Altruism should prevail in the conduct of life, and with all fine natures it does prevail. The instinctive desire, while not universal nor perhaps general, is very considerable to help the weak, to shield the innocent, to liberate the oppressed, to comfort the afflicted, to find excuses for frailty, to take a charitable view of human infirmity; but while lovely in itself and beneficent in some of its results, it is, in vital particulars, ineffectual: it cannot eliminate depravity from a nature that is innately wicked, and it cannot dispel remorse,—or even mitigate that agony,—from a mind innately conscientious.
Belasco, by obtruding harlots on the stage,—as he has not scrupled to do, in presenting to public observance Zaza and Laura Murdoch,—follows many precedents and impliedly approves the exploitation of such persons,—unfortunate, pitiable, deplorable, sometimes amiable and gentle, more frequently hard, fierce, treacherous, and wicked. His published writings avow his views on this subject, and I have found his private assurances concurrent with his published writings. Those views do more credit to the kindness of his disposition than to the clarity of his thought. From his youth onward he has been deeply interested in aberrant women, studious of their aberrancy, solicitous for their rescue and reformation, charitable toward them, wishful to befriend them, and strenuous, when writing about them, to place them in the best possible light. “Whenever I rehearse a situation of passion, of crime, of wrongdoing” (so he writes), “I remember the heart. I make an excuse—seek out the motive, to put the actor in touch with the culprit’s point of view. The excuse is always there.” No form of reasoning could be more sophistical, more delusive, more mischievous. The reason for sin, for crime, for wrongdoing, is always there: but a broad distinction exists between the reason and the excuse. Some persons, naturally good, nevertheless do wrong, commit crime, sin against themselves and against both moral law and social order, because they cannot help it, because they are weak and cannot resist temptation. Other persons commit crime knowingly, deliberately, intentionally, because they wish to do so, because they delight in doing so, and find their greatest possible gratification in acts of wickedness. Selfishness and greed are, in a vast number of cases, impervious to anything other than the operation of external forces painful to themselves: there are persons who possess no moral sense whatever. The notion that there is a substratum of goodness in every human being is one of the most flagrant delusions that ever entered the mind of sensible persons acquainted with the history of the world and aware of what is passing around them every hour. “I remember the heart” says Belasco: it would not be amiss to remember what was long ago said of that interesting organ by one of the wise prophets of his nation: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” It is in the highest degree creditable to Belasco as a man that he possesses a tenderly compassionate, humane spirit and has always practically acted on the impulse of it; neither wisdom nor justice is discernible in the “moral teaching” that he has liberated by his indiscriminate subservience to it in the instances I have named.
PRODUCTION, AND CONTENTS, OF “ZAZA.”
“Zaza” was first produced, December 25, 1898, at the Lafayette Opera House (now, 1917, the Belasco Theatre), Washington, D. C. The first presentment of it in New York occurred, January 9, 1899, at the Garrick Theatre, where it was acted till June 17, receiving 164 performances. “Zaza” is not so much a play as it is a series of loosely jointed, sequent episodes. The story is simple and vulgar. Zaza is a French prostitute. She has passed from the streets to the stage of country music halls and has become a singer. She is a common, shameless, termagant wanton, possessed, however, of an animal allurement which infatuates a man of respectable position and outwardly decent character. His name is Dufrène. By him she is removed from a life of miscellaneous degradation and,—“purified” by “love”!—she dwells with him, in contentment, for six months,—remarking, as she pulls on her stockings, “I do think it’s the most beautiful thing in the world when two lovers come together.” At the end of that time she discovers that her paramour is married, and that he maintains his wife and their child in a respectable rural home and, at intervals, bestows upon them the boon of his precious company. With the tigerish resentment often characteristic of her class, she immediately repairs to that home, intent to “revenge” herself upon Dufrène’s wife by revealing the husband’s infidelity. Her amiable purpose is diverted by an encounter with his child, whose prattle so profoundly affects her supersensitive “better feelings” that she quits the field, returns to her civic bower, which has been provided by Dufrène, there provokes a violent quarrel with that hypocritical libertine, so enrages him that he threatens to strike her, and finally elicits from him the assurance that his wife is much more precious to him than his harlot is. The separation of this edifying couple ensues. Stimulated by this experience of “purification by love,” Zaza determines to achieve artistic greatness without further delay, and this she incontinently does, becoming, within two years,—“through much misery, much grief, much work, and a little luck,” as she expresses it,—a great artist, wealthy and (general concomitant of wealth!) respected, and, most delightful of all, a paragon of virtue, gently dismissing her recalcitrant paramour, Dufrène (who, unable to forget the rapturous interlude of his amatory association with her, has sought to renew it), in the peaceful seclusion of the Champs Elysees!
The play of “Zaza,” in the French original, is even more offensive than in Belasco’s adaptation, but it possesses more unity as a dramatic fabric and more authenticity as a portrayal of a revolting phase of life. Belasco’s version is much the superior as a commercial and theatrically useful vehicle. His purpose in adapting the play for the English-speaking Stage is thus stated by himself: “I wanted my audience to find some excuse for Zaza’s past and to have less pity for the wife. When the play was produced in America and Zaza sacrificed her own feelings for the sake of a child the audience was so entirely in her favor that she won the tears of New York and, later on [sic], of London.” “The tears” of New York, London, or any other residential locality are not difficult to “win” when an experienced hand at the theatrical fount pumps hard enough for them. Freed of flummery, what does this play signify? A woman essentially vile in nature, degraded by a career of vice, gross in her conduct, vitiated in her principles and feelings, is sentimentally affected by the babble of a child, and her holy “sacrifice of her own feelings” consists in abstention from wrecking the happiness of an innocent and injured woman who has never done her any harm. As a matter of fact, such a drab as Zaza would not have denied herself that gratification for the sake of a whole regiment of children,—but truth was not the goal desired: that object was profitable effect. Such dramas as “Zaza” defile the public mind and degrade the Stage, and it would be propitious for the community if they could be played on from a fire hose and washed into the sewer where they belong.
MRS. CARTER’S IMPERSONATION OF ZAZA.
Mrs. Carter’s performance of the patchouly-scented heroine of this tainted trash was much admired and extravagantly commended. As a work of dramatic art it was trivial: as a violent theatrical display of common surface traits,—a demonstration, in “Ercles’ vein,” of ability to tear a cat,—it was highly effective. The language of the gutter was spoken in the tone and with the manner of the gutter. The method of the execution was direct, broad, swift,—and coarse. The best technical merit of it was clarity of utterance. In Zaza’s scene with the child Mrs. Carter was mechanical and monotonous. It was the utter, reckless abandon, the uncontrolled physical and vocal vehemence, the virago-like intensity of her abuse of her lover, which, communicating themselves to the nerves of her auditors and overwhelming them by violence, gained the actress her success in the part. If to “tear a passion to tatters, to very rags,” to take up the carpet tacks
Photograph by Sarony. Belasco’s Collection.