Morse’s play was not the fabric customarily offered at Oberammergau, nor was it in any particular an imitation. In the declared opinion of Morse, an apostate Hebrew, that concoction had been devised and performed for the purpose of arousing and stimulating hostility against the Jews, and he profoundly disapproved of it. His purpose, he avowed, was simply to present an epitome of the life of Jesus, as described in the gospels. He had taken the thrifty precaution to read his play before an assemblage of the Roman Catholic clergy of San Francisco (the Protestant ecclesiastics not accepting his liberal invitation to enjoy that luxury), and it had received their approbation. Several of the holy fathers, indeed, had evinced their approval of it by kissing him on both his cheeks, and Archbishop Allemany, of San Francisco, had not only sanctioned the precious composition but had inserted several passages into the text with his own sacerdotal hand. The play was comprised in ten acts (at least, that was its form when, in 1880, in the vestibule of the Park Theatre, Broadway and Twenty-second Street, New York, I heard half of it read by the author and was permitted to inspect the whole manuscript), and it consisted of a long series of dialogues accompanied by pictures and tableaux. I know not whether the whole ten acts were vouchsafed to the San Francisco audience, but, according to contemporaneous records, the play gave much offence to many persons and was incentive to some public disturbances and breaches of the peace: ignorant Irish who witnessed it were so distempered that, on going forth, some of them, from time to time, assaulted peaceable Jews in the public streets—much in the spirit of the irate mariner who chanced to hear first of the Crucifixion nearly 2,000 years after it occurred. Belasco records that a committee of citizens called on Maguire and “worked upon his credulous nature until he believed that he was marked by the devil for sacrifice and would meet with instant death if he did not withdraw the play,” and that “in a fever of fear he closed the theatre,”—March 11. A little later, however, Maguire’s torrid temperature appears to have abated, and the play was again brought forward, April 15, at the Grand Opera House, but this time it was met by an injunction, issued from the Fourth (Municipal) District Court, Judge Robert Francis Morrison presiding, which, being disregarded, was followed by the arrest of O’Neill (who was imprisoned), April 21, and of his professional associates, all of them, subsequently, being convicted of contempt of court and fined for that offence,—O’Neill $50 and each of the other players $5. Belasco escaped arrest through the kindly interference of the local Sheriff, a friend of his, who forcibly kept him away from the theatre when the other participants in the representation were being taken into police custody. The following notice appeared in “The Alta California,” April 22, 1879:
“Grand Opera House.—The management has the honor to announce that in deference to public opinion ’The Passion’ will no longer be presented.”
CONSTITUENTS OF MORSE’S PLAY.
There is nothing in Morse’s play that could exert an immoral influence. There is no irreverence in either its spirit or its incidents. It is merely a goody-goody, tiresome composition, full of moral twaddle, and consisting in about equal degree of platitude and bombast. It purports to be written in blank verse, but it is, in fact, written in nondescript lines of unequal length, halting, irregular, formless, weak, and diffuse. Choruses of rhymed doggerel occur in it, at intervals, sometimes uttered by women, sometimes,—on the contrary,—by angels. Stress is laid on the efforts of Pontius Pilate to save Jesus from the fury of the mob. There is a succession of pictures. In the Temple of Jerusalem many females appear, carrying babes, and a ferocious Jew, essaying to kill the infant Jesus, falls back astounded and overwhelmed by the aspect of the sacred infant. Later, Joseph, Mary, and the Holy Child are shown environed and protected by a branching sycamore tree, while, in the mountains all around them, many shrieking women and children are slaughtered by ruffianly soldiers. In a sequent picture King Herod, uttering a multiplicity of aphorisms, wrangles with his wife, Herodias, and the seductive Salomé dances before them and wins for her mother the head of her enemy, John the Baptist, which pleasing trophy, wrapped in a napkin, is brought in on a tray. Jesus and his disciples are then shown at the brook of Kedron. The agony of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane is depicted and the betrayal by Judas, the latter scene being double, to show, on one side, a lighted room in which is reproduced a semblance of “The Last Supper” according to the admired picture by Leonardo da Vinci, and on the other a gloomy range of plains and hills dimly lighted by the stars. In this scene passages from the New Testament are incorporated into Morse’s play, in the part of Jesus. The arraignment of Jesus before Pilate follows, including the wrangle between the furious people and that clement magistrate, and ending with the investiture of Jesus with the Crown of Thorns. The final picture shows Golgotha, under a midnight sky, and the removal of the dead body from the Cross.
AS TO PROPRIETY.
Salmi Morse, in conversation with me and my old comrade Dr. Charles Phelps, at the time of the reading in the vestibule of the Park Theatre, said that he began “The Passion Play” with the intention of writing a poem like Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” but soon discovered that the Byronic style, as evinced in “Cain,” was more consonant than the Miltonic style with his subject and his genius, and accordingly determined to write not like Milton but like Byron; and he added that his drama was really not, at first, intended for the Stage, but for publication in a book. That was a discreet judgment, from which it is a pity that he ever departed. I have not, however, been able at any time to perceive what decisive moral reason there is why “The Passion Play” should not be presented on the stage. Reasons other than moral can readily be assigned: it is a matter of Taste, in which it is a gross injustice to employ the police power as a corrective, and a matter of Public Policy, in which, with due consideration, the police power can properly be invoked. Familiar treatment of things widely considered sacred is, perhaps, likely to lower them, except with very ignorant persons, in sanctity and dignity, and certainly it does lower them with many persons of fine intelligence and taste. In the end of a church in Heidelberg there is, or was, visible, through a long window, a full-length effigy of Christ on the Cross, which swings to and fro as a pendulum to the clock, and in a church at Mayence there is a life-size figure of the Virgin Mary, seated, with the body of the dead Christ, also life-size, lying across her knees. I remember looking on those objects with aversion. To see, in a theatre, a man, impersonating the Christ, washing the feet of another man will, generally, give offence. Religious bigotry is a curse to civilization, and nothing should be conceded to it, but certainly the scruples of religious persons should receive reasonable respect.
“THE PASSION PLAY” IN NEW YORK.
After the suppression of his “Passion Play” in California Morse brought it to New York and offered it to Henry E. Abbey, then a prominent speculative manager, who, for a time, entertained the purpose of producing it at Booth’s Theatre. A drop curtain was painted, showing a flight of angels toward Heaven on Easter morning, and the purpose of Morse was made known to remove the statue of Shakespeare from the top of the proscenium arch and to substitute a large cross in its place. Obstacles intervened,—disapproval, voiced in the newspaper press, being one of them, and the destruction of Abbey’s New Park Theatre by fire (October 30, 1882), in which conflagration all the costumes were destroyed, being another,—and that project was abandoned. Prior to that mishap Morse gave a reading of the play, December 3, 1880, at the Cooper Institute; and later, February-April, 1883, ineffectual efforts were made by the author (which brought him before Judge George C. Barrett, of the New York Supreme Court) to present it in a house which he rented and called Salmi Morse’s Temple (afterward known as Proctor’s Twenty-third Street Theatre). His endeavors were finally blocked by an injunction, and the venture was heard of no more. Belasco was in New York at the time of Morse’s attempt to have his “Passion Play” represented there, and Morse wished him to undertake the stage direction of it, but being otherwise employed, and also clearly perceiving the public antipathy to the project, he discreetly declined to participate in the enterprise. On February 22, 1884, the unfortunate Morse met death by drowning, in the Hudson River, near Harlem, and he was thought to have committed suicide.
BELASCO’S SERVICES TO MORSE’S ENTERPRISE.
The successful presentment of Morse’s play in California was due to the sincerity and ability of O’Neill and to the ardent enthusiasm of Belasco, who revelled in the opportunities which he discovered for pictorial display: he explored every accessible source for paintings to be copied and for suggestions as to costume, color, and “atmosphere,” and, particularly, he made use of every expedient of “realistic” effect. Belasco writes of this: “I had seen ’The Passion Play’ in Europe, but, without prejudice, our little far-western town held the honors.” That statement involves a slip of memory. He had, in March, 1879, been as far east as New York, but his first visit to Europe did not occur till 1884. His view of the Oberammergau performance was obtained long after the presentment of Morse’s play in San Francisco. The following reminiscence by Belasco of the California representation of “The Passion Play” is instructive: