. A bolt of lightning shatters the statue of her father, to which she has been clinging, and there is an instant of darkness. When the light is restored, a chaos stands revealed, in which Princess and Fool are prostrated. Adrea revives, and, with a wild cry, realizes that she can see. Soon she remembers, and gazing down upon a “painted, hideous, gibbering thing, in red and white,” she knows him for the Fool, who has been described to her. She lifts his limp body and stares at his vacant eyes: then she drops it and whispers, in horror: “Gods! You!”

The action now shifts to a structure called “The Tower of Forgetfulness.” To this Adrea goes, not thinking to take her throne, but only wishing to die, and thus bury her shame. The Tower of Forgetfulness is an obelisk of great antiquity, built half on the land and half on the sea. Its door is never closed. Here the wretch who is weary of life can drink “the cup of oblivion,” and, through “the door of release,” sink into the sea, and be at rest. It is Adrea’s purpose to die. Then suddenly she hears the royal trumpets, the marriage song, and Kaeso’s song of battle. At the same moment her father’s ghost appears and enjoins her to reign, for vengeance. Looking down upon the ocean, she beholds Kaeso and Julia, who are returning to the palace, after their marriage. They are in her father’s royal galley, with his effigy at the prow. “Stop them!” commands Adrea. “Bring my father’s galley here! Say that Queen Adrea, rides to her coronation!” Arkissus appears with his legions, and executes her will.

The coronation of Adrea ensues. Kaeso is brought before her, in order that he may sue for pardon—which the heart of the injured Queen is ready to grant. But Kaeso is haughty, and the Queen dismisses her court, that she may judge him alone. She is temperate, lenient, and fond. She pours out all her heart; but it is only to be dazed by Kaeso’s declaration that his regret is solely for his lost ambition. He tells her that he knew of her spoliation, and allowed it. The Queen recalls her court. “Set him upon a horse of state,” she says, “drest in a robe of gold. Strew his way with roses! Let heralds go before him and cry ‘Conqueror!’ ‘Imperator!’ Let maidens chant songs! And when he has reached my gates, and his men and galleys are in sight,—whip him! Whip him to his empty camp, and hold him captive there till the manner of his death is decided.”

The scene changes to the Queen’s Cabinet. Kaeso is brought in on the way to execution. It is the supreme moment of Adrea’s life. The man she loves is on the way to death. In spite of all her wrongs she will look upon his face again, before it is mangled by wild horses’ hoofs. Her heart still cries out for him. Even now she would save him, if she could. But frenzied multitudes surround the palace, maddened with knowledge of the outrages that the Queen has suffered; and she is powerless to save. Queen Adrea must tell Kaeso the manner of his death. Kaeso had thought to die as a soldier should—upon his sword, but his death is to be that of a beast, trampled beneath the iron hoofs of horses. This fate she proclaims, but, when the first shock of horror is past, Kaeso confesses that he deserves his doom, and declares that he will die well: and then he says that he has always loved Adrea, but has put his love aside, for the sake of his ambition. Again the Queen relents. She will, at least, save him from a death of ignominy. She offers him the sword of Menethus, with which to kill himself. But his hands are chained. “You!” he begs. The thought is unendurable. She turns away. But suddenly, turning back, she cries out, “Yes!” and drives the blade through her lover’s heart.

The scene changes to Arcady. Eight years have passed. Queen Adrea has come to Arcady, and there she would remain at rest. But her people call her back to Adrea. The stanch Arkissus,—who has always loved her, whose one thought is of duty, and whose duty is to obey,—brings the prayer of her subjects that she will return and rule over them. But here are green fields, summer skies, and the shepherds and their pastoral music: it is a halcyon place and time; and she would remain, and linger, and die here, and rest beneath the sod that she and her first lover once trod together. A trumpet sounds, and a captive youth is brought into her presence. He is the son of Kaeso and Julia, and he has sought the throne of Adrea. He is vanquished, and his mother, Julia, has been slain. But there are tears in Queen Adrea’s eyes, as she looks upon him, and her arms open to him—for he has the port and lineaments of Kaeso. The Queen and the captive play a game,—“the Game of Being King.” Adrea places the youth on her throne, sets her crown on his head, puts her sceptre into his hands, throws her ermine on his shoulders, and bids him “Reign in love.” “Open the casement,” cries the captive boy, “Let in the sun, if you play fair and set no trap for me!” “At the King’s command,” she answers; and in those words ordains her fate, for Adrea cannot again look upon the sun without loss of her vision. She flings the casement wide open, and, in the sudden blaze of light, goes blind: then, when the agony is past and night has come again, she staggers to the throne and cries, “Long live the King!” For still the law of succession is inexorable,—and so Prince Vasha reigns, and Adrea is once more only Adrea of Arcady.

No student of Roman history needs to be told that among the women of Rome (and at one time all Italy was circumscribed within the capital) there were females illustrious for almost celestial virtues and females portentous for the monstrosity of their hideous crimes. The authors of “Adrea” neither distorted nature nor exaggerated fact in their portraiture of the two princesses, Adrea and Julia, who are opposed and contrasted in this remarkable drama of love, crime, frenzy, retribution, atonement, and peace. Adrea is not nobler or more virtuous than Valentinian’s Eudoxia, nor is Julia more malignant, treacherous, and cruel than Justinian’s Theodora. In this tragedy the purpose, obviously, was to present, amid regal accessories and in all the paraphernalia of semi-barbaric splendor, a woman of lofty mind, potent character, and impetuous passions, and, by making her the victim not alone of blighted affection but of deadly outrage, to involve her in a complex tangle of torment; to make her terrible in the delirium of exasperated feeling; to display her emotional perturbation and fierce and ferocious conduct in a vortex of tempestuous struggle; and, finally, to depict her noble expiatory conquest of herself, and to leave her, in her lonely majesty, a sublime image of triumphant virtue, gentle fortitude, and patient grief. That purpose has been superbly accomplished. To superficial observers, indeed, the presentment of “Adrea” appealed chiefly by reason of its implication of theatrical situation, its startling effects of climax, and its gorgeous scenic investiture. To thoughtful minds it came home as an illuminative and significant exposition of human nature, artfully made through the medium of a wonderful picture of human life in the antique world,—and in that it reached much further than merely to the fulfilment of any immediate theatrical need. Like the more classic dramatists of the Garrick era, its authors drew their inspiration from the great fountain of historic antiquity—adjusting, rearranging, and emphasizing old types and old examples to exhibit actually (and not by any dubious method of old symbolism) what is in our own hearts and of what fibre we are all made. Their play is an honor to them, and it is a rich and permanent addition to the literature of the Stage.

Mrs. Carter impersonated Adrea, and finding in it a part into which she could entirely liberate all her emotional power, without losing control of it, she rose to the occasion. She had hitherto acted in comedy, “sensation,” or sentimental, drama. The character of Adrea is wholly tragic. Through the wide range of conflicting emotions implicated in her experience—the misery of blindness and loss of royal inheritance, the ignominy of desertion by her idolized lover and of betrayal into the lewd embraces of an odious menial, the paroxysm of anguish when, to save her lover from a death of horror and shame decreed by herself, she strikes him dead, and the humility of surrender when, after years of bleak remembrance, she invites again the black eclipse and forlorn disablement of blindness and delivers her kingdom to the rule of her slaughtered lover’s son—Mrs. Carter moved firmly, steadily, triumphantly,—commanding every situation and rising to every climax. No denotement in Mrs. Carter’s acting of Du Barry had even remotely indicated such depth of tragical feeling and such power of dramatic expression as she revealed in the scenes of the tempest, in pronouncing Kaeso’s doom, and, above all, in the terrible, piteous, tragic self-conflict through which the Woman became the incarnation of Fate and the Minister of Death. Mrs. Carter had long been known for her exceptional facility of feminine blandishment, her command of the enticing wiles of coquetry and the soft allurement of sensuous grace,—known, likewise, and rightly admired for the clarity and purity of her English speech, always delightful to hear: but observers studious to see and willing to be convinced had not supposed her to be an actor of tragedy. It took a long time for Belasco to bring her to a really great victory, but she gained it in Adrea. The impersonation possessed many attributes of beauty: symmetry, for the eye; melody, for the ear; unity, continuity, sincerity, and sustainment, for the critical sense; poetic atmosphere, for the imagination; but it possessed one supreme attribute of terror,—absolute knowledge of human misery. “Look into your heart, and write,” is an old poetic precept. “Look into your heart, and act” ought to be joined with it: but God pity the heart into which the true poet and the true actor must sometimes look!

“Adrea” was first performed in Washington, D. C., on December 26, 1904, and in New York on January 11, 1905,—at the first Belasco Theatre. The following is the original cast of that play:

Coincident with his production of “Adrea” Belasco’s fight for freedom in the conduct of his business reached a climax that attracted nation-wide and wondering attention and enlisted the sympathetic assistance of eminent members of the national legislature. Whenever possible, subsequent to his successful presentment of “The Heart of Maryland” in Washington (October, 1895), Belasco has elected to bring out his new plays in that city. There he desired to launch what was in some ways the most ambitious venture of his career,—and there, accordingly, after overcoming every obstacle that could be thrown in his way, he first made known the tragedy of “Adrea.” But before narrating the manner in which that production was effected it is desirable here to make somewhat particular exposition of the antagonism he was compelled to encounter and to record the significance of his long and costly conflict with it.

BELASCO AND THE THEATRICAL SYNDICATE.

JUSTICE AND THEATRICAL ACHIEVEMENT.

David Belasco has served the Public and the Theatre, ably and brilliantly, in several fields and for many years, but his achievements as at once theatre manager, stage manager, playwriter, instructor, and “producer,” splendid and admirable as incontestably they have been and are, have been equalled by other American managers, of earlier date. In writing Biography it is prudent to remember that “there were heroes before Agamemnon.” Much was accomplished on the American Stage long before the advent of either David Belasco or any other theatrical administrator of recent times, and when we review the history of the drama in America for more than a hundred years, and consider the managers by whom it has been fostered, conserved, and directed, we should recall and honor the names,—among others,—of William Dunlap, the elder Warren, William Wood, Francis Courtney Wemyss, James H. Caldwell, Noah Ludlow, Edmund Simpson, Charles Gilfert, the elder Hackett, the elder Wallack, William Evans Burton, and Thomas Barry,—each of whom, in his day, deserved theatrical eminence and gained it, and all of whom seem now to be forgotten. Lester Wallack, who long preceded Belasco, and who also was theatre manager, stage manager, playwriter, and actor,—and as actor with no superior and scarce an equal in his peculiar realm,—gained laurels which will long endure. John T. Ford, Boucicault, Barrett, McCullough, Edwin Booth, and John S. Clarke,—all were accomplished and highly successful and distinguished in every branch of theatrical management; and, although Belasco has written his name imperishably on the honorable scroll of dramatic renown, he has not eclipsed those eminent predecessors.

BELASCO’S UNIQUE SERVICE TO THE THEATRE.

In one service, however, that Belasco has rendered to the Theatre and the Public he is peculiarly a benefactor, and in doing that service he has encountered an antagonism and prevailed in adverse circumstances with which the elder theatrical managers never had to contend. It would be difficult to over-estimate the value of his intrepid opposition to the tyrannical monopoly known as “The Theatrical Syndicate.” His conflict with that arrogant, oppressive, pernicious organization, sustained through a period of about twelve years, and finally victorious, required unfaltering courage, tenacious purpose, skilful and prompt action, and tireless persistence. It exacted from him prodigious labor; it entailed upon him great expense and loss, and it compelled an expenditure of time and strength which, if he had been left free to devote it to his artistic labor, would have been productive of lasting benefit to the Drama. But the sacrifice was well made, because the Theatre and the Public profited by it,—as, earlier, and concurrently, they profited by the resolute contest against the Syndicate (a valiant and gallant fight for freedom and justice) waged by Harrison Grey Fiske and Minnie Maddern Fiske. It should be noted that Augustin Daly, Belasco’s immediate predecessor in the primacy of theatrical management in America,—who, also, was theatre manager, stage manager, playwriter, and “producer,” and who was consummate as an executive,—being assailed by the Syndicate (as he several times declared to me), became one of its active opponents and resisted its aggressions: but Daly, who died before its despotic power had become matured, had long been an established, powerful manager before it was formed, so that it could not do him much harm. Belasco, on the contrary, was constrained to fight his way to independence and influence against its active, relentless opposition and inveterate hostility, from almost the beginning of his career in theatrical management.

WHAT ARE WE DISCUSSING?

In the period of about sixteen years preceding 1912 the newspaper press of America published many thousands of columns, often critical, at times strongly censorious, about the “Trust” or monopoly which commonly is known as “The Theatrical Syndicate.” Bitter fights likewise have been waged not only in the press but in the courts relative to that organization. The public has, from time to time, manifested interest in the subject,—as, for example, relative to Mrs. Fiske’s appearance in all sorts of unsuitable places, because the Syndicate had “barred” her from the regular and (as they are technically styled) “first-class” theatres, and to Mme. Bernhardt’s enforced performances in a circus tent, for the same reason, and, especially, to Belasco’s almost preterhuman efforts to present his plays in Washington (from which city strenuous efforts were made by the Syndicate to exclude him). Yet I believe that the public knowledge of the Syndicate,—its origin, aims, character, policy, conduct, and effect,—has never been more than superficial.

THE SYNDICATE-INCUBUS DEFINED.

Those six men were: Al. (Albert) Hayman (deceased 1916), Charles Frohman (deceased 1915), Marc Klaw, and Abraham Lincoln Erlanger, all of New York; and Samuel F. Nirdlinger (known as Nixon) and J. Frederick Zimmermann, both of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The contract under which those persons formed their copartnership and carried on their syndicate business was made in August, 1896, and it was renewed, in substance, in April, 1900.

SPECIOUS PRETENSIONS TO JUSTIFY THE INCUBUS.

That the theatrical business of America was disorganized, unstable, and, in general, so conducted as to entail loss on many or most persons engaged in it, by reason of competition, poor judgment, and lack of discrimination in its transactions; that the prevalent administration of it was not favorable to the development of actors and the promotion of the art of the Theatre; that their combination was made to cure, and that it did cure, the defects of theatrical business, stabilize it and render it reputable and responsible,—placing it, in this respect, on a level with other business; and that, incidentally, it would, and did, tend to prosper the means whereby the Theatre must live—namely, Acting and the exhibition of Acting. A. L. Erlanger, executive of the Booking Department of this organization (that is, of the firm of Klaw & Erlanger, the particular business of which was, and is, to “book,” i.e., to arrange, the tours of theatrical companies), has thus stated a part of his views relative to the character and doings of the Syndicate: