“And then the Puritans. I admire them in spots. My people came over in one of the early boats. But plays about Puritans never succeed. Do you know why? It’s because the Puritans preached the gospel of Don’t! Everything was Don’t—don’t dance, don’t sing, don’t kiss, don’t have fun, don’t wear bright colors, don’t go to plays, don’t have a good time. But the theater is the place where people go to have a good time, a good laugh, a good cry, or a good scare. The whole soul of the theater is to reconcile people with life and with one another.
“The Puritans call the theater immoral. It is so blamed moral that it is untrue to life half the time, for wickedness always has to be punished in the theater, and we know it isn’t in real life.
“And another thing, Vick, why should the theater do anything for the Puritans? They never did anything for us except to tear down the playhouses and call the actors hard names. And what good came of it all?
“Here’s a book I picked up about the Puritans, because it has a lot about my ancestors. They had a daughter named Remember and a son named Wrastle. But look at this.” Eldon got up, found the volume, and hunted for the page, as he raged: “Now the Puritans in our country had none of the alleged causes of immorality—they had no novels, no plays, no grand or comic operas, no nude art, no vaudeville, no tango, and no moving pictures. They ought to have been pretty good, eh? Well, take a peek at what their Governor William Bradford writes.”
He handed the book to Vickery, whose eyes roved along the page:
Anno Dom: 1642. Marvilous it may be to see and consider how some kind of wickednes did grow breake forth here, in a land wher the same was so much witnesed against, and so narrowly looked unto, & severly punished when it was knowne; as in no place more, and so much, that I have known or head of . . . . . espetially drunkennes and unclainnes; not only incontinencie betweene persons unmaried, for which many both men & women have been punished sharply enough, but some maried persons allso. . . things fearful to name have broak forth in this land, oftener then once . . . one reason may be, that ye Divell may carrie a greater spite against the churches of Christ and ye gospell hear, by how much ye more they endeavor to preserve holynes and puritie amongst them . . . that he might cast a blemishe & staine upon them in ye eyes of ye world, who use to be rashe in judgmente.
Vickery smiled sheepishly, and Eldon relieved him of the book, exclaiming:
“Think of it, those terribly protected people were so bad they could only explain it by saying that Satan worked overtime! There is one of the most hideous stories in here ever published and you can find facts that make The Scarlet Letter look innocent.”
Vickery protested, mildly: “Of course the Puritans were human and intolerant. That’s the whole point of my play, the struggle of a man against them.”
Eldon opposed him still. “But why should we worry over that? The Puritans have been pretty well whipped out. Liberty is pretty well secured for men in America. Why try to excite an audience about what they all are as used to as the air they breathe? Let Russia write about such things. Why not write a play about the exciting things of our own days? If you want liberty for a theme, why don’t you write about the fight the women are waging for freedom? Turn your hero into a heroine; turn your Puritans into conservative men and women of the day who stand just where they did. Show up the modern home as this book shows up the old Puritans.”